Eight months later that Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is in mortal danger, in large part because the prime minister’s take-no-prisoners approach has had the perverse effect of galvanizing the project’s opponents.
But the pipeline saga has also revealed the limitations of Harper’s particular brand of deceitful politics.
The Conservative government imported classic smear tactics to demonize pipeline opponents as anti-Canadian subversives. Yet those tactics didn’t take.
Now, even the churches remain dubious about Northern Gateway, with not just the United Church but Anglicans and Presbyterians criticizing the project.
Northern Gateway is a complex story. At one level, it is a no-brainer. Alberta pumps oil. China and Japan want oil. British Columbia already has pipelines crisscrossing the province. Why not build another?
Constructing a pipeline to ship oil to Asia also speaks to an issue that has long engaged the nationalist left — moving Canada away from its reliance on American markets.
Harper may not see himself as the heir to Pierre Trudeau’s third option strategy of market diversification. But he is.
Moreover, when proponents argue that pipelines are the safest way to transport oil, they are probably right. Yes, pipelines can and do break. But oil trains derail and oil tankers sink — often with more devastating consequences.
Which brings us to the second part of the story: Enbridge’s pipeline may be the focus of opposition but it is not the issue.
The real issues include the oilsands themselves, with their arguably devastating environmental effects, as well as the spill danger posed by oil tankers navigating B.C.’s treacherous coastline.
Yet neither of these can be taken on easily. The oilsands are governed by Alberta’s petro-friendly provincial government. Navigation regulations are within the exclusive jurisdiction of Harper’s federal regime. To no one’s surprise, Ottawa has already OK’d tanker traffic along the B.C. coast.
Politically, the pipeline is the weakest link. If it can be stopped, the tankers will have nothing to transport. That is why B.C.’s two major parties, the New Democrats and the Liberals, are digging in their heels against Northern Gateway.
The prime minister’s first reaction was to declare war on pipeline opponents. That’s when he sent Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver out to denounce environmental critics as radicals funded by foreign socialist billionaires.
In a move reminiscent of Russian boss Vladimir Putin, Harper also set the tax auditors of the Canadian Revenue Agency on environmental groups. Then he gutted the last remnants of independence retained by the National Energy Board, the agency charged with examining Enbridge’s pipeline proposal.
Harper’s hope was that this combination of toughness, smear and crass ideology — particularly if repeated endlessly in the right-wing media — would convince a big chunk of the broad Canadian middle. The strategy does, after all, work in the U.S.
But it hasn’t here. Public opposition to the scheme is so intense in B.C. that even the avowedly pro-business, governing Liberals have joined in.
Add to this the nightmare of aboriginal politics. First Nations along the pipeline route are threatening to tie up the project for years in court — which they can do.
And the broad public? My guess is that, Joe Oliver notwithstanding, most Canadians don’t regard environmentalist David Suzuki, or even B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark, as dangerous radicals funded by foreign gold.
What they do see is an increasingly shrill federal government whose bully-boy tactics aren’t working
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Thomas Walkom
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