Terry Glavin: Scrutinizing Canada's pipeline to Beijing
Canada is at the brink of a radical shift in energy and foreign policy. But there has been no debate of any consequence about it — not in the House of Commons, not in the Senate, not in the proceedings of a Royal Commission. Certainly not in the news media.
Here’s what you’ve been missing.
Ostensibly, it’s about the Enbridge project, a plan to pump condensate eastward from the coast to Alberta so that Alberta bitumen can be made fluid enough to be pumped back to the coast at Kitimat — then put into oil tankers to be sent down Douglas Channel and out into the roaring North Pacific, eventually landing in California and Asia.
As recently as last fall, John Bruk, the founding president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and as fervent a booster of trade with China as you’ll meet, was cheering Stephen Harper and wishing him all the best with his trade engagements in the Forbidden City. But Bruk’s good wishes came with a caution: “Are we going to sell the ownership of our natural resources to pay for consumer goods we can ill afford and thereby speed up the indebtedness of Canada as export revenue from those resources would be lost?” Turns out that’s exactly what we’re doing.
It’s not just about the jettisoning of a national consensus that Canada’s bitumen should not be sent overseas to be processed. It’s not just the $20-billion deluge of takeovers and beachheads Beijing has established almost overnight in Alberta’s oil sands. It’s about Chinese state-owned corporations moving in. It’s about a proper review of Investment Canada Act rules the Conservatives were promising only a year ago, before quietly scrapping the promise without explanation. It’s about recommendations from the federal Competition Policy Review Panel that were ignored. It’s about the abdication of Canada’s capacity to articulate a national energy strategy, and all to the advantage of the police state in Beijing.
Until now Beijing’s strategy has been to fly under the radar by taking only pieces of oil sands ventures and to murmur occasionally about bringing in Chinese workers or pulling up stakes altogether should they hear too much backchat.
Terry Price Victoria Bc - News
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