Pipelines, Provinces, and Oil Politics

Poised to seek their revenge on one Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Albertans – and Harper – are unlikely to back down.

Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline will probably be approved and built. Prime Minister Stephen Harper will do what Pierre Trudeau did – tell the provinces concerned that the project is a federal issue because it is inter-provincial and international, and that it’s a national development and security issue. Trudeau created the National Energy Program in the 1980s and told Alberta that it had provincial jurisdiction over the oil itself, but that he had the federal jurisdiction over moving it out of Alberta. If the province wanted to sell its oil, it had to make a deal on oil prices within Canada – or it could go sit on its oil. Trudeau avoided travelling to Alberta for quite a while after that, at least partly for security reasons. Many Alberta bumper stickers said, “Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark,” and they meant it.

I lived in Manitoba at the time, and I sympathized. All of the West hated Central Canada. Western anger was further stoked when Trudeau gave an aircraft-maintenance contract to a Quebec company even though BAE in Winnipeg had the best technical proposal and price. Trudeau said it was better for the contract to be given to a company close to the existing infrastructure, which westerners correctly interpreted as meaning that they would never be allowed to develop technological infrastructure.

Alberta had tried for years to get federal funding to develop its oil, but Ontario and Quebec always quashed its attempts because oil from the Middle East was cheap. So Alberta developed its oil with money from private investments. Then OPEC and the oil crisis hit in the 1970s and Albertans were told that their oil was “Canadian oil.” From Albertans’ point of view, the term “bastards” was too mild. In the next federal election, Trudeau’s Liberals were virtually wiped out in the West.

Now the tides have turned: Alberta has prosperity, a larger population, more seats in Parliament, even more oil with the tar sands, and an Albertan Conservative prime minister with a majority government. With this chance for revenge, do you think Albertans will let Harper back down on the Northern Gateway Pipeline or anything to do with tar-sands development? No way. For years, the West felt that Quebec and Ontario relegated it – through their words, attitudes, voting, and funding decisions – to the position of colonies that supplied the East with raw materials. Now Alberta is saying: “Guess what? We are Canada.” As for Eastern Canadian Liberal and NDP concerns about the environment, I can hear the Albertans chuckling. They’re probably remembering that Trudeau made “FU!” famous, and now they can say it back.

Harper is currently in the process of shutting out American conservationist funding and “streamlining” the environmental-review process. He will negotiate with the Aboriginal Peoples and succeed in pushing the pipeline through. Harper has drawn a line in the sand, and clearly and publicly made his stand – he won’t back down now. He’s an Albertan at heart, and it’s his tar-sands oil in more ways than one.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.