Sounds like a familiar story, doesn't it?
Michael Den Tandt: Trudeau’s success not driven by his celebrity — but by Harper and Mulcair’s mistakes
Even before the Harper government gave its tacit, much-hedged, timorously voiced approval for the Northern Gateway pipeline project, it was clear that debates about energy and resource extraction would define the 2015 federal election. This has been years in the making.
But here’s what’s truly odd: Given the long lead time, you’d think all three major federal parties would have thought their positions through, quite carefully. Yet both the Conservatives and New Democrats have made big strategic miscalculations on the resource file, the net effect of which has been to greatly reinforce the Liberals’ position.
More surprising still, the Tories and Dippers continue to compound these mistakes, even as the result — a solidifying Liberal lead in the polls — becomes more clear. Justin Trudeau’s success is being driven, not by his celebrity or winning smile or even his ground game, but by his opponents’ mistakes.
Let’s begin first with principles. It’s a foregone conclusion now that the Harper government has bungled its single most important economic task, that of securing U.S. and Pacific market access for Canadian crude oil. This was the linchpin of the great extractivist imperative, first articulated in the 2012 budget. It’s now 2014 and we’re no closer to a safe, permanent remedy for the Alberta bitumen bubble. It’s ironic: For years the Harper Tories have been accused by their detractors of being lackeys of Big Oil. As lackeys, they’ve been less than efficient.
TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, according to all logic, local and State Department environmental reviews, should have been green-lighted months ago. Geopolitics — first the Ukraine crisis, now the catastrophic implosion of the unitary state of Iraq — offers an increasingly unassailable argument in favour of shoring up North American energy security. Yet the project is in purgatory, because of a “climatist” checkmate weighing on the Democratic party from within its own ranks.
Climate change, it’s one of the defining issues of our time
Granted, U.S. President Barack Obama has been inept here. It’s fair to blame him for letting this decision rot on the vine, while the anti-oilsands lobby gathered strength. But rule one of Canada-U.S. relations has long been that the Canadian side, led by the prime minister, must employ skill and guile in ensuring this country’s interests are served, rather than seeking to move the White House by blunt pressure.
Very simply: In order to counter the protectionist and frankly jingoistic anti-Keystone pressure being applied to the Obama administration by billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, among others, the Harper government would have to have imposed carbon-emission restrictions on Canada’s oil and gas sector, either solo or in partnership with the Obama administration. The government would have to have enthusiastically embraced sustainable development, and then trumpeted that shift. Former federal minister and soon-to-be Progressive Conservative Alberta Premier Jim Prentice has long recommended a similar posture. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney pointedly did the same in April. Instead, the Tories have played spitball politics.
Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats, for their part, are locked into an anti-Keystone dialectic that only reinforces the party’s traditional weaknesses. Campaigning in the current byelection campaign in Trinity-Spadina in Toronto, NDP candidate Joe Cressy has had great fun skewering Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan, well-known as an environmentalist, with the Liberal party’s backing of Keystone XL. Apparently forgotten, just as it was in last November’s byelection race in Toronto Centre, which the NDP lost, is the message this sends the rest of the country.
“Climate change, it’s one of the defining issues of our time,” Cressy told the CBC recently. Um, OK. But since the NDP advocates shipping bitumen east, its policy is climate-neutral, relative to those of the Liberal and Tories, just as Keystone itself has been found to be climate-neutral by the State Department, and for the same basic reason. Changing the means of shipment does not mean less fuel gets burnt. The NDP’s rhetoric is structurally weak. It can, however, persuade swing voters the Orange team has it in for business and doesn’t understand the most basic rules of economics. Perhaps that’s why Mulcair’s party is languishing in the teens in popular support, despite Mulcair’s strong performances in the House of Commons.
All of which leads us back to the Liberals: They oppose the Northern Gateway project, because it lacks local community support and because its proposed route envisions sending hundreds of oil tankers down the narrow and pristine Douglas Channel, in B.C. But they support Keystone, because it has passed every local environmental and national governmental hurdle, and because of its strategic importance to Canada’s economy.
On a symbolic level, that bifurcation bridges the gap between Tories and New Democrats. It makes the Liberals look like grown-ups, and the other two parties implicitly like ideological outriders. And it places the Grits squarely in the sweet spot of Canadian politics, which is the pragmatic centre, heading into the 2015 election. Under such circumstances, is it any wonder Trudeau continues to hold his lead, despite pratfalls and weeks of bad press over the abortion debate? Well, no. Not really. It’s not Teflon, keeping the Liberals whole. It’s strategy.
