To those who shared the view that Justin Trudeau was all froth and selfie symbolism – a please-everyone politician and a leader of substantial non-substance – you must admit that last week our fearless leader put on the Big Boy Pants.
Even three time zones away from any possible catcalls, it took no small gumption to argue that science was prevailing over politics in advancing the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal, that he knew a pipeline our premier had yet to support was good for us, and that he would never risk the beauty of where he visited, taught, snowboarded and bounced.
You may not like the guy, but if you like the pipeline, you have to like his fierce, personal, nearly surly argument – a Justin justification as we have never seen. There was just a touch of his father’s just-watch-me assurance in there.
He was testing our country to understand nuance in the complicated politics of climate change, indigenous recognition, and exploitation of our underground abundance. Aside each seemingly clear assertion on these matters are asterisks and qualifiers and exemptions and limitations galore, and our prime minister was asking that we see them and see him, too.
Um, good luck on that.
No one wins in his test – not the First Nations expecting a respectful partnership in the time ahead, not the environmentalists expecting an imminent progression to a low-carbon economy, and not even the resource sector expecting a clear path to the project’s construction and operation.
This is one crazy, delicious political file beyond even what House of Cards might script: one generation removed from one Trudeau imposing a National Energy Program (NEP) that prompted Albertans to tell the eastern bastards to freeze in the dark, here was the son of that NEP prime minister helping an NDP premier – whose federal leader and B.C. counterpart think she has lost the plot – get some of the world’s most difficult-to-extract oil to a difficult-to-please market we are still trying to court, as the father did in Mao’s time.
It is possible our prime minister knows that the combination of court rulings on indigenous rights and world energy markets might render the proposal impractical before the pipe is twinned. He could at least say he tried.
It is possible, too, he has enough political hubris to not worry that pipeline opponents will forget by next election or even the end of his presumed second term. He could at least say he had some admirable Lower Mainland MPs for awhile.
Or it is possible that he believes that, eventually, his deeds – the national carbon pricing, the infrastructural support for clean tech, the coal phase-out, the marine protection initiative, the reformation of the National Energy Board process, the personal pledge to First Nations, the moratorium on northern tankers, the snuffing of Northern Gateway, the participation globally in climate change leadership, even the accommodation of dissent in his caucus and protests in the streets – will be deemed as the defining characteristics of his leadership in converting the carbon economy from high to low.
Good luck on that one, too.
Either way, no one can accuse him of playing the short game in an era of instant gratification. He is in the doghouse with many of his loved ones, and it will be some time before they invite him back inside. Doubt there will be any more bromance events at city hall, for instance. Even in approving the pipeline, it’s hard to see how he made friends out of foes upon whom he can rely beyond this issue.
And as difficult as last week’s decision was, the bigger work is ahead on selling the vision of the most significant economic transformation in our history. To save his political hide, he also has to recapture the disappointed millennials well beyond our city limits who wonder if he is any different than preceding Liberals who have campaigned from the left and governed from the middle.
If this is, as many suggest, the last pipeline his government will approve, he has work to do to make sure his is the government when the next pipeline is proposed.
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
