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The outcome of Tuesday’s B.C. election will be alarming for Alberta no matter who wins. Premier Rachel Notley’s government is well aware of the unprecedented anti-trade forces lining up against the province.
On Monday, I half-jokingly wished an NDP official a good-news outcome. “I don’t even know what that means anymore,” she said.
Liberal Premier Christy Clark has agreed to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which only means she won’t actually throw herself in front of a bulldozer.
She accepted this project after four years of forcing concessions from the company, including $1 billion to be paid over 20 years.
This cost is, in effect, a tax for shipping an Alberta product across B.C. territory and off the coast. Roger Gibbins, former head of the Canada West Foundation, has sharper words — “It’s a bounty.”
Authority for trade is supposed to belong to Ottawa. But Clark has met barely the limpest objection from the people charged with holding the country together.
This sets dangerous precedents for provinces to block or tax products from their neighbours.
The Energy East project, planned to ship bitumen east to Saint John, N.B., is relatively quiet now, but you can bet the Quebec government is watching carefully to see how much B.C. gets away with.
I’ve asked Clark twice if she agrees that bitumen is a legitimate product for transit across B.C. and shipment off the coast. She wouldn’t say yes.
If Kinder Morgan runs into the slightest difficulty from now on — and it surely will — she’ll play to the B.C. voters, while ensuring that Kinder Morgan still pays that $1 billion.
The other two parties, NDP and Green, are ferociously opposed to building the line under any circumstances, ever.
If NDP Leader John Horgan wins, obstructive provincial measures could stall Kinder Morgan for years, even though the Trudeau cabinet granted formal approval in January.
By next year we’re into a new federal election cycle, and B.C. votes count for more than Alberta’s.
According to a Mainstreet Research poll, it’s now likely that Clark will win again.
Her support in the pro-development Interior has risen sharply. She could capture a majority of seats even if the NDP wins a larger percentage of the popular vote.
A brilliant cross-issue strategist, Clark knows how to use environmental rhetoric to accomplish political, trade and fiscal goals.
Her new promise to slap a $70 per tonne carbon tax on exports of thermal coal would cost Alberta 2,000 jobs and up to $300 million in annual sales. Clark says she’s just countering U.S. duties on softwood lumber, and banning transit of dirty energy while she’s at it.
Again, Clark has no legal authority for taxing a product to prevent international export.
“None of it makes any sense,” says Gibbins. “These things are against Canadian internal trade agreements, and by going off like this as one province, probably causing problems and complications for the federal government in trade dealings with the U.S.”
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And yet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s looking favourably at Clark’s thermal coal proposal, with no reference to Alberta’s problem. There seems to be zero appreciation for the climate change measures Alberta has taken so far.
Notley made a hopeful comment in January, after B.C. said its conditions for building Trans Mountain pipeline had been met:
“We are now closer than ever to breaking Alberta’s landlock and fixing a problem that has dogged our province for decades.”
That poses a question that usually makes people strain to remember their high school geography.
How many Canadian provinces are landlocked?
Saskatchewan and Alberta. That’s it. All other provinces have a waterway out, including Manitoba via Hudson Bay, and Ontario through the St. Lawrence Seaway.
This makes us extraordinarily dependent on the goodwill of others. The principle that no province should tax or penalize another is a core value of Confederation itself.
Despite interprovincial squabbles that are eternally negotiated, Alberta and Saskatchewan have usually been able to count on fair rules.
No longer. In a significant way, the B.C. government has gone rogue on Canada. That isn’t likely to change after Tuesday’s election.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
What can Alberta do if BC stops pipeline progress?
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