Pipeline builder Trans Canada dropped a bomb on the Liberal government on Thursday when it cancelled its $15.7-billion proposed Energy East pipeline, which was designed to carry 1.1-million barrels a day of Western crude to Eastern refineries and export terminals.. The reason, according to Trans Canada: “changed circumstances”.
Hmmm. An answer that deliberately vague allows politicians to fill in the blanks. The Trudeau government said it was a business decision, pure and simple; the price of oil has fallen since the project was announced, so it is no longer viable, Justin Trudeau shrugged. The opposition Conservatives interpreted “changes circumstances” as the National Energy Board changing the regulatory rules and making them so onerous that Trans Canada could not, or would not, comply. They are both right, to a degree. Methinks the Conservatives are a lot more right than the Liberals.
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, who led the ludicrously overwrought Quebec opposition, crowed that the cancellation was a “victory”. That truly pissed of Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who said: “I can’t believe, frankly, that anyone would take any glee in the loss of this incredibly important investment and in the loss of thousands and thousands of jobs and in the continuing reliance of his citizens on oil from foreign countries.”
“To me, that is not something to be celebrating.” (Edmonton’s mayor, the deadly dull Don Iveson, said nothing.)
New Brunswick’s government took the subdued route, saying it was disappointed. So was Rachel Notley, but she was “deeply disappointed”. Other reaction from Western Canada was somewhat off the charts. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said: “Our taxpayers in Saskatchewan and Alberta will continue to send, without question, about $2.5 billion in equalization payments to help support Quebec that receives $11 billion in equalization per year and $1.4 billion to Ontario. For the west to continue on like this in our federal system is the equivalent of having Stockholm syndrome.” Wall, not surprisingly, placed the blame entirely on Trudeau.
And then there was UCP leadership candidate Brian Jean, who went all in. Jean called it “an attack on Canada and Alberta” and “a shameful moment in Canadian history.” He blasted Coderre, saying: “He’s proud of holding back Canada’s energy prosperity. Other provinces have declared war on Alberta. They are cheering for Canada to fail and threatening national unity.” Jason Kenny was, surprisingly, much less off the wall, tweeting: “The NDP promised their carbon tax would create ‘social licence’ for pipelines. What a joke.”
So, what to make of this? Until Trans Canada comes clean (their vague statement seemed mischievously designed to cause maximum consternation), we can only guess why they pulled the plug, at a cost to the company of more than $1 billion. Best guess is that the decision was due to a number of circumstances. The National Energy Board’s decision to retroactively include “upstream and downstream emissions” (in other words, the greenhouse gas impact from the production of the oil to the use of the oil) in its hearings made the approval process that much more costly and time consuming, if not impossible. With the Trump administration approving the Keystone XL pipeline (another Trans Canada project) the company may just have said, screw it, let’s just do Keystone.
Of all the pipeline plans, the Energy East project made the most sense to me. Canadian oil for Canadians. But if the most sensible, least environmentally questionable project won’t go, then what chance is there for all of the others? None, I suspect. Trudeau has bragged about approving three pipelines in his time in office, compared to zero for Stephen Harper. But he should hold off on the self-congratulations until something actually gets built. Which will probably never happen.
What happens in Vegas becomes international news
Last Sunday night, while 22,000 fans were enjoying an outdoor concert in Las Vegas by a country singer named Jason Aldean, a man in the Mandalay Bay hotel broke a window and opened fire. From almost 300 yards away, he opened fire with semi-automatic weapons. He killed 58 people and injured almost 500, the worst mass shooting in American history (TV has taken to using the term “modern American history”, as if there is some mass slaughter by one person that happened in another century that everyone has forgotten about). Four Canadians – three from Alberta – were killed, including a single mother of four.
What more can you say about the sick, twisted relationship between America and guns? How about some numbers? America has more than six times the number of gun deaths as Canada, 16 times as many as Germany. Australia has 1.4 firearms killings per 1,000 people; America has 29.7. There will be demands for new controls, and just as certainly they will be rebuffed. Because America is a land where guns are cheap, and so are lives.
Late night laments
The Las Vegas massacre put America’s court jesters/commentators in a tough spot. The late night comics (Conan, Colbert, the two Jimmys, Seth, James … did I leave anyone out?) were once again put in the position of doing a frothy comedy/interview show on the day of an unimaginable horror. They did it with Sandy Hook, they did it with the Pulse nightclub shooting, and now Las Vegas. They all addressed the horror, with Stephen Colbert being the most politically blunt, and Jimmy Kimmel the most emotional. Kimmel, previously the least political of all the late night comics, has morphed into a sharp-tongued commentator since his son was born with a serious heart defect that required extensive surgery. Kimmel became an advocate for health care for all Americans, and launched blistering attacks on Republicans who were trying to dismantle Obamacare. On Monday night, the often emotional Kimmel – a native of Las Vegas – delivered this moving, angry commentary.
