The statement by University of B.C. professor Michael Byers, Mulcair's leadership campaign co-chairman on the West Coast, was seized on immediately by one of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's senior lieutenants.
"Mr. Byers is just being more honest than Mr. Mulcair in just stating the obvious implication" of Mulcair's policy of stepping up enforcement of federal environmental laws and bringing in a cap-and-trade system to put a price on carbon emissions, said Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.
"The whole point of their policy is to reduce production. The whole point is to make it economically unfeasible," said Kenney, Harper's senior minister in Calgary.
"And the reason Mr. Mulcair isn't being explicit about it is that he's not willing to admit the inevitable result of his policy would be the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs."
Mulcair was reluctant this week, during his increasingly nasty battle with the Harper government and western premiers over oilsands policy, to discuss in detail the full economic implications on the industry of his "polluter-pay" policies.
Byers, a frequent public commentator on climate change issues, said Friday some oilsands operations would no longer make economic sense under such a regime.
Like Mulcair, Byers argues that Ottawa should eliminate federal subsidies for the oilpatch, fully enforce federal regulations like the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Act, and implement a cap-and-trade system.
"At the current price of oil . . . it's difficult to see a lot of this production making sense right now" under such a scenario, Byers said in an interview.
"Obviously the current means of production of bitumen in Alberta are based on an absence of the kinds of pricing and regulations that we think are needed," said Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law.
"So the current forms of production will have to change. They will not be sustainable in their current form."
Mulcair wasn't available for comment Friday.
But earlier this week Mulcair, when asked about the implications for the industry, cited the experience of the nickel-producing giant Inco Ltd., now owned by Vale Ltd.
Inco responded to the threat of government polluter-pay action by investing heavily in scrubbers starting in the 1990s at its Sudbury, Ont., operation, resulting in a huge reduction in emissions, Mulcair noted.
Byers said Friday that some oilsands companies could "quite possibly" adapt to the new "polluter pay" system.
He also said that if the price of oil went to $200 U.S. a barrel, from its current price in the low $90-a-barrel range, that would make the industry profitable and a magnet for investment regardless of federal rules.
Byers, who is no stranger to controversial comments on the oilsands industry, stressed that he's not speaking for the NDP leader and isn't a policy adviser.
"We're friends. I've seen him once since his leadership victory, and we've spoken on the phone, but no, I'm not crafting this policy," said Byers, who is on sabbatical from his UBC post to write a book on the future of the Arctic.
"This is Tom's lead, these are his opinions that he's putting forward. I'm impressed and I applaud his conviction and his willingness to stand up to criticism."
As a B.C. candidate in the 2008 election, Byers put then-NDP leader Jack Layton on the defensive when he said: "We need to go after the big polluters, we need to shut the tarsands down."
The NDP responded by stressing that it had no plans to shut the industry down, but did want to put a stop to the industry's current expansion.
In December, Byers said in an interview that Mulcair's policies would mean that the oilsands "would no longer be a viable business."
In December, when told of Byers' comments, Mulcair said: "What I think Michael and I are both saying is this, that the tarsands — oilsands — can be developed and can continue to develop if we apply all these rules of sustainable development, and we internalize the costs."
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Peter O'Neil
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