"Reason before passion." Despite considering the 15th Prime Minister of Canada a god at the time, Stephen Harper didn't seem guided by Pierre Trudeau's personal motto when he dropped his studies after one year at the University of Toronto. His father certainly wasn't impressed - the late Joseph Harper wanted his son to be an accountant. Unlike his father, young Harper wouldn't take care of Imperial Oil's numbers; he headed west, and in Edmonton, he was employed by that same company as a clerk instead.
When he arrived, he was Liberal to the core, even preferred John Lennon to Paul McCartney, just like Trudeau, his god. So what happened then? Well, it's not that his musical taste suddenly changed; it was Trudeau's National Energy Program (NEP) that Harper couldn't stomach. The Liberal government's NEP was designed to promote Canada's oil self-sufficiency. It was supposed to favour Canadian ownership of the energy industry, lower prices and increase government revenues, even push the door wide open to alternative energy sources. What do you say? Not bad, eh?
His hero Trudeau was often accused of arrogance, and Harper was no less - he exuded an air of being pretty smart himself. According to him, the NEP lacked teeth; a market-driven strategy is what Trudeau had missed. Hence, the fundamental basis of our energy policy today is market-inclined, so it's not a wonder to find that although Canada has the world's second biggest oil patch, a good chunk of our country depends on oil imported from elsewhere.
Harper is known for his difficulty in changing paths once he's set a course, and to this day he insists this strategy has been serving us well since we made the switch. But that was 30 years ago, and as University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan suggests, when the world is flipping, that's not good enough - it's time to move on. Can our 22nd Prime Minister see it though?
I'd like to remind our PM what he wrote in his essay "Rediscovering the Right Agenda" for the Citizens' Centre 2003 Report: "The real agenda (has) shifted from economic issues to social values, so conservatives must do the same." But he immediately forgot about this after he was elected in 2006, and when CBC News correspondent Peter Mansbridge asked him if the Northern Gateway pipeline is a fait accompli, Harper shamelessly offered that he "would put it a little differently." And what if the Joint Review Panel concludes that the proposed pipeline route is not so good? Will he pay attention? "Well," he said, "we'll take a look at the recommendation." So the thousands of you waiting to speak at the public hearings in the coming months should be grateful - he'll TAKE A LOOK at the recommendation!
Surely this doesn't call for so much anger; his government may be right: You're just a bunch of radicals trying to stall the process with funding from foreign sources. But hold on a sec, isn't this a double standard? Didn't we spend our money in the U.S. lobbying on behalf of the Keystone pipeline? It's not even a question of wanting to turn the whole of Canada into a national park, or protecting the B.C. coast from Enbridge's disastrous spill record. As renowned economist Robyn Allan says, "shouldn't we figure out if there's an economic case for the pipeline first?" Ha! Harper may have thought himself the most intelligent kid in the class, but there was a smarter cookie in the school just two streets up.
Allan's report "An Economic Assessment of the Northern Gateway" describes the pipeline as posing "a serious threat to economic growth and long-term development." Questioning Harper's and Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver's financial competence, the report warns us that Northern Gateway will have a negative impact on the Canadian economy by reducing output, labour income, government revenues and employment.
Too bad that by the time Allan's report saw the light, Harper was already on his special mission Canada-China trade-procuring flight, ready to sell the concept and get the oil flowing. And to appease our radical anger, he's bringing back a couple of pandas! Well, cute as they are, Mr. Harper, I'd leave them where they belong - you may want to pay a visit to the caribou in the Alberta boreal forest and see what you can do for them.
