ANALYSIS
VANCOUVER — That smile on Christy Clark’s face? It just got even wider, thanks to Tuesday’s announcement from Ottawa declaring the federal government’s support for the contentious Kinder Morgan oil pipeline expansion. With that, it looks like more smooth sailing for Clark as she prepares for another provincial election campaign.
The B.C. premier and her B.C. Liberal party already had lots going for them: A strong local economy, low unemployment and a growing budget surplus; a mostly milquetoast opposition in the legislature; a battle-hardened, veteran team of MLAs behind her, with new blood poised to join the back benches.
Compare the current situation to what Clark faced four years ago. Lagging behind the provincial NDP in the polls, beset with small scandals mostly of her own making, she seemed certain for defeat in her first general election as party leader.
Then came the Kinder Morgan Surprise. The real one, as opposed to Tuesday’s foregone conclusion.
Weeks before the May 2013 election, then-B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix changed his neutral position on Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, declaring his party dead against it. Dix’s unnecessary, confusing flip-flop made him seem erractic and unreliable, and it cost his party the election.
It was amazing luck for Clark and her party, who have never taken a firm position on the project and are sticking to their expedient “five requirements” position for supporting any heavy oil pipeline. These include commitments from pipeline operators and regulators for a “world-leading marine oil spill response,” proper consideration for Aboriginal rights, and a “fair share of fiscal and economic benefits” for the province.
Clark’s five conditions are subjective and practically meaningless, but they have allowed her to commit to — and dismiss — nothing. That’s worth considering in the present context, given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pro-Trans Mountain declaration Tuesday.
Across B.C.’s lower mainland and on Vancouver Island — less so in the provincial interior — Trudeau is now accused of betrayal, of putting fossil fuel exploitation before environmental protection. That’s all on him and his government, not on Clark and her MLAs; they can be accused only of pipeline fence-sitting. That’s a win for them, given everything.
Ottawa’s decision to instruct the National Energy Board to deny another, larger pipeline proposal that would have cut through B.C. to the northern coastline was also unsurprising. The Enbridge Northern Gateway project was always considered a non-starter, even after the NEB gave it conditional approval in 2014.
Should the smaller Kinder Morgan project ever go ahead — there’s no guarantee, given the nature of the project, the legal uncertainties and the popular opposition around it — the expanded pipeline would triple the volume of Alberta bitumen to a Burnaby refinery and tidewater terminal.
More controversially, it would vastly increase the number of oil tankers already loading up with oil and manoeuvring through Vancouver’s busy Burrard Inlet, into the Strait of Georgia, around Victoria and towards the open ocean for distant Asia. The number of ships making that tricky journey would jump from the current five or so each month to 34 a month. That’s a sobering prospect.
B.C. NDP leader John Horgan is firmly opposed to Trans Mountain. His party will not move from the “no” position. It will play well for them in B.C.’s coastal region, where the party already enjoys most of its support, but not in the interior, where pipeline construction jobs are very attractive, and where oil spills from freight rail tankers are already a clear and present danger.
Clark, meanwhile, can publicly hem and haw for the next six months, all the way to election day, claiming to be standing up for all British Columbians with her famous five requirements, all the while negotiating with Trudeau some sort of post-election pipeline surrender in exchange for some advantageous considerations on, say, liquid natural gas developments.
The game has already begun: Responding to Ottawa’s Trans Mountain decision, Clark said on Wednesday the feds were inching closer to meeting her conditions.
“We still need some details on the ocean protection plan and we are still working through that with the federal government so that we can be absolutely certain that our coast is protected,” she told reporters. “And we still need to work out some details to make sure that British Columbia is getting its fair share of the jobs and the economic benefits of this project.”
Trudeau must come to B.C. and explain his government’s decision on Trans Mountain, Clark added. You have to think she would enjoy watching such a spectacle, while remaining non-committal. Until sometime after the May election.
• Email: bhutchinson@nationalpost.com | Twitter: hutchwriter
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