CANADIAN ENERGY SECURITY
Easterners could freeze in the dark
The U.S. has a national energy policy that emphasizes self-sufficiency, energy independence and domestic ownership. Why don't we?
GORDON LAXER
The Globe and Mail
May 28, 2007
At a meeting of the House of Commons' international trade committee earlier this month, Leon Benoit, the Conservative chairman, ordered me to stop my presentation as an invited witness. My remarks, he ruled, were not relevant. When his decision was successfully challenged by other members of the committee, Mr. Benoit adjourned the meeting and left the room.
I was astonished. I had spent several days preparing for my presentation, and two days in transit. Later, I learned that Mr. Benoit's behaviour may have been prompted by a secret guidebook for Conservative chairmen, designed to interrupt witnesses challenging government positions.
If so, it backfired. Suppression intrigues people. They want to know what caused the storm.
I was cut off after noting that the United States has a National Energy Policy (a NEP) that emphasizes self-sufficiency, energy independence and domestic ownership.
And while Canada, as part of our bilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative, supports U.S. efforts to wean itself off Middle Eastern oil, I noted that we do not have a NEP of our own.
Indeed, Canada's official goal is greater continental co-operation, at the expense of our own security of supply.
For example, in researching how Canada's energy security would be affected by exporting more energy to the United States, I learned that Canada has no plans, or enough pipelines, to get oil to Eastern Canadians in the event of an international supply crisis.
Further, I was surprised that the government was not even studying Canadian energy security.
The National Energy Board wrote me on April 12: "Unfortunately, the NEB has not undertaken any studies on security of supply." Yet the board's mandate is to "promote safety and security ... in the Canadian public interest."
I asked if Canada, as a member of the International Energy Agency, will establish a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The IEA was created to counter OPEC's boycotting power; its 24 members are supposed to maintain 90 days of emergency oil reserves.
The NEB replied that Canada "was specifically exempted from establishing a reserve, on the grounds that Canada is a net exporting country whereas the other members are net importers."
But that doesn't make sense. Canada may be a net exporter, but it still imports 40 per cent of its oil - 850,000 barrels per day - to meet 90 per cent of Atlantic Canada's and Quebec's needs, and 40 per cent of Ontario's.
A rising share of those imports, 45 per cent, comes from OPEC countries, primarily Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Meanwhile, imports from safer North Sea suppliers have shrunk to 37 per cent.
Many Eastern Canadians heat their homes with oil. Western Canada cannot supply all of Eastern Canadian needs, because NAFTA reserves Canadian oil for Americans' security of supply. Canada now exports 63 per cent of the oil it produces and 56 per cent of its natural gas.
http://www.canadians.org/media/council/2007/28-May-07.html
This is how you build national unity folks. Let them freeze in the east. Un-freakin-believable. Can anyone else here see the unfairness in the NAFTA agreement?
Let's see...the people in eastern Canada have to import their oil and pay world market prices for it. Alberta exports her oil at world market prices. At the very least, instead of building pipelines to the states, how about you send one or two down east. They'd be happy to pay the going rate for it. Then in case of a world wide shortage at least our country would be self sufficient and major parts of the country would not be left high and dry. Again it all comes back to our federal government lacking the intestinal fortitude to force this issue in the name of national security.
