They’re about to go to the back of the line again. A new poll by Nanos Research reports that North American energy security trumps concerns about climate change almost equally among Canadians and Americans.
But what the 66 per cent of Canadians who support a full-blown continental energy strategy may not know is that 100 per cent of “North American energy security” — supposedly delivered by the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands to the Gulf Coast and the west-east oil pipelines proposed for Canada — are really destined for Americans and offshore markets.
Canadians will be left standing at the back of the line, where we’ve always been. Even for our own energy.
The Diefenbaker government’s National Oil Policy, in place from 1961 until the 1973 Middle East oil crisis, required all Canadians west of the Ottawa Valley to pay more than the world price for Canadian oil to spur development of the Alberta oil industry. Quebec and the Maritimes were supplied by cheaper offshore oil.
Laxer says the NOP still shapes Canada’s oil policy. And Canadians shouldn’t kid themselves that building pipelines to the east will finally provide energy security for eastern Canadians. They won’t. The east-west oil pipelines are all about getting Alberta crude to tidewater so the transnational oil companies can capture the higher international oil price, either by exporting it directly to offshore markets or running it through their own refineries in Canada or the U.S.
It’s a win-win situation for the transnationals, Laxer says.
“Right now, (the transnational oil companies) are blocked going south. They’re blocked going west. So they’ll go east. Look, they’ll even go north — Churchill is being talked about. So is reversing the old Mackenzie Valley pipeline.
“This has to be seen — this pipeline to the east — as just another ploy, just another attempt to get oil to international markets. And if there can be a side benefit of supplying Canada, well, that’s fine.”
Canadians should take note of the fact Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver didn’t talk about energy security and supplying Canadians when he offered support for these west-to-east pipelines, Laxer continues.
The Conservatives don’t think energy security for Canadians is part of their mandate, Laxer says. It isn’t that they’re indifferent to Canadian interests. They simply feel that “this is not government business. There isn’t going to be a problem with security of supply because the private market — the brilliance of the Invisible Hand — will always provide. And too bad, if (Canadians) have to pay more. If they’re willing to pay the price, they’ll get their oil. That’s the Conservative mentality.”
But Laxer warns that both the government and the oil companies are “living in a fool’s paradise with the idea that oil is going to carry on for decades without supply problems. Most other countries in the world are going to make sure their own people are going to get their own oil first and eastern Canadians will not be provided.”
Laxer points out that world oil production hasn’t increased since 2005 — eight years ago. “There’s been some increase in gasoline made from natural gas liquids and some other sources but not oil,” Laxer continues. “People forget that the price of oil was just $20 a barrel in 2002. Now it’s hovering around $100 a barrel.”
Nor can hopes be pinned on fracking and shale oil. David Hughes, a geoscientist who recently retired from the Geological Survey of Canada, has written a report on fracking and the shale oil boom in the U.S. and its decline rates. Hughes warns that after the first year, production drops as much as 70 per cent. Hughes also cautions that there’s been incredible inflation in predictions of how much oil is actually available in the U.S.
Hughes can’t get any funding to do a similar study in Canada.
Given the dominance of continentalism and corporatism in today’s Canada, Laxer says, Canadians will have to content themselves with what he calls “incidental oil security.”
“They may get some of the oil if it remains profitable for the oil and pipeline companies to sell it to them. But there’s no guarantee that will continue because it is government policy and oil industry practice to go wherever they can make the highest profit. And if they see that shipping it on rather than selling it to Canadians is more profitable, they’ll do it and there’s nothing to stop them.
“And it’s always going to be more profitable.”
Since Canada’s founding, Canadians have exhibited colonial mentality, viewing their country and its interests as somehow less important. The American historian Seymour Martin Lipset and philosopher Edgar Friedenberg both point out that Canadians have a history of political deference, of acceptance of elites and traditional authority.
Once again, Canadians are deferring to “that colonial connection where the elites do not think of the interests of Canada as being separate from either Britain or the U.S,” Laxer says. “And now the Conservative government has made it clear that it will not intervene to provide Canadians with energy security the way all other countries in the International Energy Agency do.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper made that crystal clear in an interview with CBC’s The National in January, 2012. “It is fundamentally a market-based decision,” Harper told Peter Mansbridge. “We don’t dictate pipelines go here or there.”
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Frances Russell
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