The prime minister’s assertion it’s not his job to become a “cheerleader” for pipeline projects echoes his father’s rhetorical query to Saskatchewan farmers in late 1968: “Why should I sell your wheat?” Historians state that pugnacious-sounding question was actually the lead-in to some woolly 500-word philosophical riff on the role from the Canadian Wheat Board in western agriculture. No matter. Westerners remembered the jibe, not the seminar. Within the next election, Liberal representation on the prairies fell from 11 seats to 3. By 1984 it was down to one (Lloyd Axworthy).
With Alberta suffering an unpleasant contraction of its dominant industry, Trudeau II might want to be more careful about seeming indifferent to Western concerns. Declining to “cheerlead” isn’t that far conceptually from “Why should I sell your oil?” The Liberals made nice gains in the west in last year’s election, winning twelve seats on the prairies. But those seats are far from rock-solid.
The ruckus over the Energy East proposal to maneuver oil from Alberta to Montreal inside a converted natural gas pipeline raises a simple question about what it’s to become fellow citizens. You might think citizenship means having empathy for the countrymen, that the fortune pleases me. If the export project benefits our compatriots in Alberta, we Quebecers ought to be pleased by that by itself. The exam of these a project thus remains whether its advantages to Canadians are greater than its costs. Even if Quebecers do bear some costs, if Albertans’ gains are more than those costs, you should be pleased to proceed. The next time cost and benefits might have to go the other way around. Albertans may lose a little and Quebecers gain but everyone’s OK with that because give and take is the reason why a country work. Being countrymen isn’t as strong a tie as being family members, where empathy is almost 100 percent, but it’s like this.
Related
- Joe Oliver: Canada’s foolish pipeline flubsKevin Libin: Don’t dismiss Coderre’s Alberta bashing; all anti-pipeline politics are local
-
-
-
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre proposes quite a different test for such projects: that “stakeholders,” with anyone liberated to declare himself a stakeholder, enjoy net benefits. Pipeline risks may be minimal (an industry web page says they’re the same as under three teaspoons of gas spilled once every 50 fill-ups of fifty litres) but when there’s any risk at all, non-Albertans must be fully compensated for them. That isn’t necessarily a typical economists would oppose. What we call “welfare economics” posits that a change is definitely an improvement only if a minimum of someone is better off with no one worse off. It’s not sufficient that overall benefits exceed immediate and ongoing expenses. Absolutely no it’s possible to lose, however slight the potential loss. Moreover, Coderre appears to say, should there be losers, their provinces can steer clear of the oil from flowing. When individuals take that method of commerce we give them a call pirates.
Trudeau II may want to be more careful than his father about seeming indifferent to Western concerns
Even if you believe an insurance policy of “no losers ever, at all” is better, it seems bound to chew up years, even decades, in process. The Harper government set a two-year limit on environmental assessments. That clearly is going to be going the clear way of financial reporting requirements for First Nations’ governments.
Wikipedia informs us the regulatory process to get the original trans-Canada gas pipeline built was “long and arduous.” Ironically, the major problem was persuading Alberta to agree to export its gas. It wouldn’t achieve this until it may be sure of a 30-year supply for its own uses. Sixty-five years later it seems its estimates of their surplus were correct.
Then there is a debate about who’d build the road and what route it might take. A Canadian company favoured a U.S. route. A U.S. company favoured the Canadian route eventually chosen though, shades of railway-building 70 years earlier, not before the federal government provided a Crown corporation and funding for the uneconomic northern Ontario section.
And, obviously, there is the famous “Pipeline Debate” of 1956, featuring a full-out opposition filibuster, an MP’s fatal cardiac arrest in the stress of it and, finally, an old and tired Liberal government’s utilization of closure, then regarded as a drastic parliamentary measure, to be able to end debate, pass the pipeline bill, and let construction begin in summer 1956. By October 1958, barely 2 yrs later, the three,000-kilometre pipeline was finished and also the first gas flowed. Of course, by then John Diefenbaker was prime minister.
From under eight years from conception to flow seems, not “long and arduous,” but lightning-fast by modern standards. The best minister does not have to channel C. D. Howe and Louis St. Laurent on parliamentary procedure, but if he wants 1950s economic growth rates, as numerous in his party would like, he must have a look at 1950s openness to mega-projects.
