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Don’t bet on Alberta turning off the oil tap any time soon

Game on. The taps won’t be turned off soon. But the tap-dancing has begun. Jason Kenney, barely through his first cup of coffee as Alberta premier, has proclaimed a law that may be proven lawless.
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Game on.

The taps won’t be turned off soon. But the tap-dancing has begun.

Jason Kenney, barely through his first cup of coffee as Alberta premier, has proclaimed a law that may be proven lawless. Bill 12 was created by the former Alberta NDP government and will be opposed in court by the British Columbian NDP government.

Among the many ironies of the moment, it has taken a United Conservative Party premier in a neighbouring province who likely wouldn’t come close to being electable here to stand up for the majority in our province who support the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

The bill’s proclamation is a trump card to reduce the shipments of energy resources on the basis – some might say pretense – that doing so protects the national economy. It could ignite the federal-provincial tinderbox and spread quite the wildfire.

But not so fast. Is it at all clear the Albertan will follow through on his oft-emphasized election mantra?

Well, as one might expect, Kenney the Campaigner has become Kenney the Conciliator. He said Wednesday he prefers “the path of diplomacy,” chatted with John Horgan the night before and wants to meet him, looks forward to the Western Premiers’ Conference next month, and so on and so on and so forth.

Thus, no tightening of the screws in short order.

Horgan’s attorney general, David Eby, has signalled the province’s readiness to challenge the constitutionality of the Alberta bill on the basis of its restriction of refined products between provinces. But even with that move imminent – the province filed for an injunction to stifle the bill – Kenney wasn’t betraying any expectation of a near-term battle of the non-blinkers at his news conference Wednesday.

He wouldn’t reveal his strategy – noting that in poker you don’t play the high hand off the bat – but asserted the bill is “not a bluff” and that the province won’t stand for a “long-term campaign of obstruction.”

That being said, a lot more talking will precede any sort of walking.

We might eventually be freezing in the dark – not a safe bet, though – and it sounds like we can be driving in the warm sunshine for the next while, albeit at record expense, which Kenney reminded us about repeatedly in suggesting the pipeline would be in our gas-pumping interest. Experts don’t think it would make a massive difference, but when you see spontaneous lineups for $1.59-a-litre gas like it’s a door crasher, you have to think Greater Vancouverites would take any relief they could get any time in the next few years.

The bigger problem by the day is Ottawa’s: a dormant multibillion-dollar project it has paid for and cannot easily sell without confident resumption of construction, and a prime minister who insists “it will be built” but is in no apparent rush to push his cabinet to authorize expansion.

Trans Mountain is not an evident priority. He has SNC-Lavalin to put in the rear-view mirror, eastern Ontario flood sandbags to fill, steel and aluminum tariffs to suffocate and a stagnating economy that he must reboot. Oh, and he has an election that is more testy by the hour, in which it would be seemingly wise to minimize the pipeline expansion’s prominence as an issue.

While the shovels ought to be hitting the ground soon, instead we’re going to get the political shovels out for the rhetoric. If the public spat hits the courtroom, lawyers will be able to put their children through law school, their grandchildren through medical school, and their great-grandchildren through business school with the dividends.

Meantime, our premier is offering no particular relief – except the comedic kind – about how to deal with the raging bull of pricing. His suggestion that Alberta spend about $5 billion to build refineries to feed our market borders at once on parody and farce.

Our new slogan: Keep Calm and Cycle.

Kirk LaPointe is editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.