Albertans shouldn’t hold their breath for Ottawa’s approval of the Frontier oil sands mine..Reports of massive opposition within the Liberal Party caucus and rumours of an appeasing “economic aid” packagefor the province are strong indicators that the federal cabinet will not approve the Frontier mine in northern Alberta later this month. .Frontier represents hope for Alberta. It promises $20 billion in investment, which in four decades of operation will generate $70 billion in taxes for all levels of government. Some 2,500 permanent jobs will remain from the 7000 sparked during the construction phase. .The project has been through all the hoops and complied with all the requirements under law and regulation. It enjoys the endorsement of all 14 adjacent indigenous communities..But the project chafes against those wishing for Alberta to leave its oil in the ground – to phase out the oil sands as Justin Trudeau said – and to transform Canada into the world’s eco-Nirvana. They are strong ideological voices inside the Liberal, Bloc and New Democratic parties. These are the same folks to whom the prime minister and the finance minister regularly tweet to say the Canadian economy is doing wonderfully well..The real culprit, however, is the Laurentian regime; that is, the current structures of power that dominate Canada. Without this arrangement, the imposition of Laurentian dominance over Alberta’s natural resources would not be possible. .The present House of Commons has 338 Members, from which only 34 represent Alberta. Contrast that number with 199 MPs from the Laurentian provinces, Quebec and Ontario. Regardless of who may be in power, Laurentians have nearly seven times more voices in the House of Commons than Albertans do, and eight times as many in the Senate. This will not change..Of course, not all Laurentian MPs are doomsday environmentalists, but they don’t have to be. If only a third of them were so, it would make them twice as numerous as all Alberta MPs –and this will not change any time soon. But it gets worse. The MPs who will decide on Teck’s Frontier fate are in the federal cabinet, with no Albertans among them..Ottawa has tried to extort political gain from Alberta in exchange for approval, pushing more job-killing policies and punishing the province for “fighting [the] federal government on the issue of the pricing of pollution,” as Jonathan Wilkinson, federal Environment and Climate Change minister, expressed it. They know Edmonton won’t surrender, thus setting things up to blame Alberta for the rejection, exactly as Finance Minister Bill Morneau now blames Kinder Morgan for “walking away” from TMX. .Cabinet has three choices: it can decide to approve, reject or delay. .Approval isn’t an option for the government. It would cost them crucial seats in Laurentian urban centres such as Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, as well as in Atlantic Canada and BC’s Lower Mainland. Conversely, they would lose zero seats or have negligible gains in Alberta. .So, a new version of “Screw the West, we’ll take the rest” will do. The minority government cannot survive without the other eco-nirvana Bloc and NDP. .The prime minister wants to avoid the collapse of his minority government. And he needs to safeguard – for his party and for himself – the chance of regaining majority power in a not-too-distant future, for which he must avoid the wrath of Laurentian eco-doomster voters..However, the typical seat-computation will have to be mitigated by the real and present danger of further fuelling Alberta independence sentiments. The effect of cancelling Teck’s Frontier mine outright will be worse in Western Canada than passing over Winnipeg to favour Montreal for the CF-18 maintenance contract – the decision that finally sparked the Reform movement in the late 1980s. Frontier rejection will sting as most illegitimate, absent any Alberta elected representative among the decision-makers. .Yet, no Laurentian PM, however indifferent or callous to Western concerns, wishes to have the country collapse on his watch. .That leaves stalling as the most plausible option. .As consolation, the feds will offer Alberta an economic aid bailout package. But Alberta voters are not for sale (much less bought with their own money). They want private sector jobs and autonomy instead of subjection to Laurentian dependency. No amount of Ottawa spend-and-spin will make Albertans receptive to an effort to deliver a deadly blow to the province’s largest employment generator. .So, delay it will likely be. Yet, short of full approval for Teck’s Frontier mine, the stalling will only stoke among Albertans the already incandescent fires of the desire to go it alone. .Marco Navarro-Génie is President of the Haultain Research Institute and a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.Due to a high level of spam content being posted in our comment section below, all comments undergo manual approval by a staff member during regular business hours (Monday - Friday). Your patience is appreciated.
