XPost: can.politics, ab.politics, edm.general
XPost: calgary.general
From: doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca
In article ,
=?UTF-8?B?IijgsqBf4LKgKSAi?= wrote:
>December 9, 2014 - Macleans
>
>
>Harper and the oil patch: Honesty is the only policy
>
>The prime minister explains crazy policy to us
>
>
>Prime Minister Stephen Harper, today in the House of Commons:
>
> “Frankly, Mr. Speaker, under the current circumstances of the oil and
gas
>sector, it would be crazy, it would be crazy economic policy to do unilateral
>penalties on that sector. We’re clearly not going to do that,” Harper
told the
>House as Conservative MPs roared their approval.
> “In fact, nobody in the world is regulating their oil and gas sector.
I’d
>be delighted if they did. Canada will be there with them.”
>
>Jim Prentice, then federal minister of the environment, not quite five years
ago:
>
> “For those of you who doubt that the government of Canada lacks either
the
>willingness or the authority to protect our national interests as a ‘clean
>energy superpower,’ think again,” he warned darkly. “We do and we will.
And, in
>our efforts, we will expect and we will secure the co-operation of those
>private interests which are developing the oil sands. Consider it a
>responsibility that accompanies the right to develop these valuable Canadian
>resources.”
>
>Back then, it was possible to believe the federal government would impose
>regulations on the oil and gas industries. The government certainly said it
>would, often enough. (Peter Kent in February, 2013: “We are now well into,
and
>very close to finalizing, regulations for the oil and gas sector.”) But, as
>Chris Turner reminds us in his book The War on Science, Prentice quit as
>environment minister in November 2010, and the Harper government’s periodic
>attempts to demonstrate environmental virtue, even at some hypothetical cost
to
>the resource sector, pretty much came to an end.
>
>Of course, it can be hard to tell where the notion of oil and gas regulations
>ended. Prentice himself has been sounding much like Harper since he became
>premier of Alberta:
>
> “Environmental performance is important, but so, too, is our industrial
>competitiveness . . . I think this low-price environment is a reminder . . .
>that we have to be careful laying on costs, including regulatory costs, on our
>industry, because we need to remain competitive.”
>
>But is even that new? From my 2010 article, linked above:
>
> “We will only adopt a cap-and-trade regime if the United States signals
>that it wants to do the same. Our position on harmonization applies equally to
>regulation. Canada can go down either road—cap and trade or r
gulation—but we
>will go down neither road alone.”
>
>So the paper trail on the government’s oil and gas policy is a bit of a
mess.
>The feds will only impose regulations in concert with the Americans? Well,
>there are two problems with that story. First, as Bruce Cheadle points out:
>
> An Environment Canada briefing memo revealed last month by the Globe and
>Mail shows that the United States, in fact, placed what were called
>“significant” limits on its oil and gas sector in 2012.
>
> “For oil and gas, recent air pollution regulations are expected to
result
>in significant greenhouse-gas reduction co-benefits, comparable to the
>reductions that would result from the approach being developed for this sector
>in Canada,” states the June 2013 memo obtained by Greenpeace under an
Access to
>Information request.
>
>Second, there is simply no record of a concerted Canadian effort to work with
>the Americans on joint regulations. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird
>mentions the Keystone pipeline to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in every
>meeting and at every phone call. There is literally no record of any public
>proposal from Harper to U.S. President Barack Obama to work on the joint
>regulations that are now, the PM says, the necessary condition of any Canadian
>regulations.
>
>In this light, I note with genuine surprise that the “U.S.-Canada clean
energy
>dialogue” that was created when Obama visited Ottawa in 2009 is actually
still
>a thing. I also note with no surprise at all that the latest joint report,
>barely a month old, does not mention joint regulations on oil and gas
>industries anywhere in its 10 pages.
>
>So. The feds have been promising oil and gas regulations for seven years,
while
>periodically insisting they could produce no such regulations without U.S.
>co-operation. They have also refused to seek such co-operation, while refusing
>to follow up on helpful U.S. unilateral action. (By “helpful,” of course,
I
>mean “action that would seem helpful if anyone felt like constraining the
>carbon emissions of the oil and gas sector. Like, hypothetically.”)
>
>One more thing. If the price of oil is too low for regulations, this would be
a
>big change from the last seven years, when the Harper government’s argument
was
>that the price of oil was too high for regulations. There is, in the
consistent
>messaging of this government, no time when government action to constrain the
>carbon emissions of the oil sands is appropriate. When the price is high,
it’s
>too high. When it’s low, it’s too low. One can assume governments in
potential
>export markets have noted this message, and will act accordingly.
Looks like shortsightedness strikes again!
--
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tor@@nl2k.ab.ca
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