Michael Den Tandt: Trudeau’s success not driven by his celebrity — but by Harper and Mulcair’s mistakes
Michael Den Tandt: Trudeau’s success not driven by his celebrity — but by Harper and Mulcair’s mistakes
Even before the Harper government gave its tacit, much-hedged, timorously voiced approval for the Northern Gateway pipeline project, it was clear that debates about energy and resource extraction would define the 2015 federal election. This has been years in the making.
But here’s what’s truly odd: Given the long lead time, you’d think all three major federal parties would have thought their positions through, quite carefully. Yet both the Conservatives and New Democrats have made big strategic miscalculations on the resource file, the net effect of which has been to greatly reinforce the Liberals’ position.
More surprising still, the Tories and Dippers continue to compound these mistakes, even as the result — a solidifying Liberal lead in the polls — becomes more clear. Justin Trudeau’s success is being driven, not by his celebrity or winning smile or even his ground game, but by his opponents’ mistakes.
Let’s begin first with principles. It’s a foregone conclusion now that the Harper government has bungled its single most important economic task, that of securing U.S. and Pacific market access for Canadian crude oil. This was the linchpin of the great extractivist imperative, first articulated in the 2012 budget. It’s now 2014 and we’re no closer to a safe, permanent remedy for the Alberta bitumen bubble. It’s ironic: For years the Harper Tories have been accused by their detractors of being lackeys of Big Oil. As lackeys, they’ve been less than efficient.
TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, according to all logic, local and State Department environmental reviews, should have been green-lighted months ago. Geopolitics — first the Ukraine crisis, now the catastrophic implosion of the unitary state of Iraq — offers an increasingly unassailable argument in favour of shoring up North American energy security. Yet the project is in purgatory, because of a “climatist” checkmate weighing on the Democratic party from within its own ranks.
Climate change, it’s one of the defining issues of our time
Granted, U.S. President Barack Obama has been inept here. It’s fair to blame him for letting this decision rot on the vine, while the anti-oilsands lobby gathered strength. But rule one of Canada-U.S. relations has long been that the Canadian side, led by the prime minister, must employ skill and guile in ensuring this country’s interests are served, rather than seeking to move the White House by blunt pressure.
Very simply: In order to counter the protectionist and frankly jingoistic anti-Keystone pressure being applied to the Obama administration by billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, among others, the Harper government would have to have imposed carbon-emission restrictions on Canada’s oil and gas sector, either solo or in partnership with the Obama administration. The government would have to have enthusiastically embraced sustainable development, and then trumpeted that shift. Former federal minister and soon-to-be Progressive Conservative Alberta Premier Jim Prentice has long recommended a similar posture. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney pointedly did the same in April. Instead, the Tories have played spitball politics.
Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats, for their part, are locked into an anti-Keystone dialectic that only reinforces the party’s traditional weaknesses. Campaigning in the current byelection campaign in Trinity-Spadina in Toronto, NDP candidate Joe Cressy has had great fun skewering Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan, well-known as an environmentalist, with the Liberal party’s backing of Keystone XL. Apparently forgotten, just as it was in last November’s byelection race in Toronto Centre, which the NDP lost, is the message this sends the rest of the country.
“Climate change, it’s one of the defining issues of our time,” Cressy told the CBC recently. Um, OK. But since the NDP advocates shipping bitumen east, its policy is climate-neutral, relative to those of the Liberal and Tories, just as Keystone itself has been found to be climate-neutral by the State Department, and for the same basic reason. Changing the means of shipment does not mean less fuel gets burnt. The NDP’s rhetoric is structurally weak. It can, however, persuade swing voters the Orange team has it in for business and doesn’t understand the most basic rules of economics. Perhaps that’s why Mulcair’s party is languishing in the teens in popular support, despite Mulcair’s strong performances in the House of Commons.
All of which leads us back to the Liberals: They oppose the Northern Gateway project, because it lacks local community support and because its proposed route envisions sending hundreds of oil tankers down the narrow and pristine Douglas Channel, in B.C. But they support Keystone, because it has passed every local environmental and national governmental hurdle, and because of its strategic importance to Canada’s economy.
On a symbolic level, that bifurcation bridges the gap between Tories and New Democrats. It makes the Liberals look like grown-ups, and the other two parties implicitly like ideological outriders. And it places the Grits squarely in the sweet spot of Canadian politics, which is the pragmatic centre, heading into the 2015 election. Under such circumstances, is it any wonder Trudeau continues to hold his lead, despite pratfalls and weeks of bad press over the abortion debate? Well, no. Not really. It’s not Teflon, keeping the Liberals whole. It’s strategy.
Michael Den Tandt: Trudeau’s success not driven by his celebrity — but by Harper and Mulcair’s mistakes
