Stephen Harper and the Great Pipeline Gambit

Well it's the talk of the town. The pundits are perplexed. Shock and confusion reigns.

Everybody is trying to figure out why Stephen Harper is disowning his tarry baby.

After working so hard to conceive it.

And in some parts of the country paranoia runs rampant. 

I don’t have any inside information, but maybe, just maybe, Harper is prepared to write off a number of Conservative seats in B.C. in order to gain support across the rest of the country.

Just about every opinion poll taken these days in Canada puts jobs and economic security right at the top of issues people are concerned about. And, close reading of the polls showing opposition to the pipeline also reveal a significant portion of the people who are opposed are open to changing their minds.

The pipeline opponents are helping set up the wedge issue: Are you for jobs and economy? On one side will be Harper and the Conservatives, and on the other will be the Liberals, NDP and the Greens. Harper can win this one with under 40% of the popular vote when the other three parties are fighting over the remaining 60%.

And who can blame people for feeling that way eh? When paranoia in Harperland is just a higher state of consciousness. 

Because he is crazy desperate, and he is capable of pitting the rest of the country against BC, even if that threatens the national unity of the country, 

And he will do ANYTHING to satisfy his raging bitumen fever, even if it threatens the future of the planet. 



What Mr. Harper will do is promote by any and all means bitumen oil, and the pipelines to get it to markets, even though the growth in bitumen production is the driving reason why the Harper government (and therefore Canada) will fall miserably short of meeting its GHG-reduction targets.

But if he is planning to use the pipeline as a wedge issue, and is trying to distance himself from it to make it look like an economic decision, not a political one, it probably won't work. 

In some respects, Northern Gateway is a classic wedge issue, as it very neatly divides public opinion into two camps: for and against. The wedge issue strategy would assume that opposition to the project would split between the NDP and Liberals, while pipeline supporters would rally to the Conservative Party of Canada. But there’s danger in that approach for the Tories. The assumption is that voters who support pipeline projects generally support Northern Gateway; similarly, those who are against Northern Gateway are against pipelines in general.

That simplistic view ignores some fundamental differences between this project and other pipeline projects, like TransCanada’s Keystone XL and Energy East or Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain.

Because even some of the dumbest and greediest Canadians can instinctively understand that wrecking the pristine environment of BC, to ship oil to China and make Alberta richer, probably isn't a good idea.

He'll never fool Canadians into thinking that the project isn't his tarry baby... 



Trying to pretend it isn't, will only make him look like he's trying to hide something, and make most Canadians distrust him even more than they already do. If that's possible. 

And if any trouble breaks out with the First Nations, Canadians will blame him, and his bitumen mania.

Because the truth is Harper is now so unpopular he can't count on getting support for ANYTHING he does. His credit is exhausted. Most people are sick and tired of him. And the writing is on the wall.

Or on this sign in someone's back yard in the Niagara region of Ontario...



Which speaks to the anger of so many Canadians, who can't wait for the day when they can defeat him.

He's out of time. His great pipeline gambit, if it is one, will not work. 

Only a miracle, or a bad mistake from his opponents can save him now.

And his day is almost over...

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