Harper said last week the Northern Gateway decision will be made by experts using science and not politics. He says a review panel of the National Energy Board will make the call based on “economic costs and risks.”
Maybe it will. The Harper government showed leadership by using a non-political process in its naval shipbuilding decision last year. But it’s notable that the prime minister didn’t mention environmental concerns, which are top of mind among the Gateway’s opponents.
And there’s history in the mix, too. Traditionally, mega-projects in this country go political. Canadians are conditioned to expect political interference and they are primed to react.
The Harper government has fed that sense through almost everything it has said about the pipelines up to now. During the spring budget battles, it emerged that the cabinet would have the power to make the call on big projects, whatever the energy board says.
The government says that’s aimed at “giving government authority to make the ‘go/no go’ decisions, based on the recommendations of the National Energy Board.” In other words, the cabinet can force the board to reconsider decisions with which it disagrees. When politicians get involved, process becomes politics.
Pipelines have already gone political in British Columbia, where the Tories won a significant part of their majority with 21 of the province’s current 36 seats. It’s in B.C. that pipeline politics are hottest, with Premier Christy Clark adding fuel by demanding a “fair share” of the take from Western oil and pipelines.
Clark faces the voters in early 2013 and polls suggest she might not be around when the next federal election is held. But the pipeline debates likely will be, even if the government gets its way and the Northern Gateway decision is made before the end of next year.
What the Harper government doesn’t need is the process dragging on into 2014, creating oil and pipelines as hot political issues going into the next federal election cycle.
Northern Gateway is the most controversial but not the only pipeline with political dimensions. There’s also the proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain line to Vancouver and the southbound Keystone XL. Taken together, pipelines have galvanized a militant coalition of anti-oil environmentalists, Eastern labour unions and pipe-skeptic political parties like the Greens and the NDP.
They’ve also found ready allies among existing opponents of the Conservative government. Offsetting that somewhat is the fact that the solid Tory vote in Alberta will be boosted by Harper’s support for the pipelines. Northern Gateway is forecast to put more than $1 billion into the Alberta treasury every year and billions more in economic spinoffs.
The political problem is that adding to their vote in Alberta won’t give the Conservatives many more seats because they already own the place. Losing ground in B.C. could be painful.
And this isn’t just a Western issue. Opposition to the pipelines seems to be stirring in other parts of the country. The Tories well know that even small numbers of swing voters can cause big effects in elections.
Harper has described pipelines as being “in the vital interests of Canada and in the vital interests of British Columbia,” because they diversify access to oil markets. But pipeline supporters face a big job selling that idea to the broader electorate. They haven’t done a very good job so far.
So does the Harper government try to ram the approvals forward and risk alienating voters in B.C. and elsewhere? Because it does represent such a risk, some Tories will no doubt want to punt the debate past the next election. They might then be able to use a renewed majority to get the job done.
But it’s entirely possible the debate will peak just as the next federal campaign gets into gear. And what happens then? I certainly don’t know. But for Stephen Harper, the political problem is that he doesn’t know either.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: DAN LEGER
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