
Image description: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley speaks at a podium, with an Alberta flag and a picture of mountains and a lake in the background. Notley recently advocated for the use of pipeline revenues to fund Canada’s transition away from fossil fuels. (Image credit: Premier of Alberta/Flickr)
It’s early days yet, but already it looks as though the great debate over pipelines will be one of the defining issues of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s time in office.
The pipeline issue is hot right now. Opposition to pipelines from the pro-Leap Manifesto faction of the NDP played a significant role in unseating leader Thomas Mulcair earlier this month and may yet lead to a splitting of the party. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway, long presumed dead, is poised for a potential last-minute revival thanks to the campaign-promise-breaking support and behind-the-scenes machinations of several prominent politicians. And pipeline fever won’t be going anywhere soon; with the NEB due to deliver its recommendations on Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain in just under a month, the issue will be widely discussed and debated this summer. Meanwhile, the NEB’s final report on TransCanada’s Energy East isn’t expected until March 2018, with a cabinet decision due three months later, guaranteeing that pipeline politics will feature as prominently in the run-up to the next election as they did in the last one.
This is also an issue on which our Boy Wonder PM just can’t catch a break. He finds himself attacked on all sides for his opaquely unsatisfying position. Pipeline proponents like Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, and Conservative Party interim leader Rona Ambrose have slammed Trudeau for being insufficiently enthusiastic about pushing the issue, despite the seemingly unending litany of statements from senior cabinet ministers that this government is “committed” to “getting Canada’s resources to market” – indeed, that this is “one of the fundamental responsibilities of any Canadian Prime Minister”. Meanwhile, although the government has taken steps to make the pipeline review process at least appear more impartial and thorough, activists and environmentalists have slammed the piecemeal reforms as woefully insufficient, with some charging that they amount to little more than a fig leaf designed to provide cover for pipeline approval.
Pipelines occupy the precise intersection between economic issues and environmental concerns. The issues is therefore a kind of proxy war, a struggle over what kind of future we want to work towards. Concerns about catastrophic climate change clash with worries for the plight of the suddenly impoverished workforce of Alberta and Saskatchewan, who are facing a once-in-a-century economic calamity.
And this really does need to be stressed – things are BAD out west. Continue Reading
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