This week a tragedy happened. It was not about Teck. It was about the future of Alberta and Saskatchewan within Canada
By Diane Francis, NATIONAL POST
Signage at the Teck Resources Ltd. booth, seen on Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s annual convention and trade show in Toronto.
Nature abhors a vacuum and so does free enterprise and democracies. And Canada is about to show why.
This week, Canada’s massive megaproject, Teck Resources’ giant oil sands mine in Alberta, was obliterated — the biggest casualty of the #ShutDownCanada movement that’s been building and hurting the economy and country’s reputation.
The significance is not so much about a single project. It is the beginning of Canada’s irreversible economic decline caused by the anti-enterprise policies of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s regime.
This week Canada’s living standards peaked. The absence of smart political leadership, or an understanding as to how the country prospers, has atomized the national interest into thousands of vested, warring interests.
Ironically, Teck pulled the plug on the project late on a Sunday night just hours after getting approvals from 14 First Nations communities and after spending nine years’ and $1.1 billion in development preparation. Why now?
The deal was not scrapped due to concern about emissions because Teck is deeply in the emissions business as a huge coal and metals and oil sands producer. The deal was not nixed because of concern about low oil prices because long-term price projections have not changed dramatically. The deal was not killed because of aboriginal issues, because affected First Nations had signed off. And it was not abruptly ended due to concerns that Trudeau and his cabinet would reject the project this week.
Teck pulled the plug because Canada is now an untenable political risk. It no longer matters who does or doesn’t approve resource and infrastructure projects. They simply cannot be finished.
Canada, in other words, is not worth the risk. And that means living standards will fall, capital and jobs will continue to leave, and the country’s million-strong and restive Indigenous people, among other Canadians, face diminishing opportunities.
Put another way, even if Ottawa approved the project, Teck had no political cover. For the past five years, Trudeau and British Columbia’s NDP-Green regime have piled on obstructions, permitted endless court challenges, allowed illegal railway or road barricades, acceded to NGO and Indigenous misbehavior, and frightened away billions of dollars’ worth of investment.
Even Teck, a proud Canadian company, gets it, and has joined the ranks of foreign giants who have walked away from Canada, or delayed plans indefinitely. This is the tipping point. Teck did not spend nine years developing a project only to walk away at the last minute. But since the re-election of the Liberals, the idiocy of the NDP and Greens federally and provincially, and an absentee prime minister unable to staunch protests, there was no other choice.
No one is privy to Teck’s board minutes, but proceeding with its oil sands project — even if given the nod by the Liberals — would have opened up the company and its shareholders to permanent harassment, legal challenges, and attacks on its other mining operations, infrastructure, and reputation.
This is the beginning of the end of the resource base that underpins living standards, thanks to those who slavishly follow a climate change agreement so flawed that the world’s biggest polluters are not required to curb emission and that doesn’t credit Canada with the fact it has one of the world’s highest rates of trees per capita.
When the history of this period is written the Liberals, NDP, and Greens, plus United Nations zealots and non-transparent NGOs, will be the villains. Also to blame will be the political culture dominated by people who haven’t a clue as to what provides jobs or pays the nation’s bills.
This week a tragedy happened. It was not about Teck. It was about the future of Alberta and Saskatchewan within Canada. And it was about how the vacuum at the top represents an existential threat to all Canadians.
@ Michael S:
You talk about your “special category years” . The eldest in my family, my dear sister was 100 last Nov. I had 2 grand-uncles of 105 and 103, another of 93, my grand-mother 92….and so on…..all on my dear father’s side. The great grand-uncles were already advanced in age when they came to Ireland. Nobody knew how old my grand-mother really was because as a religious Jewish lady, she always wore a sheital, a wig, a lustrous brown colour. And…because she was several years older than my grandfather, she always subtracted a goodly number of year from her age. To me she always seemed old, exactly the same age…never changed over the years. At that time I didn’t know she wore a wig, I just thought her hair looked a bit odd as an old woman.
