Will Ontario stick with Barack Obama?

Never before has the White House emerged as the principal protectionist actor in a trade dispute with Canada. Other presidents have been negligent or looked the other way when legislators or state politicians growled: “America First!” Yet here we are, after 25 years of mutual progress under a comprehensive free trade agreement, facing a President entirely free — and seemingly inclined — to disrespect the American logic and agreed rules of the biggest bilateral trade treaty in the world, not in concert with but in defiance of both houses of the US Congress.

Not since the cocky final year of Jack Kennedy’s presidency has a US president come as close to getting personal — and nasty — toward his Canadian ally.

Could Obama’s looming inclination to kill the Keystone XL oil pipeline defeat Harper in next year’s election? Could Obama actually scratch his seven-year itch?

Excuse me; I’m getting personal.

Sure, I’d be dismayed if my favorite conservative Democrat sided with the Save-the-World-from-Canada capitalists in California and the Tea Party Democrats who think gumming up markets generally is a progressive idea.

The mystery of the moment, however, is whether Obama is prepared to humiliate Harper and whether Harper must look the other way or should personally start building a decent line of defense, especially in Ontario, against a well-liked lame duck President.

One decision that giant Ontario can’t avoid is deciding who wins Canada’s next election. Prime ministers usually come from elsewhere but they’re all made here. And as attentive followers of American tastes and power politics, Ontario’s influential voices want to be seen as favoring prime ministers that don’t irritate America’s giants, especially presidents without Southern accents.

(Questioning the soundness of White House Texans has helped elect prime ministers. On the other hand, being dismissed by Obama’s White House could have cost Harper his majority in 2011. Happily, on every dangerous file from spying on fellow citizens to fighting the Great Recession and using military force overseas, Harper’s been Obama’s helpmate — a leaden Joe Biden, who also knows he has no votes of his own.)

Changing the subject has been Harper’s preferred way of responding to trouble, but will it do if Keystone is formally rejected? Must the old rules against an aggressive Canadian Prime Minister be honored in this case?

Failing big in front of the world on a “no brainer” isn’t what competent leaders do. Harper must already see that the likeable Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and the idling Laurentian machine will place all the blame on Harper, the Climate Denier who’s now doing to Canada’s brand what Rob Ford did to Toronto.

Harper would be well advised to more vigorously and persistently defend Canada’s position in speeches and in interviews here, and, in the United States, attack the new protectionism swarming around the President. Shrugging that Obama won’t be President forever won’t reduce the damage; it won’t diminish Obama’s now-inflated credibility in Canada.

Obama can’t open US national parks to oil and natural gas fracking projects, permit soaring US coal and oil exports, promise to keep prices down at the pump, and, at the same time, precipitate a possible energy investment recession in Canada to pad his green presidential legacy — unless Canada turns the other cheek.

New York Times columnist David Brooks hints at what’s happening to Barack Obama’s reputation within the burgeoning moderate center of American politics. If moderates in America’s leadership are openly questioning Barack Obama’s moderation, surely moderate Ontario will give their Prime Minister a hearing as the champion of a trade union under assault in the White House.

Keystone Pipeline: Dare Harper simply wait for Obama’s Okay?

A quirky element in the neurotic power relationship between Canada and the United States remains the uneven significance of saying “no” to the other side. Globe-preening Canadian governments profit inordinately when they can say “no” to the global power next door. On the other hand, saying “no” to Canada can be devastating—whether Washington notices or not.

Last week, former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his senior Liberal colleagues gleefully reminisced in the national media over the 10th anniversary of their un-bidden public declaration that Canada would reject any request by George W. Bush to support the US-British invasion of Iraq. That decision to not act stands above all the other things Jean Chretien didn’t do during his 10 years in office.

Within as many weeks, Stephen Harper could receive from Washington a “no” of devastating consequences—to his relationship with the US government, his vision of Canada’s future, his reputation in Canada, and his chances of surviving another election.

The theatricality of Obama’s pending Keystone decision is appropriately noted.

There is, in fact, little American substance at stake in the decision. The thousands of US jobs that wouldn’t happen along the pipeline will soon be found elsewhere in America’s dirty fossil fuel Renaissance—and, in any event, their fate pales against the jobs being killed each month by Washington’s symbolic campaign to fix Washington’s balance sheet by the mid 2020s. The environmental movement and its latest campaign recruit, hedge funds magician Tom Steyer, sees the oil sands entirely in marketing terms. 

The lack of showmanship on the Keystone Project by the Harper government, however, crises out for greater attention.

With enemies circling, there’s no way Jean Chretien would have sat still and relied on opposition Congressmen and Congresswomen and dull Canadian lobbyists to make his case in Washington.

The Prime Minister will not be credited for playing by Queensbury Rules in Canada and will enjoy no quarter if he loses like a gentleman in Washington.

(Those of you who think you have deep inside knowledge that the President has Harper’s back can ignore what I say next. Those of you who remain nervous might appreciate the following rather aggressive advice from an Obama Canadian to a quintessentially Canadian Prime Minister standing in the headlights.)

If you’ve got Goliath on your side, Mr. Harper, don’t look for your own David; coach Goliath.

The Prime Minister has the confidence of a big majority in Canada’s Parliament and, as reported by Politico, also has majorities in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. It needn’t be repeated that Keystone also has overwhelming support among US business leaders and the technocrats the President relied on to fight the recession. 

Don’t wait to mobilize their support after Obama turns you down. They won’t go back to him after he’s decided. Why not secure a resolution now from Canada’s Parliament, supplementing what passed last week in the US Senate?

