Is Kenney trying to make friends with PM?
Jason Kenney has issued a long list of utterly terrible things that will happen to Canada if the federal government doesn’t approve the Frontier oilsands project in Alberta.
Investors will balk, global markets will slam the door on Alberta, angry Albertans will lose their cool, endangered species — caribou! bison! — will not get the protection they need. Canada’s reputation for being reliable would come to an end.
“Its rejection would have devastating impacts on Alberta and Canada’s economy,” he concluded Tuesday in an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Never mind that the project may never find the right economic conditions or oil prices to see the light of day, hire its 7,000 people and contribute billions in tax revenues. Never mind that global markets are already turning their backs on long-term oil developments, and envisaging lower returns over the coming decade, regardless of what happens on this project.
Hyperbole is in full swing — the most obvious indication that a momentous decision is at hand, and Kenney fears it won’t be in his favour. He is raising the stakes by stoking indignation in advance.
But the federal cabinet is putting its ear very close to the wall of Kenney’s echo chamber, straining to listen past the threats and insults in search of some kind of way forward. And woven delicately through Kenney’s rhetoric are some clues of compromise.
Similarly, when the Ottawa contingent repeatedly addresses the sharp Alberta arguments in favour of the oilsands development with cheerful, jargony talking points, it’s hard to see how anything productive could come of its long back and forth. But they, too, are leaving some bread crumbs about where a solution could be found.
From the Alberta side, Kenney’s letter commits the province to capping emissions at 100 megatonnes a year. That’s significant because it puts the promise in writing. The cap was put in legislation by the previous government of the NDP’s Rachel Notley, but regulations were never brought into force. And while Kenney hurled a few insults in
Ottawa’s direction about not talking enough to the province about its willingness to maintain the cap, his commitment — from a federal viewpoint — is an important one in making the case in favour of oilsands development.
Kenney is also signalling that he won’t quarrel with the federal Liberals and their goal to drive emissions to net zero by 2050. Instead, he says he wants to see a detailed plan and wants to be included in designing that plan.
“We do not dispute the need to reduce emissions and, in fact, are committed to doing so,” he writes.
Of course, when he intersperses these commitments amongst the doomsday language around approval for Frontier, the underlying message is: he will only co-operate if he gets a yes. If it’s a no, all bets are off.
As for the federal side of the equation, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson has been sending some signals of his own.
In a speech to a who’s who of energy producers and clean tech in Vancouver on Tuesday, he affirmed what Trudeau had said during the election campaign: the government is in favour of expanding oilsands production over time, under certain conditions.
Wilkinson laid out those conditions — essentially saying what Teck would have to demonstrate to get to yes.
“It is important for us as a country to ensure that in supplying hydrocarbons, that we are striving to be the best, the cleanest, the lowest emission on a per unit basis, the lowest in terms of impacts on biodiversity and wildlife, the best in terms of our overall environmental footprint,” he said. “That is the lens that a government, our government and any government federally, should be using to assess project proposals.”
The problem is, the Frontier project may not be meet those conditions as the federal government sees them. Its expected emissions are a bit below average, but certainly not the lowest of the low. It would affect the habitat of bison and birds. And it would add to Canada’s environmental footprint at a time when the federal government has committed to shrinking it.
Both sides have now quite clearly set a test for the other, but it’s not at all clear whether either side will pass. And given the incendiary nature of the dispute, failure is not an option.