Is It Victory For Federal NDP If Trans Mountain Is Killed?

http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-lawyers-to-strike-it-rich-in-kinder-morgan-pipeline-fight

From Pondering:

I think most Canadians want their municipal and provincial laws to be respected. 

​However, there is a hierarchy of laws. The BC government would never allow a municipal regulation to interfere with what the province wanted to do. Municipal laws are subservient to provincial law, as provincial law is subservient to federal law. It couldn't really be any other way.

If municipal law was a higher authority than provincial law, why bother with a province? And if provincial law was superior to federal law, what's the point of the federation? 

Now, before you get carried away, I do know that there are areas of jurisdiction that are provincial. One of the things that is not, is interprovincial trade. 

If interprovincial trade is federal, why are provinces allowed to block things like unions from other provinces, and goods?

There’s dumb, and there’s Alberta dumb—and Rachel Notley’s Bill 12 is both

True enough, Notley’s Bill 12 does not itself discriminate against British Columbia. But she has made it abundantly clear that it is entirely aimed at authorizing by regulation the discriminatory export of oil and gas to B.C.

Something that is explicitly forbidden by Canada’s highest law.

The one that she either hasn’t read, has misread, or simply hopes to wish away. Not unlike her misreading and wishful thinking on the Kinder Morgan project itself.

It is the same Canadian constitution that the government of Canada has also discounted at every turn, in ignoring its fiduciary and legal obligations to Indigenous peoples and in assailing B.C.’s efforts to seek legal clarity about its constitutional jurisdiction.

The one and same constitution that the Trudeau government would be so obviously obliged to uphold, in overriding Alberta’s sorry excuse for constitution-breaking, if Notley ever had the temerity to bring down her legislative “sword of Damocles” on B.C. as she envisions.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau frequently expresses his concern for First Nations people, but he has no problem forcing a pipeline on Indigenous bands who have refused to provide consent.

Not that I expect to hear a word to that effect from any of Trudeau’s sorry lot, any more than they were inclined to chastise Alberta for breaking trade laws with its first wine war. Trudeau’s principles are as malleable as his environmental “convictions”—and equally bent to the will of Big Oil, which in Canada, rules all.

Never mind that if the imagined powers authorized by Bill 12 are ever invoked to penalize B.C., it will effectively start an international energy trade war with Washington state refineries and other customers.

They are, of course, reliant on their contracted volumes flowing through the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, which would be severely impacted by any “licensed” export restrictions that Notley might hope to impose on volumes bound for or through B.C.

Set aside the lawsuits that would trigger and the added delays that would surely entail for all of those frustrated tarsands producers that hope to see more of their filthy product somehow poured out in ever greater volumes to Pacific tidewater.

I don’t believe for a second that if Notley ever tries to license, regulate, and restrict her own province’s oil producers as she is now threatening that there would not be a rapid revolt in Alberta by all those companies whose oxes would be so arbitrarily gored.

No matter. Pretend, if you will, that Bill 12 could be wielded as threatened without instantly creating a full-blown constitutional crisis, backed by Quebec, that would rapidly convince Canada’s out-in-the-wilderness prime minister to fold his already shaky camp stool.

Give him some credit. He might seem like a coward, but when push comes to shove, he knows damn well who has the most muscle, and it sure ain’t Alberta. It’s Quebec, Ontario, and First Nations.

As an accomplished boxer, Trudeau knows full well that “rope-a-dope” only works so long before a knockout blow connects. The attack on Bill 12 will be fast and furious if that lame jab at B.C. is ever suffered upon our entire nation, if only for the precedent it would set. Which Quebec and Ontario could never abide without a serious fight.

Forget all that. The point is, fortunately for British Columbians and for all Canadians, we have a constitution that is the highest law of the land.

Just as it will be used by First Nations to legally assert and uphold their constitutionally enshrined rights and title—and as it will be used by B.C. to protect its constitutionally delineated jurisdiction—Canada’s ultimate law will surely sink Bill 12. If only after that bill does a lot of damage, including to Alberta’s global reputation.

Meanwhile, Kinder Morgan will be literally laughing all the way to the bank in Texas.

Stupid, stupid Canadians, it must be thinking. They are such pushovers. Once an American colony, always an American colony. A branch-plant economy that will perhaps never find its nerve or will to stand up to the biggest bully on whom it depends for its lunch money.