The Prime Minister should be able to ask his Parliament to be clearer and more aggressive. Conservative and Liberal MPs, at least, should be able to remind Washington, and the President, of the support they’ve enjoyed since their economy tanked in 2008; of the fragility of the present recovery in both countries; and of Canada’s open hand to jointly tackle climate change, continental security, and economic recovery.

Canadians don’t expect you to need the same face time with the President that the Prime Minister of Israel has enjoyed. However, they wouldn’t think it too pushy if you literally went to Washington to make your case directly to the President—and let it out that you’d be pleased to spell out politely what’s at stake, before a joint session of Congress.

There is no value in downplaying the economic consequences of a “no” simply to bolster jobs and housing starts this spring.

The capital markets, more likely, would probably appreciate the candor; and Americans would definitely listen if the Prime Minister argued: killing Keystone now could abort economic recovery in Western Canada and that could spread across Canada—the United States economy’s best customer. 

New York Times’ Foreign War on Climate Change

When George Bush went into Iraq to ferret out weapons of mass destruction, the New York Times had his back.

Almost 10 years later to the day, its Editorial Board has decided that, “in good conscience,” Barack Obama should launch his campaign—this one against global climate change—on the icy black marshlands of that fledgling democracy to the north.

The Times pegs its advice on Obama’s recognition—in his last two long speeches—that climate change is a “pressing danger.” He said he’d do something as President, and unilaterally stopping the Keystone XL oil pipeline would certainly be something. It's nice for the forests and streams in one region of northern Alberta and, as a bonus, it gives a few more years for Canadian democracy to re-decide how and whether Western Canada should exploit its oil sands reserves.

(Canadians usually say “oil” sands. Critics prefer “tar” sands. Apparently, “tar” is more provocative.)

It will all be for the good, Mr. President: if we slow down those money-crazed Canadians, they might just decide to opt out of the fossil fuel boom that’s got everyone so excited down here. Hey, Canada might go back to demonstrating to us—especially fellow Democrats in Congress—how to be international moral leaders again.

The world would be dimmer without the New York Times. However, the permission of its editorial board to do something stupid won’t protect a President in the history books. Imperial swagger won’t look presidential because Manhattan decides its fashionable. Ask George Bush, please.

We should reach for our wallets when opinion makers preface their recommendations with the expression “mainstream scientists are virtually unanimous.” Climate science doesn’t single out one source of CO2 emissions—on the horizon or over the last hundred years—as the culprit or salvation.

Mainstream economics—a profession that also deals in numerical probabilities, as well as human behavior—wouldn’t sign off on a plan to fight a global production and a consumption problem by singling out one producer.

Economics and American diplomatic interests scream out for a rationale for stopping Keystone XL. Other than using up half his second honeymoon teasing American environmental lobbyists, why single out Canada’s fossil fuels? Americans buy oil and electricity from dirtier suppliers, domestic and foreign. Furthermore, oil tax and royalty revenues in Canada are not spent to subsidize excessive fuel consumption, as they are by shaky autocrats in Venezuela, Africa, and throughout the Middle East. 

The Times would better serve its conscience—and the climate—by actually analyzing Obama’s recent assertions on climate change.

In effect, by saying he’d act if Congress won’t, Obama graciously freed Congress to not do what must be done—legislate a tax on carbon.

Apparently, The Time’s editorial board would only have puffed up his State of the Union Address by declaring to America: “A burden must be shouldered and, for now, that burden should be shouldered by Canadians.” 

Thomas Mulcair’s Keystone XL Duck

Despite different family trees and social pretensions, centrist social democrats and centrist liberals in Canada offer the same opposition and alternative vision to Stephen Harper’s Canada.

Style-wise, of course, they still see things differently. Liberals strain to be exciting; social democrats fret about sounding respectable and being well mannered. Social democrat politesse is especially important when visiting Washington. Certainly, according to Paul Koring in his Globe piece, “Mulcair to sidestep Keystone on U.S. Trip,” that appears to be New Democrat Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair’s biggest concern.

Here’s his prepared line on the only Canadian issue that presently interests Washingtonians:

“My position is that the Americans are going to sort themselves out (on Keystone) based on their own rules,” he said Sunday in a telephone interview, declining to offer either clear support for the pipeline that will funnel Alberta oil-sands crude to Texas refineries or urge it be rejected, as demanded by U.S. environmental groups.”

Rather than offend unilateralist impulses in progressive circles in Washington by alluding to Canada-US trade interests and formal covenants, he wants to educate Americans on the NDP’s “vision for the future,” including that 19th-century habit of subsidizing east-west capital projects to make Canada secure and (presumably) not reliant on Americans and their precious rules.

This message will bore Americans and will play very poorly back in Canada.

No American in Washington who’ll be listing to Thomas Mulcair won’t already know that numerous Canadian politicians and flush patriotic bankers are talking up multi-billion dollar east-west infrastructure projects—nation-building ideas that economics didn’t favor in the past. 

From coast to coast, they remain worth studying, but, commercially, not—yet—are worth doing.

On the other hand, the Keystone XL Project has already been financed privately, has oil suppliers and customers, and has the immediate capacity to restore confidence in Alberta’s economy and Canada’s relationship with the United States—without compromising joint work on a gimmick-light, North American Climate Change strategy.

When talking about energy options, Thomas Muclair should know that it’s first necessary to make sense to those who are energy literate—and have an immediate interest in the issue. Unless gasoline prices at the pump are rising, the millions who smile when he repeats nationalist bromides will be smiling for Justin tomorrow.