Canadians dislike it when the American political system pays Canada no attention. This election season, Canada may face an alternative: too much attention.
In the midst of his victory speech after the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich inserted a shout-out to Canada. After blasting President Obama for halting the Keystone XL pipeline, Gingrich added:
"What Prime Minister [Stephen] Harper -- who, by the way, is conservative and pro-American -- what he has said is he's gonna cut a deal with the Chinese and they'll build a pipeline straight across the Rockies to Vancouver. We'll get none of the jobs, none of the energy, none of the opportunity. Now, an American president who can create a Chinese-Canadian partnership is truly a danger to this country."
The Northern Gateway pipeline does not terminate in Vancouver, but close enough, let it pass. The real news here is that Gingrich is hitting a theme that will be repeated and enlarged between now and November. Republicans see in Keystone a powerful political weapon against Barack Obama. The weapon
cuts especially sharp because it divides Democrats from each other. The pipeline -- and the oil sands that will supply the pipeline -- are anathema to Obama's wealthy environmentalist donors. However, the highly paid construction and refinery jobs that will be created by the pipeline are dearly desired by blue-collar Democrats whose votes Obama will need.
Gingrich hit this internal Democratic division hard in South Carolina:
"The president says, 'No, we don't want you to build a pipeline from Central Canada straight down with no mountains intervening to the largest petrochemical centre in the world in Houston, so we'd make money on the pipeline, make money on refining the oil and shipping the oil. Oh, no, we don't want to do that,' because Barack Obama is taking care of his extremist left-wing friends in San Francisco. They think that'll really stop the oil from heading out."
To keep the internal Democratic divide fresh, congressional Republicans are attaching pro-Keystone amendments to a succession of important administration measures: first, a payroll tax cut; next up, perhaps a big multi-year highway bill. Meanwhile, the presidential candidates will talk Keystone on the campaign trail as one more reason to defeat Barack Obama in November.
Canadians, however, want a pipeline, not a campaign issue. The harder the Republicans hit, the more fixed the Democratic position becomes. Obama's original intent on the pipeline issue appears to have been: postpone the pipeline issue until 2013, collect maximum donations from deep-pocketed donors, win re-election, then reconsider. Now, however, opposition to Keystone is hardening into the consensus view of Democrats in Congress. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, told reporters on Jan. 24:
"If we want to wean ourselves from foreign oil, why would we allow a pipeline to be built of 1,700 miles to manufacture petroleum products to be shipped overseas? That's the purpose of this."
For almost 50 years, American leaders have urged a continental energy policy that would integrate the U.S. and Canadian oil markets into one. The older folks may recall that back in the 1980s, Canadians opponents of the Free Trade Agreement with the US warned that the treaty might lock Canada into
just such a continental deal.
But that was then. Now, Canada is sitting atop a resource so huge and so capital-intense that it cannot be developed successfully unless it is developed for export. Now it is a Democratic senator who expresses hesitation about over-reliance on Canadian oil -- "foreign oil," as he calls it, to conjure up images of oil sheikhs and petro-dictators.
Historically, both U.S. political parties have taken turns advancing the U.S.-Canada relationship. It was a Democratic president, Franklin Roosevelt, who first extended an explicit U.S. security guarantee to Canada. It was a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, who co-operated on the St. Lawrence Seaway and brought about a common market in defence procurement. The Auto Pact was signed under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, the U.S.-Canada FTA under the Republican Ronald Reagan, and the acid rain problem solved under another Republican, George H.W. Bush.
It would be strange if that tradition came to grief under Barack Obama, a president whose election was so welcomed by so many Canadians. It would be even stranger if the weakening of the U.S.-Canada relationship proved one of the issues that helped a elect a Republican president in 2012.
This post previously appeared on NationalPost.com
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/03/us-athabasca-idUSTRE8020OW20120103
The oil and refined products go on the world market. It's a couple hundred jobs for oil and probably thousands of lost jobs for green energy
It is by far the worst energy source every invented, with twice the CO2, and heavy metal pollution of Arab sweet crude.
Canada has great waste bio mass and wind resources.
There should be integrated policy, and here's the opportunity to bring in China too. It may be one of the best opportunities yet to bring down greenhouse-gas emissions. But the intransigence of the international capitalist system is such that nothing will happen unless the people force it. There clearly should be no agreement about TransCanada pipelines in the US until such an integrated energy policy (aimed at reducing greenhouse gasses) has been enacted.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe (which Buffett owns) moves oil to refineries.
Whoever labeled Canadian oil as "foreign" obviously hasn't been watching TV for the last two decades. Half our comedians and slightly more than that of our stars come from somewhere around Vancouver.
The oil is part and parcel of Canada's financial brilliance which made it one of the only countries to ride out a worldwide recession with only minor effects. That would be because Canada had its fiscal come-to-Jesus moment in the 1980's and made "austerity" a household word when its definition was less disastrous than it is today.
We could learn a lot from Canada, including how to avoid the more egregious deficiencies of its health care system. Just remember, as the pipeline wends its way to the Pacific Ocean over solely Canadian soil, they offered it to us first.
As for the pipeline, you do realize they'll have to deal with their own very energetic and committed environmentalists right? Also that any oil sold out of Canada goes to the highest bidder - whichever land it traverses on its way to refinement. It doesn't become "ours" because we let it dredge through our environment. I'm always astonished at how childishly most Americans speak about the oil industry - as if all the foreign companies drilling our oil are doing it for our benefit, and if we just let more of them have more drilling rights, somehow they'll give it to us, rather than do what they do - sell it on the open market to the highest bidder. American oil doesn't belong to Americans. Hasn't for a long time. And this Canadian dirty sand won't belong to us either.
Neither country should be welcoming of this toxic mess from the tarsands, and the eventual environmental disaster of a spill.
Those who think of this as the answer to their need for oil have no idea of the dirty, environmentally costly, processes this bitumen is subjected to before it can even be pumped through a pipeline.
There is a reason the development is not called the "oil sands" - it's not oil! In spite of our Governments P.R. effort to call it "ethical oil", it is what it is... a toxic brew.
Spoken like a true American turncoat. Has your green card come through yet David? All those lies you put into Dubya's speeches gave you great practice for HuffPo eh?
Who will benefit from this pipeline? Will consumer gas prices be cut in half? No?
But oil executives and lobbyists will make a bundle? Fantastic.
Canadians want investments in Solar, Wind, and other alternatives. We want to be world leaders in these new technologies, not helping to scrape out the last of the fossil fuels in dangerous ways, while paying ever higher prices for a rarer and rarer energy source and polluting the planet.
There are major discrepancies about the number of new jobs--new temporary jobs. Is it 10,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 or just 5,000? Also, the last I heard, the overwhelming majority of the oil will end up going overseas, a lot of it to China and India. The US is not getting all of it, or even most of it. Finally, isn't the cost of refining the shale oil a lot higher than other types of oil? Would the price of gas really come down?