TORONTO — Former prime minister Stephen Harper closed the Canada Investment Summit by telling investors that becoming an energy superpower is no longer just good business — it is “critical to our prosperity and indeed to our survival as a country” — and that Ottawa had no choice but to walk away from Washington.Harper spoke as board chair of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, which he called the Maple Eight’s “wild rose one,” and said AIMCo still holds more than 40% of its portfolio in Canada even though it is “not an economic development fund.”He thanked Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien for the podium and warned Carney that handing a partisan a microphone was “a courageous decision.” A day earlier the three men had stood with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Bell CEO Mirko Bibic for a data-centre announcement billed at $50 billion.Harper said the current U.S. administration treats Canada’s economic integration as incompatible with separate sovereignty, and that diminished reliance on the United States will carry “significant costs” Canadians should be prepared to accept. He called that path sad and necessary, and said Canada cannot let the Trump administration “hollow out our industrial capacities.” Leadership, he said, means taking accountability for what Ottawa can control: becoming more internally competitive, more externally connected and “more truly sovereign.”.He put resources at the centre of that case. Canada is the fifth-largest natural-gas producer and fourth in oil production — third in reserves, he said, citing Suncor CEO Rich Kruger — third in hydroelectricity and second in uranium, almost all of it from Saskatchewan. He credited Moe for new mines that will make Canada the world’s largest uranium producer within a few years. In 2015, he said, the country was poised to be an energy superpower. “Today, we are not. Why? Because of deliberate policy choices that followed over the next decade.”Harper congratulated Carney for fast-tracking major-project approvals, “especially for projects in the oil sands,” then said more has to be done. Burdens and restrictions that do not exist elsewhere “simply must be removed,” and investors need a science-based decision on resource and infrastructure projects “within a fixed and reasonable time frame, as we had set up a decade ago.” If Canada does not, “the Americans will continue to be our sole customers.” That is the gap with Carney’s morning pledge of “one project, one review, one year.” Harper said he was “very encouraged” by those comments and that Premier Danielle Smith will keep using “Alberta diplomacy” to hold Ottawa to the urgency.Demand is not the problem, he told the room. Customers and investors want Canadian energy “provided we want to get it out of the ground and sell it.” He called the summit a first of its kind and said it should not be a one-off. God bless Canada, he closed.
