Justin Trudeau has told his senior lieutenants to draw up plans to make the Energy East pipeline and the Trans Mountain expansion in British Columbia a reality.
The prime minister has been convinced by his finance minister, Bill Morneau, and other influential voices around the cabinet table that the pipelines have to be built to achieve the ambitious economic growth targets his government has set.
But the problem for the Liberals is that this conviction has to be conveyed subtly to a public that has decidedly mixed views on oilsands expansion and pipelines.
“I won’t let up,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley told delegates to the NDP’s national convention last week. “We must get to ‘yes’ on a pipeline.” She repeated that message Saturday, asking the convention to support “pipelines to tidewater that allow us to diversify our markets.”
In doing so, Premier Notley just became the latest Canadian politician to play games with pipelines. She’s telling Albertans a pipeline to tidewater can cure what ails the industry. It won’t — it can’t — because the problem a pipeline to tidewater was intended to address doesn’t exist anymore.
There are over a dozen major new export projects currently proposed on both sides of the Canada/US border. This means that shipping traffic passing through the Salish Sea is set to rise dramatically, bringing with it a significant increase in the risk of an oil spill.
The idea that greater pipeline capacity and access to tidewater would maximize the value Alberta receives for its tar sands crude is a standard talking point for industry, politicians, and other commentators in the ongoing oil price-induced recession in Alberta.
This briefing note counters this argument with analysis that shows that even if Alberta had expanded access to tidewater today, in the form of pipelines to east or west coasts, it would not be any better off.
I was there the day it was sworn in, when thousands of people filled the legislative grounds. I was there when the first cabinet with full gender parity in Alberta’s history was sworn in. I cheered when - after years of an unfair tax system creating unequal burdens – the government raised corporate taxes. I cheered again when your government helped get the money out of politics.
Gordon Laxer has just written a new book titled After the Sands: Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians. In it, the founding director of the Parkland Institute and long-time Council of Canadians Board member, argues for the need to plan beyond the tar sands, which he refers to as the Sands.
CALGARY — Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, once a reluctant defender of the oilpatch, now says she won’t take no for an answer on getting a bitumen pipeline to tidewater.
The NDP premier made the pledge in a televised speech to Albertans on Thursday evening, a week before presenting a budget that will come with a $10-billion-plus deficit and help for the needy as the once oil-rich province struggles with a price shock that has destroyed government revenue, investment and jobs.
Beijing has high hopes for the new Trudeau government.
On October 20th, 2015, Prime Minister-elect Justin Trudeau received a congratulatory call from China’s ambassador Luo Zhaohui. The next day, the state-run China Daily newspaper celebrated “improved prospects for a Free Trade Agreement with China” under Canada’s new Liberal government. A week later Premier Li Keqiang himself picked up the phone.
A new coalition of state attorneys general gave vocal notice to fossil fuel companies on Tuesday that obfuscating the realities of climate change has put ExxonMobil and its peers under the searchlight of a broadening multistate investigation.
Gordon Laxer has just written a new book titled After the Sands: Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians. In it, the founding director of the Parkland Institute and long-time Council of Canadians Board member, argues for the need to plan beyond the tar sands, which he refers to as the Sands.
