Vancouver Sun op-ed: U.S. stands between Canadian oil and Asian market
If you're going to play in BC politics, you better bring your 'A' game
The following op-ed originally ran in the Vancouver Sun on August 2nd, 2012.
When it comes to sports we know that Canada’s national obsession is hockey. For those who discuss Canadian politics, however, there is no bigger subject today than oil pipelines.
Whether it was Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s remarks about “radical” environmental groups, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s “Dutch disease” analogy, the federal opposition parties’ furore over provisions in Bill C-38, or the recent war of words between the British Columbia and Alberta premiers, all relate back to the struggle to export Canada’s oil resource to international markets.
What few of us realize, however, is how much of our nation’s biggest spat has been influenced from outside our borders.
On the matter of oil pipelines to the west coast, Canada is clearly a house divided. Not only in the case of B.C. versus Alberta, but Conservative versus NDP and Liberals, urban versus rural dwellers, first nations against non-aboriginals, environmentalists in opposition to the resource sector, and the interests of eastern provinces put at odds with those of the west.
Credit must surely go to Canada’s environmental activists for their ability to garner significant public support for their cause. Their work has frustrated the efforts of governments, the port community and the oil industry sector from getting their message out.
But how successful would the activists have been without millions in funding and the cooperation of counterparts in the U.S.A.?
Thanks to the praiseworthy efforts of researcher Vivian Krause, who analyzed U.S. tax returns to follow how much funding crossed over the border into Canada, we know that well over $100 million has been granted in recent years by American foundations to first nations and conservation initiatives on British Columbia’s north coast.
Whether it was intended or not, these efforts have helped to create what Krause termed as the “Great Trade Barrier” of oil exports to Asia through Canadian waters.
In the summer of 2008, New York-based Rockefeller Brothers Foundation presented a scheme titled the Tar Sands Campaign with a $7-million annual budget to choke off market access for Canadian petroleum. According to the plan, to stop pipelines and tankers you must “raise the negatives,” “raise the costs,” “slow down and stop infrastructure development” and “enrol key decision-makers.”
Translation: Bring all the bad publicity you can down onto the Northern Gateway development and you will stop it cold.
Which is precisely what is playing out today.
Then, the following year, representatives of Greenpeace, the Sierra Club of Canada, Pembina and the Canadian Wildlife Federation met with the heads of more than 30 U.S. environmental organizations in Washington, D.C. It is reported that at this meeting the Americans offered funding and tactical advice to their Canadian counterparts.
Before you think plans hatched years ago are no longer relevant to the current pipeline debate, look no further than last weekend’s New York Times editorial titled “Canada’s Oil, the World’s Carbon.” One of the world’s most influential newspapers asks “whether America needs this oil now or in the future.”
The editorial also argues that it could be “America’s decision to stop Canada’s development of the tar sands, or the sale of its oil elsewhere in the world.”
That’s surprising candour, even for a superpower. Can you imagine how Americans might react if we told them to stop drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico?
In Metro Vancouver a campaign to kibosh Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion is well underway, helped along by local politicians who have adopted the language of the environmental activists. The impeccable safety record of tankers in our port over six decades is no match for the calamitous scenarios painted by opponents of beaches desecrated by oil.
While we Canadians carry on our family feud, who can blame Americans for sounding as though they are entitled to this rich energy resource? Especially since a consequence of environmental activism is that Canada’s petroleum reserves remain landlocked, thus providing our oil at a deeply discounted rate to the United States.
Canadian proponents of exporting oil to Asia came forward far too late and woefully ill-equipped to challenge the savvy grassroots marketing of the environmentalists. To use a hockey analogy, it is nearing the end of the third period, and Canada’s oil and pipeline industry has not figured out there is a game on.
For those sitting in the stands, it would be hard not to conclude the game is over, and the Americans have won.
Photo credit: iStockphoto.
