On May 30, I had the honour of being the banquet speaker at the Redvers Oil Showcase, speaking to more than 400 people. My speech “I didn’t see their horses,” targeted the anti-oil lobby — their hypocrisy in their actions and their efforts to target Saskatchewan oil and gas.
The comments that got the most positive audience reaction were when I suggested that if British Columbia really doesn’t want oil, fine. Total embargo.
I, and the nation, found out two days later how close that came to be.
The Financial Post had a superb piece published June 1 called, “Houston has a problem — The call that sparked Canada’s Trans Mountain crisis.”
In it writer, Geoffrey Morgan, revealed the Government of Alberta “had prepared a full contingency plan that included choking off oil shipments to British Columbia in three days and making an offer to buy the project by itself.”
Getting down to the last days before the deal was announced, Morgan wrote, “If the talks had collapsed, Alberta would have triggered Plan B, declaring Bill 12 as law and enacting its powers to throttle out-of-province oil shipments within three days.”
What he didn’t mention is Saskatchewan had pledged to take similar measures, following Alberta’s lead. Not that much, if any, Saskatchewan oil gets to British Columbia, but once something is on a rail car, presumably it could go anywhere. And there are plenty of idle crude-by-rail facilities in Saskatchewan that could have potentially been re-activated. I believe this is why Saskatchewan took the stand that it did.
I have to give credit to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. I, and pretty much the whole oilpatch, have given her a hard time (and deservedly so) over the years. But I didn’t really think she was going to close the taps. According to Morgan’s piece, it looked like she was deadly serious. Do not get into a poker game with her.
As I noted in my speech, such an embargo would have made the 1970s energy shocks look like a walk in the park compared to what would happen in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. While some people talk about gasoline potentially costing $2 per litre, there’s no price high enough if the gas station is dry.
The mood of the crowd in Redvers was definitely with me. They are tired of the hypocrisy, tired of the crap we are hearing from the lefties, both politically, and from the Left Coast.
I also talked about how I worked, 21 years ago, on the pipeline that had been destined to become Energy East, and how pipeline environmental regulation has become absurd to the point where National Energy Board-regulated pipelines are no longer built in the summer because a bird may have made a nest of the right-of-way, and yet the same right-of-way will see a farmer drive his airseeder or sprayer over it.
Watching Prime Minister Trudeau during question period on June 4 was almost laughable. Here he was, vigorously defending the need for an ocean export pipeline and quoting how the Canadian economy loses $15 billion a year due to the lack of one.
Where was Trudeau when the federally approved Northern Gateway project was killed? He was standing with his foot on its neck as it choked and died, that’s where. That project was killed because of Trudeau’s tanker ban. It could have been built by now. If that pipeline had been built, Kinder Morgan would not have been nearly as big a deal.
Where was he when Energy East strangled to death? His other foot was on its throat, changing the goalposts mid-game.
It looks like he ran out of feet when it came to Trans Mountain.
If it weren’t for Trudeau’s failures on Northern Gateway and Energy East, we would not be committed to at least $4.5 billion and potentially more than $11 billion if no buyer can be found. Make no bones about it, his government not only chased away billions of dollars in foreign investment, it squandered billions in nationalizing a pipeline. A pipeline that would have gotten along just fine if the prime minister had just done his job since day one, in 2015.
Every single one of us is on the hook for this, and it’s all due to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
I think he’s now realized that. Good luck, prime pinister. You’re going to need it.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
