As an Albertan and a sympathizer of Alberta's oil patch, I am scared about President Barack Obama's plans for a carbon tax. Right now, literally 100% of Canadian oil exports go to the U.S. Why not build a pipe to the West coast to hedge our bets? Contrary to mythology, it's Japan, not China, that is the second largest importer of oil in the world after the U.S. And India and Korea are big importers, too -- and they buy from the nastiest places, like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Why not from us instead?
I'm not for trade sanctions against China, so I wouldn't be averse to selling oil to them, too. But I think we could treat our allies like India more favourably than we do our -- what's a nice way of putting it? -- strategic competitors like China.
Of course, the Americans are our best friends of all. But with Obama turning a lean and hungry look towards our oil patch, I think it's just good risk management to have other options.
Here's my Op-Ed to this effect in today's National Post (at left is how it looked on the page):
A pipeline to Asia
The Chinese government, through a corporate front called Sinopec, has announced plans to invest another $4.5-billion in Canada's oil sands. China's going to buy ConocoPhillips' 9% stake in the giant Syncrude project.
The Sinopec deal brings to $10-billion the Chinese investment in the oil sands in recent years. Is it a hostile takeover?
No, for several reasons.
First, 100% of Canada's oil exports go to the U.S. -- that's the only place the pipelines lead. China isn't buying oil sands companies for the oil. It's buying them as a place to put its money in long-term, strategic investments, as it backs away slowly from increasingly wobbly U.S. treasury bills. China's not buying our oil; it's buying the reliable flow of Canadian corporate profits and our stable economic outlook.
Is it a national security risk to Canada?
No, again. It is true that, according to CSIS, the Chinese government represents the largest espionage threat to Canada, stealing the equivalent of $1-billion a month from our country in industrial secrets. (That's more than our annual exports to China.)
But that espionage is done illegally by Chinese students, expats and other sympathizers, not through the legal ownership of share certificates. No doubt our high-tech energy secrets are being stolen and will continue to be stolen, but that is not happening because of a Wall Street deal. The central strategic value of the oil sands is not at risk.
And there is little room for corporate mischief, even if that were the Chinese strategy. For one thing, all of the Chinese ownership so far is fractional, with other shareholders involved in each of the companies. Canadian business law protects the fiduciary interests of those other shareholders. The Chinese, even if they had a majority stake in any company, couldn't operate in any manner other than to maximize profits -- which means operating normally and exporting oil to the U.S.
So a Chinese shutdown of the oil sands is not a legal possibility. Even if China were to buy, outright, a large number of oil sands companies, and in a moment of crisis took some concerted action against Canada's national interests, the companies could simply be expropriated. Even American customers are protected, through our free trade agreement that ensures the U.S. has market access to Canadian oil.
So there's no risk of China simply taking our oil, or stopping us from selling it to anyone else. But that raises the question: If countries like China can't buy our oil now, is it in our interest to be able to sell it to them?
The answer is yes.
It's an economic blessing living next to the world's greatest economy. And it was investors from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, not from Ontario or Quebec, who first took a chance on Alberta's oil patch. After nearly a century working together, the cross-border cultural and economic ties are strong. The fact that both president George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney were oilmen only made the relationship closer.
But President Barack Obama is a community organizer from Chicago, as culturally distant from the oil patch as possible. And Obama has said that, after health care reform, his carbon tax proposal (called "cap and trade") is his highest priority.
In 2004, oil sands production vaulted Canada ahead of the Saudis to become the largest source of U.S. oil imports, so he's talking about us. All of a sudden having the U.S. as our sole customer for oil exports is a lot less reassuring. Canada's Conservative government has admitted the obvious: We will have to follow the U.S. lead on a continent-wide energy policy, which means we might yet see Stephane Dion's disastrous Green Shift enacted.
Which brings us back to China -- and Japan and Korea, which also have oil sands stakes, and India, which has announced it's in the market to buy oil sands too.
Those four countries together import more oil than the U.S. does. So at what point does it make sense to build a pipeline from Fort McMurray to the West Coast, and offer our bounty to Asia, too?
Pipeline operator Enbridge thinks the time is now. They've proposed a 525,000 barrel per day pipeline from Bruderheim, just northeast of Edmonton, to Kitimat, on British Columbia's northern coast. The project, dubbed Northern Gateway, would be almost completely buried underground, minimizing its environmental impact.
