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Novice Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford, while expressing the Federal Cabinet’s infinite concern for a balanced appraisal of the Northern Gateway pipeline, which is due by next Tuesday, managed to leave the impression in New York this week that the decision might be delayed, even as he was also quoted as saying that it was “relatively straightforward.” Officials were left to unfuzzify his remarks.
This is hardly the time for communications cock-ups, particularly given that the Harper government is coming under predictable pressure as it prepares — presumably — to approve the proposed $6.5-billion pipeline from the oil sands to the coast of B.C. Why would the Cabinet want any delay? Is Stephen Harper aspiring to look like President Odithers on Keystone XL?
Northern Gateway is at least as politically fraught for Mr. Harper as Keystone XL is for Mr. Obama, but in economic terms the Enbridge proposal is of far greater economic significance for Canada than Keystone XL is to the U.S.
Liberal Opposition leader Justin Trudeau called upon the Prime Minister this week to “do the right thing and just say no” to the pipeline, which in turn gave Mr. Harper the opportunity to conjure up the ghost of Mr. Trudeau’s father, Pierre, perpetrator of the 1980 National Energy Program, and suggest that opposition to the oil industry might be in the Liberals’ DNA.