Where would Big Oil be without Canada’s easily browbeaten prime minister? The one who recklessly declared its latest sinking pet project to be a vital enterprise in the national interest, which is simply too big to fail.

Talk about an easy mark. He has basically put Kinder Morgan in the envious position of dictating how large it wants Ottawa’s cheque to be, to cover its margins and keep its dog-of-a-project “on track”.

Trudeau brought a nail file to a knife fight that is in serious danger of literally morphing into a potential gun fight. That is, if the worst and most dire threats of some First Nations leaders are to be taken at face value.

He has backed himself to the edge of the cliff that he now seems determined to pitch himself and Canadians off, offsetting Kinder Morgan’s risk at all costs with billions of taxpayer dollars that his government would effectively have to steal from other crucial public services.

Canada’s first Emperor Trudeau said “just watch me,” in acting to save Canada from the terrorist FLQ that was murdering people and was vowing to rip our country apart.

His child emperor has pretty much embraced that phrase as his governing credo.

Because watching him is what’s it’s all about for Justin Trudeau: staying busy at looking busy, and doing nothing but breaking hearts wherever he does do anything substantive.

Bailing out Big Oil to the tune of billions of dollars, which Kinder Morgan’s shareholders now bear the sole risk of losing?

Sounds like a plan.

Thumbing your nose at Canada’s First Peoples and vowing to run pipelines across their unceded territory, in wanton violation of their wishes and of their internationally acknowledged human rights?

That’s leadership, all right.

Jumping as high as commanded by Kinder Morgan, to meet its arbitrary May 31 deadline? I stress: dead. Line.

No bar too high, Trudeau happily says, however hard the fall for future generations that will have to pay for that error of judgement and hubris.

By May 31, you say, Houston? We have a problem. But nothing that Trudeau can’t solve with taxpayers’ money and his “sunny ways” at the bargaining table.

All to kickstart Kinder Morgan’s uneconomic, massively disruptive, environmentally destructive, socially irresponsible, and anti-climatic tarsands pipeline.

Hey, it’s only money.

Albeit taxpayers’ money. But who's to know better when money has never been any object?

What’s a few billion more of debt for future taxpayers when you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth? When the closest you ever got to really going over an edge from which there is no recovery was on a snowboard at Whistler?

Sadly, all the world can now see what is really going on. It is the failure of leadership from Trudeau and Notley that threatens to make fools of us all, as it confirms Canada as a climate-action fraud.

The emperor has no clothes, I suggest. Be it the one occupying the prime minister’s office in Ottawa, or the tiny Tories of all political stripes in Edmonton.

All of them are laughably compromised by Notley’s latest pathetic attempt to bully British Columbians and First Nations, on a pipeline for no one that is going nowhere fast.

If anything is really out of gas, it is the Kinder Morgan project, which Bill 12 makes its own argument for stopping. Now. In the national interest.

https://www.straight.com/news/1059086/martyn-brown-theres-dumb-and-theres-alberta-dumb-and-rachel-notleys-bill-12-both

Pondering wrote:

Alberta will not follow through on limiting oil and gas shipments to BC. 

Oh yes it will! 

More nonsense from Trudeau 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/transmountain-evironmental-protections-1.4622913

So much for that trip to Calgary we were planning for this summer

https://thetyee.ca/News/2018/04/17/Pipeline-Battle-Escalates-Alberta-Turn-Off-Taps/

Pondering wrote:

There's nothing Trudeau or Notley can do about it. 

I very much appreciate you including Notley in this. Not many people are doing so. She seems to be getting a free pass because she's an alleged New Democrat. The reality is that she's as right wing as any Alberta politician and she is the biggest hardliner for this pipeline.

Thanks for noticing that fact.

Smithee wrote:

The reality is that she's as right wing as any Alberta politician

On every issue, she's as right-wing as Jason Kenney?

Not all Albertans are in favour of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion: A letter to BC Coast Protectors

https://www.corporatemapping.ca/not-all-albertans-are-in-favour-of-the-t...

https://www.facebook.com/CoastProtectors/photos/a.1811106015615318.10737...

Classic 1953 pipeline for sale. Some rust.

https://dogwoodbc.ca/news/1953-pipeline-for-sale/

voice of the damned wrote:

Smithee wrote:

The reality is that she's as right wing as any Alberta politician

On every issue, she's as right-wing as Jason Kenney?