And in Trumpland …
This week, Donald Trump paid an overdue visit to the battered island of Puerto Rico, which, as he has said repeatedly, is surrounded by water, lots and lots of water. Trump, naturally, messed it up horribly. He made a lame joke about how Puerto Rico messed up with his budget plans (a joke that wasn’t even met with embarrassed titters). And in the worst photo op ever devised, Trump handed out supplies by lobbing rolls of paper towels at a crowd. Apparently, paper towels are just what flooded out people need. Hope they were Brawny and not some lousy generic.
Meanwhile, in another extraordinary leak from the White House, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was quoted by two news sources as having called Trump a “moron”. He didn’t admit it, but then he didn’t deny is completely, either. He’s no moron.
Update on the terrorist/not a terrorist
Details emerged this week about the Edmonton ‘not a terror’ attack last week. The perpetrator, Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, was on the RCMP radar after the cops were tipped off that he might have been radicalized. They investigated, couldn’t find any evidence, and dropped the matter. It has also emerged that Sharif was living in the U.S. in 2011 when he was ordered removed to Somalia. He was not detained, but when the time came for his return to Somalia, he had disappeared, presumably now in Canada. How did someone who had been expelled from the U.S. move to Canada and be granted refugee status? Good question. I think. And one that we probably won’t get an answer to, this being Canada, where the tough questions regularly go unanswered.
RIP
Tom Petty, 66, one of the most enduring and widely popular rock and roll artists of the last few decades. From Breakdown back in 1978 (!), Petty logged 10 “Mainstream Rock Songs” No. 1s, among 28 top 10s, the latter the record for the most top 10s in the Billboard chart’s history. You may not have liked everything Tom Petty did, but chances are you liked a lot of it. This has been an especially bad year for musicians. Add Petty’s name to a list that includes country singer Troy Gentry, Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker, country/crossover legend Glen Campbell, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers, pioneer rock and roller Chuck Berry, and jazzman Al Jarreau,
In This Corner 
“Of all the pipeline plans, the Energy East project made the most sense to me. Canadian oil for Canadians”
Well, speaking as a Maritimer, the true East, and not those central Canadians, it would have made a lot of sense 50 years ago, when the product was crude oil and there were two more refineries than now.
Surely you as an Albertan have some idea that Energy East was going to ship that muck known as dilbit, thinned-out tarsands “oil”, full of spiky carbon bits, and not much like real crude oil. It requires re-outfitting a refinery to handle it.
Did you ever ask yourself if such oil could actually be refined in Quebec or by Irving in Saint John, NB?
Obviously , you never investigated. Irving cannot refine dilbit. It runs flat out refining overseas crude of the conventional kind at its refinery, a 300,000 bpd facility that also serves the New England market with gasoline and heating oil. It had not the slightest interest in refining dilbit, spending money on re-equipping its refinery, thus negating the warm and fuzzy feeling of Canadian oil for Canadians you espouse. It did build an export terminal in anticipation of flogging the dilbit overseas. Big help for Canadians, eh? More like a nice little earner for not much effort. And New England was not exactly thrilled at having three times the existing tanker traffic hauling the muck across the Gulf of Maine and down the US East coast.
Montreal refineries also utilize a good amount of conventional imported crude oil, but I cannot discover whether anyone was contemplating refinery modifications tohandle dilbit, Probably not. Another reason Trans Canada decided to chuck it in if true.
As for the rest of your anti-Quebec, etc tirade, you Albertans need to give it a rest. For four decades we’ve had to listen to the whining and complaining of the West not getting a fair shake, blah, blah, blah. If you want to take over, get more population, or get used to reality that 22 million people live in Ontario and Quebec, and Alberta doesn’t have the population of the GTA.
With heartfelt thoughts from Nova Scotia, where we could really complain at being forgotten, but just try to get on with life. I’m glad the dilbit is staying where it belongs. If Alberta had the nouse to do it, I’d support your refining the tarsands junk there and shipping refined products. But you seem completely uninformed on what other progressive bloggers are writing about. I’m not surprised, I have family in Calgary, and they are about as badly informed as you seem to be.