Green activists in B.C. hurting their own cause
Environmental extremists hurting Canada and their cause, writes Claudia Cattaneo.
The disrespect shown by B.C. Green Leader Andrew Weaver for Alberta’s NDP premier, Rachel Notley, over her defence of the Trans Mountain pipeline is indicative of why Donald Trump seems poised to wash his hands of the Paris climate change accord.
When the environmental left goes too far — as Weaver and his new best friend, B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan, are doing, and as former U.S. president Barack Obama did — the result is a corresponding extreme position.
It remains to be seen which one will prevail. One could continue to undermine the other and no progress will be made, to the detriment of the climate and of Canada.
Just watch what is happening in the U.S. Trump is expected to announce he will pull his country out of the Paris climate change accord, a move that dismantles one of Obama’s big legacies and that becomes the environmental left’s new legacy.
In Victoria late Tuesday, using a tone that was professorial, condescending, and inappropriate, Weaver scolded Notley for supporting the federally approved $7.4-billion pipeline.
“The idea that somehow a pipeline in a market where it doesn’t exist is going to create jobs in British Columbia is nothing more than a myth,” Weaver said. “For Ms. Notley to tell British Columbia that somehow (we should be) chasing the 20th century for our future is not a good sign for her and her economy in Alberta.
“Frankly, I think she should get with the program to embrace the 21st century as well.”
In fact, the Edmonton-to-Burnaby pipeline has been in operation since before Weaver was born and is a major supplier of oil to B.C., fuelling its cars, planes and trains. About 90 per cent of the gasoline used in the B.C. Interior and the Lower Mainland comes through the pipeline from Alberta’s oilfields, and will continue to be an important supplier unless Weaver has an energy miracle up his sleeve.
Contrary to Weaver’s views, Canada’s 21st century will be about increasing oil and gas exports because they matter to its prosperity. Environmental performance will increase, and if Canadian pipeline options aren’t available, oil will move in costlier and less safe oil trains and keep Canada dependent on the U.S. market and its politics. This is the program.
The B.C. NDP and Green agreement that will enable them to jointly oust Christy Clark’s Liberals takes singular aim at Trans Mountain.
Yet it says nothing about natural gas or coal production in the B.C. Interior, both fossil fuels, underscoring that the pipeline obsession is really about Alberta bashing.
Even more strangely, Weaver is a supporter of media baron David Black’s proposed $25-billion refinery to process Alberta heavy oil. Black happens to be a constituent of Weaver’s affluent Oak Bay-Gordon Head riding, where jobs from resources aren’t so top of mind in oceanfront mansions, golf and yacht clubs.
Like Weaver and Horgan, Notley started her mandate two years ago with an anti-oil, anti-business agenda. Reality of governing got in the way, like tens of thousands of unemployed oil workers, deficits that led to rapid-fire provincial debt downgrades, and a flight of capital.
By going to war against the Trans Mountain pipeline — supposedly the federal reward for Alberta’s tough climate change plan that is underpinning Canada’s Paris greenhouse gas reduction commitments — Weaver is hardening views in Alberta.
Anger and alienation from the rest of the country are supporting the rise of the United Conservative Party, the new right wing party that if elected in Alberta in 2019 is sure to follow Trump’s footsteps and toss out climate change commitments with no upside.
Environmental extremists like Weaver will have themselves to blame.