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Getting to yes

This wasn't what some First Nations leaders and environmental leaders thought Justin Trudeau meant by sunny ways.
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This wasn't what some First Nations leaders and environmental leaders thought Justin Trudeau meant by sunny ways.

They thought the departure of the despised Stephen Harper and his Conservatives in favour of Trudeau would mean the Salmon Arm salute to big business and major natural resource development projects. They thought his opposition to the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline meant he didn't like pipelines.

They thought wrong. The Trudeau government blessed the construction of the Site C dam and has now given conditional approval of the Pacific NorthWest LNG project, a massive $36-billion project to ship as much as 19 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas to Asian markets from a facility on Lelu Island near Prince Rupert. And Trudeau isn't done disappointing these folks yet. There's a big lump of coal coming for their Christmas stocking - more like a glob of oil, actually - in the form of his government's decision about the proposed expansion of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain oil pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby.

If Site C and Pacific NorthWest are any indication, Trudeau will once again offer a conditional yes to Kinder Morgan.

At least on the files of energy and natural resource development, Trudeau has a natural ally in Premier Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberals.

Her 2013 campaign was about finding ways to get to yes on LNG and major resource development projects while portraying the B.C. NDP as the naysayers who hate job creation and economic prosperity. When Adrian Dix announced just a few weeks before the election that he would oppose Kinder Morgan's pipeline plan, regardless of what the environmental review into the project found, he played into her hands and it cost him the premier's chair.

Trudeau, like Clark and Alberta's NDP premier Rachel Notley, recognizes that Canada has to move its landlocked energy products to market through pipelines and ocean tankers to maintain and enhance the national economy. Saying yes doesn't mean abandoning efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions, it doesn't mean rejecting efforts to develop and implement clean energy technology and it doesn't mean ignoring the concerns of Canada's indigenous people and environmental activists.

Saying yes is about balancing the solutions of today and tomorrow.

Trudeau also has plenty of political cover, working between the NDP's ludicrous Leap Manifesto and the bulldozing business-first approach of the Conservatives. He can say yes and put up 190 conditions, as he did with Pacific NorthWest LNG with little political fallout, portraying himself all the while as the responsible, thoughtful leader who cares about jobs and the environment. Combine that with the extended honeymoon Trudeau continues to enjoy with voters as long as the federal Conservatives and NDP have lame-duck leaders. That's about as close to having one's cake and eating it, too, as Canadian politics offers.

Most of all, Trudeau's support of Site C and Pacific NorthWest LNG, as well as his likely approval of Trans Mountain, paves the way for Clark heading into next May's provincial election. She'll be able to show progress on the energy front - nowhere near as much as she boasted about in 2013, but progress nonetheless - and how those projects will create jobs and further bolster the provincial economy.

Clark will also be able to argue that replacing her with John Horgan's NDP would jeopardize those projects, even though Horgan and the B.C. NDP have distanced themselves from the federal NDP's Leap Manifesto. She can trade in on the excellent relationship she's built so far with Trudeau and trade in on his personal popularity as well, pointing out how they share that "getting to yes" approach when it comes to economic development, social progress and good governance. Sunny days for Clark, sunny ways for Trudeau and a blinding political headache for Horgan, who finds himself having to somehow craft an appealing message to voters that runs counter to both a savvy premier and a popular prime minister.

-- Managing editor Neil Godbout