But observers and former participants in past fights say this scrap is unlike anything seen before: environmental issues are taking centre stage, the playing field is international and Alberta occupies a vastly different role in Confederation.
“Really big stakes are in this battle,” said Andre Plourde, a Carleton University energy economist and former senior bureaucrat at National Resources Canada.
“This is a big deal.”
Sparring erupted this week with B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s demand that her province receive a “fair share” of the economic benefits given the environmental risks it will bear from the $5.5-billion pipeline.
If approved by regulators, the project by Calgary-based Enbridge will carry oilsands to the B.C. coast and Asia-bound tankers, opening vital new export markets for Alberta crude.
But Premier Alison Redford was quick to deep-six B.C.’s suggestion a share of Alberta’s energy royalties or that tax revenue could be on the table.
At the end of the Council of the Federation meeting Friday, Clark walked out and vowed B.C. wouldn’t co-operate with other provinces in developing a Canadian energy strategy — Redford’s major policy plank — unless the dispute is resolved.
Richard Nixon at the University of Alberta’s school of business said the future and the past are colliding in the Gateway debate.
Although the concerns are regional, they tie into a broader international discussion surrounding market access for growing Canadian oil production.
“Energy is the 21st century global issue — how do we have a more benign form of energy, in other words not damaging our environment, and how do we supply more?” he said.
“Canada has always thought regionally about its energy and now we’re being driven into thinking globally and so, if anything, this is what the transition is.”
Unlike past battles, environmental issues dominate the Gateway landscape.
Opposition to oilsands expansion has become a national and international movement, and Gateway would run through areas of wilderness and waterways, as well as First Nations’ land.
B.C.’s call for greater compensation was one of five demands laid out as a condition of supporting the line, with the others relating to environmental protections and aboriginal rights.
Oilpatch historian David Finch said the dispute is fundamentally different from the pipeline wars of the 1950s, or Alberta’s long struggle with Ottawa over jurisdiction of natural resources in the 1980s.
The sheer magnitude of the oilsands — the third-largest reserves in the world — makes it a strategic resource that has drawn attention from all corners.
“Who’s going to decide what will be in the best interest of the country?” he asked.
“Here’s a huge new resource being developed and you’ve got a bunch of people saying we want to have a say in this process. Back in the 1950s and ’60s certainly no politicians were talking about environmental issues around pipelines.”
Alberta has fought more than its fair share of energy brawls in the past.
In the 1970s the Lougheed government turned off the supply of natural gas to Ontario in a dispute with Ottawa over the development of secondary products.
By the end of that decade, Alberta and Ottawa were at war over the National Energy Program, the Trudeau government’s attempt to wrest a larger share of oil revenue, and lower prices in Eastern Canada.
Disputes between Canada’s westernmost provinces aren’t completely unheard of either, with a 1977 set-to over Alberta providing natural gas to allow B.C. to fulfil contracts to the United States.
But for much of the past four decades, the western provinces have backed each other on energy.
“Very rarely have we seen in Canada this kind of provincial to provincial kind of dynamic . . . it’s quite remarkable,” said Greg Stringham, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which represents the country’s largest oil companies.
The Gateway issue threw this week’s premier’s meeting for a loop, although B.C. had little backing for its position among other provinces.
And while Clark called for negotiations between Alberta, B.C. and Ottawa, the federal Conservative government — a strong backer of Gateway — appears to be in Redford’s corner. Senior cabinet ministers Jason Kenney and John Baird both slammed Clark’s stance.
Calgary Centre-North MP Michelle Rempel said it’s not the federal government’s role to settle the dispute between the two provinces.
She said Clark’s argument about receiving a fair share buttresses the federal position about the critical importance of this pipeline.
“We’ve had a lot of static out here over the last few months about whether or not the oilsands should be developed,” said Rempel, parliamentary secretary to the environment minister.
“All of a sudden, when the rubber is hitting the road, the discussion is about royalty revenue, it’s about the importance of that revenue to a provincial government.”
Former Alberta energy minister Rick Orman — who was involved in scraps over gas exports to the United States two decades ago — believes Clark’s call for negotiations aren’t serious and could have unintended consequences.
“B.C. runs the risk of having their ox gored on this because there is a lot of interprovincial trade that happens in this country that’s good for the economic well-being,” he said.
Orman thinks the premier is staking out her position for domestic consumption in B.C., not as the basis for serious talks.
Public opinion appears to be running against Gateway in the province and Clark’s governing Liberals trail far behind the Opposition NDP in the polls with an election looming next year.
Orman’s former boss, ex-premier Don Getty, said there should be discussions between the provinces and the companies involved.
Redford took the right position by rejecting any sharing of Alberta’s royalties, but there are ways to increase B.C.’s benefits such as a potential equity stake in the project, said Getty, who also served in Lougheed’s cabinet during the energy wars with Ottawa.
“By calling a meeting of all interested parties you can actually get it switched to a very positive, gung-ho, let’s make a lot of money with this thing (attitude),” he said.
The U of A’s Dixon thinks Redford’s national energy strategy may be the key to resolving the conflict as it helps broaden the discussion into a pan-Canadian conversation about the importance of non-renewable resources.
But Plourde said given the battle lines that are already drawn, Redford’s plan may be doomed.
“This is a good example of why it’s so hard to forge a national energy strategy in Canada,” he added. “The interests of the province don’t line up.”
Original Article
Source: calgary herald
Author: James Wood and Chris Varcoe
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