As Canadian politicians scramble to respond to Kinder Morgan’s deadline of May 31 to clear perceived political obstacles to its proposed pipeline, it’s time to examine the dominant narrative: “Canada’s national interest entails getting Albertan bitumen to ‘tidewater,’ to generate jobs and revenues.”
What really is the “national interest?” Is it to allow a Texas-based multinational to export Albertan non-renewable resources to Asia at breakneck speed and fire-sale royalties? Astoundingly, almost alone among advanced economies, Canada has no energy security plan or strategic petroleum reserve, as Gordon Laxer, founding director of the Edmonton-based Parkland Institute, points out. Under NAFTA, Canada could not prioritize Canadians in an international supply crisis.
The petro-elites promise epic wealth from bitumen export, but oil economists like Jeff Rubin and Robyn Allan find no Asian market drooling to buy a low-quality product with high transport costs and competing sources.
Why do Albertan politicians wail the fiscal blues, when they haven’t introduced a provincial sales tax, let alone maintained the robust royalty and ownership regime negotiated by then-Premier Peter Lougheed in the 1970s? Parkland estimated that from 1999-2008, Alberta forwent a staggering $121 billion in excess profits to fossil fuel companies.
No wonder Alberta’s Heritage Fund totals less than 2 per cent of the trillion dollars that Norway, with similar sized oil fields, has amassed.
Such a nest egg could have financed proposals from Alberta’s own trade unions to create more refinery jobs within Alberta, and to finance a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy that cushions resource workers and communities. Even a 2 per cent provincial sales tax would equal the revenues that Notley optimistically anticipates from the KM pipeline over the next 20 years.
Moreover, KM co-founder Richard Kinder, a former Enron executive, is renowned for structuring corporations to minimize taxes payable.
Why hitch our economic wagon so heavily to volatile international resource markets, and to an industry that receives billions in subsidies and externalizes many of its costs?
Responsible sands development would surely prioritize land remediation, First Nations rights, groundwater safety, renewable energy (already employing more than fossil fuel companies), and economic diversification. It would husband a non-renewable resource for domestic energy security and pay its fair share of the huge costs of global warming.
Foreign corporations don’t hesitate to divide and rule.
Having lived in four provinces, including Alberta, I’m saddened to see Canadians so polarized.
Bob Hackett is a professor of communication at Simon Fraser University, and co-author of Journalism and Climate Crisis.
