by the National Post Editorial Board - from the National Post
There’s an old adage in Alberta politics that when all else fails, bash Ottawa. Well, Alberta’s Tory government must feel itself at risk of failure, because it has begun making far-fetched claims about how its federal cousins — Stephen Harper’s new Tory majority — have suddenly turned into anti-oil sands hypocrites bent on hobbling the project’s development with new environmental regulations just to win favour with central Canadian voters.
“The federal government has sat on the sidelines for years and years and years. Now they see their little golden goose is under attack and they want to be the voice for Canada on the world stage and we respect that,” Alberta Finance Minister Lloyd Snelgrove told Postmedia News this week. “We have tried to be team players on this. They’re saying Alberta should have been all over the world defending the oil sands, but only as long as they are holding the leash.”
These claims are overwrought. The Canadian government has rightly defended the oil patch on the world stage. And to the extent that excessive regulation might hobble the oil sands, it is Ed Stelmach’s government in Alberta that poses the greatest risk.
In the past, it is true that Alberta has had every right to be wary of federal intervention. Pierre Trudeau famously imposed his National Energy Program (NEP) on the resource-rich province, and in just over six years drained more than $70-billion out of its economy and sent the province into an economic tailspin that took 10 years to pull out of. At present, Alberta still annually contributes over $5,000 more toward Confederation than its residents receive in return for every man, woman and child in the province.
Even former Tory prime minister Brian Mulroney became unpopular in Alberta for failing to end the NEP for 2½ years after assuming office, for foisting the GST on a province that had previously had no sales tax, and for attempting to amend the Constitution in such a way that would have appeased many of Quebec’s concerns, while also giving Quebec a veto over future change requested by other provinces.
But the current Alberta government has nothing similar to gripe about. It’s true that after being reappointed federal Environment Minister last week, Toronto MP Peter Kent announced Ottawa would soon introduce environmental regulations that would reduce the oil sands’ carbon footprint. But it is unlikely these regulations will devastate Alberta’s economy. This is the same federal government that in its first term proposed ignoring the UN’s Kyoto accords in favour of more sensible quotas that tied growth in carbon dioxide emission to growth in the economy. Moreover, the same week as he let it be known that oil sands regulations are pending, Mr. Kent also announced that a cap-and-trade scheme to cut carbon emissions was “off the table,” a very pro-oil sands move.
Indeed, in the past five years, the Alberta government under Premier Stelmach has done more to discourage oil sands development than anything done or proposed by the Harper Tories.
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