She's the biggest hardliner for this pipeline left of Kenney. Which doesn't say much considering Kenney is so right wing he's a fascist. I didn't call her a fascist. She's a sad excuse for a New Democrat. The Alberta NDP is nothing more or less the ressurrection of the Wild Rose Party. She is,and make no mistake about it,right wing.

voice of the damned wrote:

alan smithee wrote:

voice of the damned wrote:

Smithee wrote:

The reality is that she's as right wing as any Alberta politician

On every issue, she's as right-wing as Jason Kenney?

She's the biggest hardliner for this pipeline left of Kenney. Which doesn't say much considering Kenney is so right wing he's a fascist. I didn't call her a fascist. She's a sad excuse for a New Democrat. The Alberta NDP is nothing more or less the ressurrection of the Wild Rose Party. She is,and make no mistake about it,right wing.

I never said you called her a fascist. I asked if you thought she was as right-wing as Kenney on every issue. Which she would have to be, to fit your claim of "...as rightwing as any Alberta politician".

Besides pipelines, can you give me an example of some issues on which there is typically a left/right division, and on which Notley is as right-wing as Kenney?

I'm going to be honest with you,VOTD. I don't know much about Alberta politics. BUt on this issue she's hard right. Are you really going to disagree? Please.

..if this is true and i believe it is what are the options?

Is the Oil Industry Canada's 'Deep State'?

KEVIN TAFT: I wanted to give it a little bit of academic structure. So I linked it to the notion of institutional capture, which has a very long history in literature in which agencies of one kind of another set up to serve the public interest, regulators or government departments, or so on, end up serving the private interest instead of the public interest.

KEVIN TAFT: My argument is that over 25 years or so, the oil industry has worked very hard to gain influence through various means over the federal level, over environment Canada, over natural resources Canada, over the prime minister's office.

ADAM SCOTT: There's been numerous times when the federal government has said, "Okay, we're gonna deal with climate change, we're gonna put modest regulation in place for emissions," and we've seen time and time again where suddenly the government one minute is talking about doing climate policy, and the next minute it's gone.

KEITH STEWART: They have a political influence that is way larger than their actual economic influence. But I think part of what they've done, is they've convinced government officials and many Canadians that they are a crucial part of the economy, when the reality is they're a small part.

R.E.Wood wrote:

"What we're saying is if they (Alberta) turn off those taps, Saskatchewan won't be here to fill those (B.C.) fuel tanks."

The sun shines in British Columbia. I'm glad to see that allies Rachel Notley and Scott Moe will both be putting their oil where the sun don't shine.

Why Kinder Morgan’s Pipeline Is DOA

Falling prices and competition from a new Texas export terminal mean Trans Mountain fails the business test.

Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau are prepared to pay for a pipeline that no longer makes economic sense. Photo from trumpvstrudeau, Creative Commons licensed.

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/04/17/Why-Kinder-Morgan-Pipeline-DOA/

Forget Any Economic Windfall from Kinder Morgan, Analyst Says

In damning report, David Hughes challenges claims that Trans Mountain will boost Canada’s oil prices.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/05/31/Kinder-Morgan-Forget-Economic-Windfall/

I understand that the Federal Governemtn wants the pipeline. That is not the most grevious error here. It is a dispute.

However, for a national government to stay silent while two provinces threaten another  with an unconstitutional threat to prejudice them when it comes to exports is much more serious.

It is a major problem that the federal government is supporting through silence a bid to damage the economy of another province in this way. I wonder when even the pro-pipeline people in BC will realize the seriousness of this situation where the Federal government is apparently condoning unconstitutional attacks like this.

NorthReport wrote:

Constitution allows B.C. to regulate, but not stop, national pipeline: experts

Legal experts agree pipeline is federal jurisdiction but some argue B.C.’s stance has weight—so long as Horgan’s stance is carefully worded

In the worsening feud over Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, British Columbia premier John Horgan could have more legal ground to stand on than his counterpart in Alberta has alleged, according to several constitutional law experts.

https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/04/16/constitution-allows-bc-to-r...

As I said upthread I think this is correct.

The problem is that a reference on the quesiton may not be adequate. The Federal Government position may be that there is no dispute becuase BC cannot prevent it and they do ot disagree with the BC government authority in terms of regulation.

It could be that the BC government would have to introduce a regulation that the Federal government disagrees with (short of stopping it altogether) in order to have any purpose in a case -- which would then be based on how far the regulation can go or whether a given proposed regulation were actually a regulation or if it were a stalling or blocking attempt.

