{"id":789,"date":"2018-04-19T22:14:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T22:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/?p=789"},"modified":"2018-04-19T22:14:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T22:14:00","slug":"how-kinder-morgan-could-make-trudeau-a-one-term-pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/19\/how-kinder-morgan-could-make-trudeau-a-one-term-pm\/","title":{"rendered":"How Kinder Morgan Could Make Trudeau a One-Term PM"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Kinder Morgan Could Make Trudeau a One-Term PM<\/strong><\/h2>\n

British Columbians need to let Liberals know their petro-passion will cost them critical seats in next year\u2019s election.<\/h3>\n

By\u00a0<\/strong>Mitchell Anderson<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>13 Mar 2018\u00a0|\u00a0TheTyee.ca<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer based in Vancouver and a frequent contributor to The Tyee.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Anti-pipeline protests should make Justin Trudeau think about the risk to the Liberals\u2019 18 seats in B.C.\u00a0<\/strong>Photo by\u00a0Kent Lins<\/a>, Creative Commons licensed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alberta will stop buying B.C. wine. Alberta will stop shipping oil to B.C. Is there any hyperbolic policy that has not been explored by the Premier Rachel Notley on the Trans Mountain pipeline?<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alberta has even demanded that Ottawa\u00a0intervene<\/a>\u00a0in the province\u2019s resource sector. Strange times indeed.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Politics have been described as the art of the possible and in fairness, Notley is in a bind. Is it possible that a woman could be re-elected as NDP premier in a province whose national emblem might be truck nuts? Recall the mob gathered on the legislature lawn\u00a0chanting<\/a>, \u201clock her up\u201d in an embarrassing display of endemic dumbass.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

In spite of steady leadership on many issues, a December\u00a0poll<\/a>\u00a0showed only one-third of voters approved of her performance as premier.<\/h4>\n

What to do? Picking a fight with B.C. over pipelines is an easy win, supported by\u00a082 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of Albertans. However, this gratuitous gambit may not carry the day. United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney leads by 14 per cent in the polls and offers Albertans a more authentic version of the same oil industry policies that\u00a0squandered<\/a>\u00a0a vast resource bounty with virtually nothing to show for it other than a $45 billion debt.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

And what about our prime minister? Where does he stand? In spite of his aggressive eco-branding, Justin Trudeau has been unabashedly pro-pipeline. Look no further than this remarkably fawning\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0he delivered to the energy industry in Houston, Texas last year, beginning with a pointed mea culpa about his father\u2019s National Energy Program. \u201cIt was a failure\u2026 The NEP introduced a level of state control over energy that hurt growth and jobs.\u201d<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trudeau went on to brag about delivering three new pipeline approvals for unrefined bitumen from Alberta. \u201cI make no bones about it. We\u2019re very proud of this\u2026 No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.\u201d<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Extracting, transporting, refining and burning those 173 billion barrels of bitumen will dump some\u00a0122 billion<\/a>\u00a0tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere, yet Trudeau maintains even to\u00a0Bill Nye<\/a>\u00a0that this is the best way to fight climate change.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Interestingly, there is a missing video portion of his speech at the 11:35 mark. A written\u00a0transcript<\/a>\u00a0reveals the omitted words: \u201cAnd let me be very clear. We could not have moved forward on pipelines had we not acted on climate.\u201d<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trudeau seems to be\u00a0intimating<\/a>\u00a0to his Texan hosts that the proposed federal carbon-pricing scheme was the required policy fig leaf to push through contentious pipeline approvals. \u201cOur immediate predecessors tried a different route for 10 years – to ignore the environment. It didn\u2019t work any more than the NEP of the 1980s worked. They couldn\u2019t move forward on big energy projects.\u201d If oil-friendly former prime minister Stephen Harper couldn\u2019t deliver pipelines, perhaps the influential power brokers within the petroleum sector merely switched horses.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trudeau certainly has some high-level fossil fuel friends of his own. Canadians might recall that days before the last election, the Liberals were forced to\u00a0jettison<\/a>\u00a0their campaign co-chair Daniel Gagnier when it was revealed he was advising TransCanada Corp. on how best to lobby a new Liberal government on pipeline approvals.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a\u00a0leaked email<\/a>, Gagnier told TransCanada, \u201cIf there were ever a time for energy companies to act with clarity and uniformity, it would be in a change-of-government scenario. An energy strategy for Canada is on the radar and we need a spear carrier for those in the industry who are part of the solution going forward rather than refusing to grasp the implications of a changing global reality.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Gagnier had also served as the president of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada (EPIC), a petroleum industry-funded think tank whose \u201csole purpose is to develop a comprehensive, pan-Canadian approach to energy.\u201d EPIC later folded after its former co-chair Bruce Carson was\u00a0convicted<\/a>\u00a0on charges of illegal lobbying on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