But she confided in my dear mother….so we knew. Family histories can be interesting sometimes. They all came from Latvia which was Russia then and grew up hardy. Had to be, to survive.. Their forebears were living in what the Russians called the Pale of Settlement, which, when they took over the Baltic States was extended into them….. Their actual ages were only estimated by the immigration officials as they had no English birth dates.Also they spoke only Yiddish.
It would be something like “Born on Erev Rosh HaShana, exactly 18 months and 2 days years after his next older brother”. That’s exactly how I discovered my dear late father’s actual age. By accident we discovered the English date of his older brother’s barmitzvah. His insurance company had him down as 5 years younger than he really was, and he always looked younger as well…..
You both are mere kids……. But, of course, I always forget that Americans have funny ideas…different to we normal people…..
@ ngottlieb:
Since Greta came on the scene the vertebrae seem to have become a little loose…..He doesn’t really mean it. It’s just Adam being “good”. He’ll get over it…in time. But you make a very apt point. I’m still laughing about it….
Glad to see another humourist on the scene. I was feeling a bit lonely.
@ adamdalgliesh:
environmentalist? what species is that? not remember vertebrate with this name…
@ adamdalgliesh:
Adam… have you no pity….??
Maybe if they’d read a few Jules Verne books they’d have been inspired to do this……..I take it that you don’t want any energy to come from oil, although it will put hundreds of thousands on the bread line, ….How about shivering all through the winters dressed with 3 pairs of pants, stockings, with huge fur lined boots (maybe you’re also against fur),…as well as going to bed wearing two overcoats–….
It was already a huge corporation before your father was born.. Think of the enormous economic damage the loss of a $20 billion investment will cause the people, plus the spin-offs all the way down the line to the consumer, and the revenue agency….thus the country. I forgot to mention the shareholders…. I could even bring Thunberg in here somewhere, from wherever she’s been hiding out lately….
Adam….Have you no PITY……..????
I didn’t know you were a tree–hugger.
Trudeau must be trying to make up for voting against Israel at the UN. He just told the ICC that the Israel/Palestine issue was not within their jurisdiction. He’ll never win me back even if he moves the Canadian Embassy to Jerusalem.
As an environmentalist, I am unenthusiastic about tar sands. I wish this company had worked on developing geothermal power instead.
@ Edgar G.:
Nah, it will be the “Islamic State of Canada”, an ally of Germanistan and the République Islamique de France, the two leading members of the EIU, the European Islamic Union.
@ Edgar G.:
Hi, Edgar.
I never won a car either, nor did we ever win the Readers Digest Sweepstakes. God has richly blessed us over the years, though. In fact, it’s a real treasure to have survived to our “special category risk” years.
By your response, I take it you don’t think Canada wants California. How about we give you just San Francisco (beautiful harbor, …I’m thinking… nice bridge, in some need of repair…) for Saskatewan and Alberta. That would really be a win-win deal. OK — we’ll throw in Silicon Valley too, but only if they want it. We’ll take southern Manitoba in exchange, but let them keep the mosquitos.
@ Michael S:
“Let’s Make A Deal”…….”A NEW CAR”…….!!
Do you remember that Show? In my stupid days, I watched it sometimes. But I quicky got over it..I never won a car.
@ Michael S:
“Let’s Make A Deal”…….”A NEW CAR”…….!!
@ Edgar G.:
We’re working on “Greater Idaho”, with seaports at Coos Bay and Eureka. Once we have that, we can trade you most of California, Washington and the rump of Oregon for Alberta, Saskatewan, Manitoba and SW Ontario. Maybe we can retain Vancouver Island, Bremerton and San Diego for navy bases.
One caqn always dream.
The next thing we’ll be hearing about Canada will be the formation of a new country, called;
“The Republic of Western Canada”,( formerly Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia)………….
Prognostication is very difficult, especially about the future, as Yogi Berra used to say.
All because of a wannabe Muslim Prime Minister who was the first Canadian leader to vote AGAINST Israel at the UN.