South of the migraine cacophony surrounding Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline project, Stephen Harper's Tories continue to indulge their other smoothbore fetish, the Keystone XL.
It`s been two years since the prime minister told the Vancouver Sun that Northern Gateway was in the 'vital interest' of Canada; since then, presumably to lend a patina of credibility to the approval process, the Tories have somewhat refrained from frothing at the mouth when they hear the word Enbridge.
Not so with Keystone XL, TransCanada's pipeline proposal to link the oilsands with two ports in Texas. Last February, Harper called long-sought U.S. government approval of the project "a necessary and inevitable victory," despite embittered opposition in the States. Backing up the PM's pom poms, according to the Globe and Mail`s Eric Reguly, was an estimated $207,000 U.S. ad in The New Yorker's April 14 edition celebrating Canada's oilsands and proposed pipelines.
Reguly expertly deconstructed the ad's various claims but among his favourite spurious tidbits was the line: "Canada continues to use innovation and technology to reduce emissions"; he points out while emissions "intensity" - the emissions of greenhouse gases per barrel of oil - is down, the oilsands' total emissions continue to expand.
Funnily enough, the Globe reported a year earlier then-Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver got into trouble when a government website claimed greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands fell 26 per cent from 1990-2011; again, emissions per barrel fell but oilsands GHG output quadrupled over those 20 years. Oliver hastily corrected the error on the site - www.gowithcanada.ca - which was part of a Conservative effort to bombard U.S. lawmakers with ads and billboards in support of Keystone. The minister wouldn't reveal how much Go With Canada cost, or even how long it would last, but his department, Natural Resources Caanda, saw its ad budget go from $237,000 in 2010 to $16.5 million last year.
And, go figure, the April New Yorker ad was sponsored by www.gowithcanada.ca. Congratulations, taxpayer, you're bankrolling one of the most aggressive, shameless lobbying efforts ever mounted by a foreign government on U.S. soil.
It's not just the money, although it's obscene and perverse the Canadian government is wasting public dollars on an oilsands firm. The money is only part of a systematic, ongoing campaign in which Stephen Harper's Tories shill for TransCanada in particular and the oilsands in general.
According to the Tyee, minister after minister has made the pilgrimage to Washington to plead TransCanada's case, most recently the Tories Minister with a Shock Collar John Baird. In 2011, Canadian ambassador Gary Doer got a thank you letter from TransCanada for pumping the pipeline. One U.S. congressional aide - who works in a place that's seen the persuasive efforts of Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, and the National Rifle Association - said Canada's pipeline pressure was "more aggressive than we`re used to."
When does a chummy relationship cross into the incestuous? It's fair to assume that for some time the oilsands and Harper's Conservatives have been going steady. They may even held hands.
The problem is that while the Conservatives continue to flaunt their infatuation with the oilsands on one hand, on the other the federal government is promising to objectively consider the Northern Gateway pipeline project, which is currently awaiting final approval from the Harper government. The anticipation has been cute but the only thing that would be more surprising than the Conservatives saying no to the Northern Gateway is Joel "Kick-It-In" Otto being hired as the head coach of the Vancouver Canucks.
With the Tories' groteque cheerleading for Keystone, it's impossible to give any credibility to the Conservatives' judgment of the Northern Gateway pipeline. And how are Harper's Tories going to effectively police 1,177 kilometres of steel pipe filled with poison, as well as the coastal waters it connects to, from beneath the bedsheets it shares with the oil and gas industry?
It's also a nightmare legally. When eco-groups and First Nations unleash a barrage of legal suits against Northern Gateway, how is the government's case going to withstand scrutiny? The Tories and Enbridge will swear the pipeline withstood a rigorous examination while First Nations were listened to but it's hard to do either when the federal government is putting up billboards in support of the oilsands all over Washington, D.C.
The Keystone XL pipeline is currently mired in a classic Beltway morass. Northern Gateway will likely languish in court for a decade or more. When it comes to the federal Conservatives and the oilsands, it couldn't have happened to a nicer couple.
