National Affairs: Pipeline politics will keep Ottawa and Alberta divided
By Medicine Hat News Opinon on December 8, 2018.
All is far from well between Rachel Notley’s Alberta government and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. With the prime minister in the eye of the storm over the failure to get more oil to tidewater, no federal gesture between now and next falls election is likely to really lower the temperature between the two capitals. The combination — within a space of six months next year — of an Alberta and a federal election probably guarantees that the rhetoric between the two capitals will become more heated. But those who expect that the federal vote will wash away the clouds should think again. For months now, the trend in the voting-intention polls has pointed to a Conservative sweep of Alberta next fall. A Liberal victory would almost certainly see the province consigned to the opposition benches, with no voice within the federal government. And that would only exacerbate the current frustrations with Ottawa. But the alternative is not necessarily promising of a more harmonious climate. Anyone who expects a Conservative victory to result in peace or even decisive action on the pipeline front is almost certainly in for a disappointment. For all the talk among Conservatives about Trudeau messing up the file, Stephen Harper — had he been re-elected as prime minister in 2015 — would have faced many of the same roadblocks. The Northern Gateway pipeline green lit by his government over its last term in office was anything but a done deal. The controversial project was mired in litigation. Shortly after Harper left office, a court overturned his approval of the pipeline. Instead of scrapping the project as Trudeau did, a Conservative government would probably have appealed the decision and, in the end, the Supreme Court would have had the last word. But there is no guarantee that the top court would not have doubled down on the original ruling and ordered the government to more properly acquit itself of its duty to consult the Indigenous communities affected by the pipeline. No federal government is exempt from the rule of law. The duty to consult is part of Canada’s constitutional framework. There is no opting out of it. The notwithstanding clause only applies to some sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is not a get-out-of-jail card at the disposal of governments looking for a way to ignore any inconvenient court ruling. When it comes to dealing with landmark cases, the Supreme Court tends — to put it politely — to proceed at a measured pace. It would probably have taken 18 months to two years to secure a definitive ruling on Northern Gateway. That same timeline would have attended an appeal by the Trudeau government of the more recent Trans Mountain court ruling — again with no guarantee that the outcome would have cleared the way to an immediate resumption of the expansion rather than to a court-ordered return to the drawing board. Any government — Liberal or Conservative — looking to meet the court requirements rather than to challenge them would have to avoid shortcuts liable to bring about a new round of litigation. By the same token, a federal Conservative government could hardly have prevented the replacement in Victoria of a pipeline-friendly B.C. Liberal government with one led by the NDP. Premier John Horgan is within his rights to test the extent of his government’s power to limit the oil that transits through the province in court just as Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba are entitled to challenge the federal carbon tax. Were the federal government to start to retaliate financially against provinces for exercising their legal options, a major unity crisis would be the likely result. The hurdles standing in the way of more pipelines are hardly unique to Canada. In the U.S, where no one would accuse the current administration of being anti-pipeline or even in the least concerned over the impact of fossil fuels on climate change, a Montana court has just put the brakes on the Keystone XL project. Trudeau’s Liberals are counting on shovels eventually hitting the ground on the Trans Mountain expansion site to prove their Alberta critics wrong. But even that is unlikely to buy peace on the carbon tax front. That much-vilified federal measure is becoming a lightning rod of dislike for Trudeau himself, and recent events in France are demonstrating that it could have the potential to ignite a populist protest movement. Over on the Conservative side, the commitment to do away with the carbon tax would not speed up the construction of new pipelines by a single day. A government led by Andrew Scheer would soon discover that steamrolling the opposition in some key provincial quarters to its pipeline ambitions was easier said than actually done. One way or another, federal-provincial peace is unlikely to be on next fall’s ballot. Chantal Hébert writes on national affairs for Torstar Syndication Services 27-26