It seems the oil industry \u201cspear carriers\u201d have hit the mark with the current government. On the campaign trail, Trudeau specifically pledged on page five of the Liberals\u2019\u00a0environment platform<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cwe will fulfill Canada\u2019s G-20 commitment to phase out subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.\u201d<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 2017, Auditor General Michael Ferguson tried to investigate what progress, if any, was being made in phasing out such public gifts to the oil and gas sector but was\u00a0stonewalled<\/a>\u00a0by the finance department, which refused to provide the required documents. However, Ferguson was able to conclude that the Trudeau government had\u00a0failed<\/a>\u00a0to even define how it interpreted this commitment.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Efforts to obscure Trudeau\u2019s inaction on this file seem to have reached absurd levels. A scheduled public parliamentary committee hearing on energy subsidies last October was abruptly declared\u00a0in camera<\/a>\u00a0by Liberal co-chair Alexandra Mend\u00e8s, ostensibly to put witnesses \u201cat ease.\u201d The cryptic minutes from this suddenly secret meeting\u00a0state<\/a>, \u201cIt was agreed\u2026 that consideration of Report 7, Fossil Fuel Subsidies, of the Spring 2017 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada be postponed until further notice.\u201d Problem solved.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Instead of eliminating the many federal petroleum subsidies, totalling almost\u00a0$1.3 billion<\/a>\u00a0annually, the Trudeau government has locked some in until 2025. Direct government gifts to the fossil fuel sector top $3.3 billion when provincial subsidies are included – an amount that works out to about\u00a0$19 per tonne<\/a>\u00a0of CO2 emissions or\u00a0$237 per Canadian household<\/a>.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

In fact, Trudeau\u2019s much ballyhooed federal carbon tax will actually collect\u00a0less<\/a>money than the flow of public funds going the other direction towards the carbon production sector between now and 2020.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another form of perverse government support for the petroleum sector is unreasonably low resource rents – something Canada sadly excels at. A recent investigation by\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0shows<\/a>\u00a0Canada collects billions less from oil companies doing business here than developing countries such as Nigeria, Indonesia and Ivory Coast. According to University of British Columbia geography professor Phillipe Le Billon, quoted in the article, \u201cThe numbers reveal a poor tradeoff: high emissions for not much revenue. It\u2019s long-past time for Canada to follow a model like\u00a0Norway\u2019s<\/a>, which captures far more revenue from oil production.\u201d<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Realistically, would that ever happen here? It certainly hasn\u2019t yet. It is telling that Justin Trudeau made a pilgrimage to Houston to publicly wash his hands of any such ambitions toward resource nationalism – an ideal that was at least aspired to by his father.<\/h4>\n

Notley\u2019s position on the Trans Mountain project may be expedient but at least it\u2019s understandable given the imperatives of public opinion in her province.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

British Columbians need to remember they hold the same power over the Trudeau government whose renewed majority in 2019 hinges on the 18 seats they hold here – 16 of which are close to the coast. As has been ably demonstrated by Alberta, all politics are local (and expedient).<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How Kinder Morgan Could Make Trudeau a One-Term PM British Columbians need to let Liberals know their petro-passion will cost them critical seats in next year\u2019s election. By\u00a0Mitchell Anderson\u00a013 Mar 2018\u00a0|\u00a0TheTyee.ca Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer based in Vancouver and a frequent contributor to The Tyee. Anti-pipeline protests should make Justin Trudeau think about…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43],"tags":[69,68,70,33],"class_list":["entry","author-larrynorton","post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-bc-politics","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nortonspeaks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Trudeau.jpg?fit=1200%2C630","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bppg-cJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions\/791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}