Keystone XL Project (cont.): Next move is yours, Mr. President

Yesterday, in Houston, Texas, Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver promised that Canada will soon announce tough climate change regulations for its oil and gas sector. Following Ambassador Jacobson’s script, Oliver asserted:

“'Canada is the largest supplier of heavy oil to the U.S., and soon to be one of the few with stringent oil and gas GHG [greenhouse gas] regulations,' Mr. Oliver told a friendly crowd at the CERAWeek energy conference. 'In contrast, other suppliers are doing little or nothing to manage GHG emissions.'

“As a result, Canada represents 'the most and perhaps only responsible choice' for the United States to meet its oil import needs, he said.”

Will this ease Barack Obama’s decision-making on the Keystone XL pipeline? Is it even relevant? Not likely. Here, in the same story, is the response of a key anti-Keystone lobby:

“'We need a credible system that actually reduces absolute emissions,' Gillian McEachern, campaign director for Environmental Defence, said in an interview from Toronto.

“Ms. McEachern said Canada lags oil producers such as Norway, the United Kingdom and Australia in imposing climate regulations.”

These terms for agreeing to the pipeline, unsurprisingly, are impossible.

It’s quite feasible that Canada (and, hey, the United States, too) could significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms, nationally or in a continental deal. However, to expect Canada to cut emissions absolutely in its strongest export sector is, for the foreseeable future, an intolerable idea. Why not simply insist on a Western Canadian recession?

Furthermore, why should Norway’s off-shore environmental standards—whatever their supposed technical relevance—get into a decision about the responsible extraction of heavy oil in landlocked Alberta? What do they have to do with maintaining free trade in North America? Why isn’t it good enough for Canadian standards to be as good as—and improve in tandem with—environment standards within the US energy market?

It’s a safe bet that the climate change movement will never be cornered into going along with the Keystone XL pipeline.

Why let this decision fester on your desk, Mr. President?

By Canadian standards of good manners: Wouldn’t it be nice if—before you go to Israel to puff up a difficult conservative Prime Minister—you cleared up this pipeline question with a conservative Prime Minister in Canada, one who has caused you not a single serious worry in four years?  

The China card and Canada’s frayed affair with America

Stephen Harper must have kicked something when he learned that Barack Obama had decided to delay the Keystone XL pipeline project. It’s been some time since he won anything significant for his political base in Alberta, and this $7 billion project would have greatly enhanced Alberta’s long-term economic credibility.

Yes. Harper too has made politically expedient decisions to secure his own majority—for instance, arbitrarily blocking the foreign sale of Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. Nevertheless, as prime minister, Harper has taken, without reservation, numerous real political risks to bolster Obama’s foreign policy—on Afghanistan, border management and security, Israel, Libya, and, most recently, Iran.

Harper, however, left it to others to vent in public.

The Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, characterized the Keystone delay as a “wake up call” and then started dreaming about China.

“. . . Diversifying away from the US, particularly in energy, is right at the centre of our thinking. . . .It is a major fundamental strategic objective for Canada.”

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadas-trade-vision-shifts-beyond-the-united-states/article2235094/

As a rhetorical gesture, the statement works.

It sounds big and elevates the strategic importance of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, an even more environmentally controversial system of pipelines across British Columbia and oil tankers down its exquisite west coast. Indeed, one retired Canadian strategist warned that Canadians not get too excited. “You can’t change geography,” Colin Robertson acknowledged. The US “is still the biggest market in the world.”

As a true description of what holds the strategic attention of the Harper Cabinet, however, Oliver’s statement is distressing.

Trade diversification is a natural outcome of globalization—the Americans, the Europeans, and the Asians are widening their markets even faster than Canada. But it doesn’t measure up as a comprehensive economic, ethical, or geopolitical strategy for Canada. Trade expansion builds on a strong economic base; it doesn’t substitute for one.

Canada’s geographic location isn’t regrettable; it’s a blessing.

Making Canada richer by being less North American is a lazy, vain idea. As a whole, Canada will only continue to prosper globally by improving its performance in North America and, yes, by helping the US remain a successful great power.

Two hundred oil tankers a year sailing off to China will not create for Canada a better trading partner than it has now or a more respectful American neighbor. The US is not on its knees to secure vast additional supplies of unconventional Canadian oil. A slice of China’s energy market will not make China any less ruthless as a superpower or the loss of North American markets less painful.

The 100 largest US cities alone are economically bigger than China; they are growing as markets and they already practice business, commercial law, and politics like Canadians. At the same time, Canada’s share of their imports is shrinking drastically.

“The numbers are devastating. Between 2001 and 2010, Canada’s share of U.S. imports has fallen to 9.1 per cent from 25.1 per cent in furniture, to 5.4 per cent from 10.1 per cent in electrical equipment, to 4.8 per cent from 10.3 per cent in beverages and tobacco products, to 2.2 per cent from 6.8 per cent in textiles, to 17 per cent from 30.3 per cent in printing, to 10.3 per cent to 18.1 per cent in fabricated metal, and to 19.9 per cent from 31.1 per cent in plastics and rubber.”

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/daily-mix/stunning-loss-of-canadian-market-share-in-us-report/article1842144/

Canada isn’t failing as a communicator, it’s failing as an innovator—a competitive producer of goods and services that can create high paying jobs in its own wonderfully liveable cities.

Canada’s Maclean’s Magazine well represented a new confident Canadian nationalism with the headline “I thought we were friends. Obama’s backpedalling on the Keystone pipeline is just the latest slap in the face of Canadians. We do have other friends, you know.”

Is lovable Canada looking elsewhere for love?