At the same time I wonder why we are not hearing about an Indigenous reference which is where I think a stronger case on stopping the pipeline would be.

B.C.'s attorney general Eby calls Alberta fuel-ban bill a 'bluff'

British Columbia's attorney general is calling Alberta's proposed fuel restriction law a ``bluff'' that will result in an immediate lawsuit from his province and likely lawsuits from oil companies.

http://vancouversun.com/pmn/business-pmn/b-c-s-attorney-general-calls-al...

NorthReport wrote:

B.C.'s attorney general Eby calls Alberta fuel-ban bill a 'bluff'

British Columbia's attorney general is calling Alberta's proposed fuel restriction law a ``bluff'' that will result in an immediate lawsuit from his province and likely lawsuits from oil companies.

http://vancouversun.com/pmn/business-pmn/b-c-s-attorney-general-calls-al...

I am not sure. Why would oil companies sue?

They want the pipeline. They would not necessarily be hurt all that much as they would increase the price due to scarecity and not lose all that much. 

If you think of it in labour terms it is less like a strike than a slowdown where you get to increase the price of the service in the process so you do not lose anything from what is not supplied.

The lawsuit I agree is a thing. Even more of a thing would be a lawsuit against the federal government of encouraging and not preventing this. The threat is already an action with fuel prices in BC soaring.

People are being sold a bill of goods.

The price of gas will not be reduced in BC due to the completion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion. If anything the cost of completing the pipeline expansion is going to increase gas prices in BC.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

B.C.'s attorney general Eby calls Alberta fuel-ban bill a 'bluff'

British Columbia's attorney general is calling Alberta's proposed fuel restriction law a ``bluff'' that will result in an immediate lawsuit from his province and likely lawsuits from oil companies.

http://vancouversun.com/pmn/business-pmn/b-c-s-attorney-general-calls-al...

I am not sure. Why would oil companies sue?

They want the pipeline. They would not necessarily be hurt all that much as they would increase the price due to scarecity and not lose all that much. 

If you think of it in labour terms it is less like a strike than a slowdown where you get to increase the price of the service in the process so you do not lose anything from what is not supplied.

The lawsuit I agree is a thing. Even more of a thing would be a lawsuit against the federal government of encouraging and not preventing this. The threat is already an action with fuel prices in BC soaring.

R.E.Wood]</p> <p>[quote=Pondering]</p> <p>[quote=R.E.Wood wrote:

The oil industry supports what the Alberta government is doing! I already posted this link but I'll post it again since you obviously didn't read it, along with some helpful quotes:.....

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-oil-gas-producers-support-...

Here are some even more helpful quotes from the same article. 

Tim McMillan, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said Alberta's hand was forced and producers are on board with Bill 12. But he noted that if the legislation is enacted, it wouldn't just hurt B.C.

"Any disruption would have further effects on our industry, and I think it comes down to short-term challenges for long-term gain. Our preference is that we don't have barriers getting our product to market, short or long term," he said.

"Any time there is a barrier getting the product to market, it hurts the economics in Western Canada and has an effect on jobs.".

They are on board with the bill, not actually using it to limit sales to BC. Next...

Gary Leach, president of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada (EPAC), echoed McMillan's sentiments, and said he hopes the government handles any enactment of Bill 12 with "some skills" to avoid too much negative impact on Alberta's energy producers.

"But, I think at this point this impasse with British Columbia has to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. So our view is that it's regrettable it's come to this, but we would support the government at least acquiring the legal tools to defend Alberta's interests if necessary."

That isn't support for using the bill. Just having it. Getting them to agree that it is necessary is another matter. 

Another key industry group, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA), said in a statement that while it understands Bill 12 has become necessary, it's concerned the measures could have unintended consequences.

"We hope that the measures will not need to be implemented and that we are able to find a prompt resolution to the current impasse that reflects the needs and concerns of industry and other stakeholders," CEPA president Chris Bloomer said.

Again, support for the bill but coupled with a warning not to use it rooted in "unintended consequences". 

Alberta's ability to physically export bitumen is limited by transportation options. If Alberta decides to not sell to BC it doesn't have other customers waiting in the wings. BC can also shut down bitumen exports from its coast. 

Alberta is playing chicken. While BC gas might go up oil companies would have no choice but to reduce production and lay off workers.

Trudeau and Notley better think twice about sinking money into the project. It is not guaranteed to go through. There are still cases before the courts that have not been settled aside from Horgan's reference question.