The Green party thinks it has found the prime minister's smoking gun.
The problem being that when it comes to the Enbridge pipeline, discovering a smoking gun on Stephen Harper is like finding a bag of weed on Woody Harrelson. Is anyone really shocked?
Thanks to leaked internal federal government documents, the Greens have uncovered what they say is proof that Harper has already decided to approve Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, even though the body doing the environmental review of the proposal has yet to say whether it should go ahead.
Not only that, but the Greens say Ottawa has quietly spent $78 million this year to grease the wheels for the project, with another $42 million set aside for 2014-15.
The Conservatives reply that the work is hardly secret, that they announced in March a $120-million-over-five-years plan to improve tanker safety. At the same time, they insist they haven't jumped the gun and won't approve any resource-development plan until it is deemed safe by an independent scientific review.
Federal Green Leader Elizabeth May and Oak Bay-Gordon Head MLA Andrew Weaver held a news conference in Victoria last week, at which they charged the Conservatives with using four government departments -- Fisheries and Oceans, Environment Canada, Transport Canada and the National Research Council -- to work on behalf of the yet-to-be-approved plan to pipe diluted bitumen from Alberta to Kitimat.
In particular, Ottawa is paying to study how dilbit (as the cool kids call it) would behave in case of a spill in the waters off Kitimat and the surrounding coast. (The provincial government cited the lack of such knowledge when it told the Northern Gateway environmental review panel that it couldn't back the Enbridge proposal.) The Greens say this means taxpayers are subsidizing research that should already have been done -- and paid for -- by Enbridge.
In addition, Environment Canada is putting in meteorological aids geared to giving supertankers the information they need to navigate the routes out of Kitimat -- odd behaviour for a cash-strapped government that claims it hasn't decided whether to allow oil tankers up there. Think of it as building a garage before admitting you plan to buy a car.
"We're building an infrastructure as though the project is already approved," May says. None of this was debated in Parliament or included in federal budget documents, which only spoke vaguely of earmarking $248 million for "revitalizing Canada's weather service," she says.
To summarize: The Greens say Harper has made up his mind before the review process is complete, has spent millions and millions of taxpayer dollars to benefit one particular company, and has done so while keeping it secret from the public and Parliament.
The Conservatives say that's nonsense, that it's the Greens who are coming to a conclusion before all the scientific information is in.
But here's the deal: Would anyone faint in surprise if Harper overruled the environmental review panel and approved the pipeline?
It's no secret that the Conservatives favour shipping oil to Asia from the B.C. coast. The prime minister said during a visit to China that it is in the public interest. Last year's passage of Bill C-38 gave cabinet the power to OK Northern Gateway even if the National Energy Board recommends against it. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver famously ranted about "environmental and other radical groups" blocking pipeline proposals. Ottawa pumped $8 million into a Revenue Canada crackdown targeting environmental charities, and poured millions more into its Responsible Resource Development television ads. Then there was that March press conference at which Oliver boasted of Canada's beefed-up spill-response capabilities (the photo op lost some of its oomph when the Esquimalt-based cleanup ship that was to serve as the backdrop got stuck on a sandbar en route).
These are what a seasoned observer refers to as "clues."
Still, it would take some serious gumption for Harper to overrule the energy board should it recommend against the pipeline this December. And it could be political suicide to go ahead with Northern Gateway over the B.C. government's objections (Harper should remember how Albertans reacted to Pierre Trudeau jamming his national energy policy down their throats).
That's when the smoking gun might backfire.
