John Ivison, Ottawa-based political columnist for the National Post, joins our Stewart Muir on Power Struggle and explores federal election issues. Ivison says natural-resource development now is a national issue for Canada, and so is US President Donald Trump.
THE TRUMP IMPACT
The US is now “an adversary” under Donald Trump with a presidential wish-list that includes annexing Canada, taking over Greenland, and taking back control of the Panama Canal.
Ivison sees Trump’s thinking going like this: ‘If I could annex Canada, incorporate Canada into the United States, then that’s my Mount Rushmore moment. You know they’ll put statues up to me.’
And as a result of Canada’s federal election campaign, we see almost an unprecedented rise in the Liberal Party’s fortunes.
“The main driver of that is that the polls suggest that people think (Mark) Carney would be better at handling Trump than Pierre Poilievre.”
Regardless, now Canada needs to diversify its trade base. ‘” We can never decouple from the US, but… clearly we can reduce our dependency and that’s what I think the Holy Grail is for both parties right now.”
NATURAL RESOURCE ISSUES
Both major party leaders have said Canada has to build more resource projects, and more quickly.
“You’ve got to live up to your election promise: build more, quicker.”
For example, building the TMX Northern Leg, a spur of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline to an export terminal in Kitimat.
“You get indigenous support, and away we go. That could be done. I spoke to Ian Anderson, who was TMX’s former chief executive. He said it could be done in two or three years. . . . Let’s just do it. And you know, of course, you have to be mindful of the environment, but we’re in a crisis.”
OIL/GAS EMISSIONS CAP
While Carney’s new environment minister says Ottawa’s planned emissions cap is still alive, “Carney could ditch that policy as long as he continues the federal backstop on the large emitter program in the provinces, which Pierre Poilievre this week said he was going to remove.”
And Ivison asks why, if that backstop stays and is made to work properly, would we also need a cap-and-trade system for an oil-and-gas emissions cap?
ABOUT MARK CARNEY
Ivison says Carney obviously has environmental convictions, “but I don’t think he’s a zealot.”
Ivison notes that Carney has, in the past, talked of leaving oil in the ground, but he’s also talking about a pipeline to Churchill and mineral exports shipped from Nunavut.
“I don’t think he’s coming in with the idea that he wants to close it all down, and why would he? . . . He has to create new alliances, find new customers and find a new way of doing things that is much quicker and much more effective than the last nine years.”
ABOUT PIERRE POILIEVRE
Ivison sees the Conservative leader as not a populist in the same way that Trump is, but “fairly or unfairly, people think he would be more accommodating to Trump.”
So, says Ivison: “It’s Poilievre’s job now to try and raise Carney’s negatives and raise questions about things like energy.”
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