Needless to say, it is being opposed by the usual environmental groups, a handful of aboriginal bands and Kitimat's NDP MP, Nathan Cullen. But the pipeline would create 4,000 construction jobs, and hundreds more on a permanent basis. Like the oil sands itself, its employment would disproportionately favour aboriginal bands -- not to mention Kitimat itself, reeling from the recent closure of a major pulp mill. And then there's the value of the oil: Even if prices stayed at the current $85 a barrel, the pipeline would ship $16-billion a year.
If the Northern Gateway receives regulatory approval, it wouldn't be operating until 2018 -- likely too late to save Canada's oil patch from any U.S. carbon taxes. But the mere prospect that the U.S. would have to compete for Canadian oil would be salutary in itself -- and it might make Congress think twice before designing taxation policies to apply to Canadian industry.
Few international relationships in history have been as close as that of Canada and the United States. At first glance, shipping oil to Asia might seem like an anti-American slight. But if opening up a small pipeline to Asia causes Washington to rethink its plans to foist another National Energy Policy on us, it's actually the best guarantor of a healthy Canada-U. S. relationship for decades to come.
- Ezra Levant is the author of Ethical Oil: The case for Canada's oil sands, to be published this summer by McClelland & Stewart.
The other day, the National Post's John Ivison wrote about the Canadian Human Rights Commission's appalling view, as expressed under oath by "hate speech" investigator Dean Steacy, that "freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value".
Seriously, Steacy said that -- look it up for yourself in the transcript of the hearing, here, at page 4793.
Ivison asked the CHRC to explain themselves, and they told him:
(a commission spokesperson said this quote has been taken out of context and that if the question had been about freedom of expression, one of the freedoms guaranteed in the Charter, the answer would have been different).
That's a lie, of course. Here's my letter to the editor in today's Post pointing out that lie:
CHRC 'bullies' don't believe in free speech
Re: Laws Can't Assure We'll Never Be Offended, John Ivison, April 3.
John Ivison is right to focus on the stunning testimony of the Canadian Human Rights Commission's "hate speech" investigator, Dean Steacy, who declared that "freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."
What's even more amazing is that when Mr. Ivison asked the CHRC about this shocking statement, the commission actually tried to defend it.
First the CHRC's spin doctors told Mr. Ivison that the quote was taken out of context. But it wasn't -- it was a one-sentence answer to a one-sentence question: "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints?"
Then the CHRC tried to argue that our Charter of Rights only protects "freedom of expression," so it's OK that its censors don't give any value to "freedom of speech" because that's "different." But that's just stupid: speech is a kind of expression, the most common kind.
Despite what the CHRC says, freedom of speech is guaranteed under Canadian law: the 1960 Bill of Rights brought in by John Diefenbaker lists "freedom of speech" right in section 1. And the phrase "freedom of speech" has been used in no less than 243 rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Canada's censorship laws are being enforced by bullies who don't give a damn about our freedoms and don't even know the law.
Ezra Levant, Calgary.
That's Kathy Shaidle's catch-phrase when a Jew takes it upon himself to single-handedly undo the Hebrew people's most positive stereotype, namely that we're smart.
But why don't you judge for yourself?
Two young students at Carleton University, one Jewish and one not, were attacked the other night by Muslims wielding a machete and shouting at them for being "Zionists".
So we don't have a "hate speech" moment here. We don't have a fake "right not to be offended" moment. We have an assault with a weapon. It's in the Criminal Code, not some politically correct speech code.
And what does Len Rudner, an Official Jew at the Canadian Jewish Congress, Bernie "Burny" Farber's mini-me, have to say about it?
“Maybe we should consider the impact that words can have in accelerating the argument to the point where people feel that this kind of behaviour is acceptable."
What?
So we have an actual crime with an actual weapon. And Rudner is calling for not the enforcement of the criminal code, but more censorship?
But look at the mealy-mouthed coward. He can't even say that. He says "maybe" "we" "should consider" "the impact words can have" in "accelerating the argument".
WTF?
Maybe?
We?
Should consider?
We didn't do anything. Ten thugs did.
Words didn't have an impact. A machete did -- or almost did.
Accelerating the argument? A machete isn't an argument. It isn't speech, even offensive or "hateful" speech. It is a tool of violence.
And Rudner thinks that -- what? more human rights commissions prosecuting more Zionists like Mark Steyn and me? -- would make these thugs "feel" their behaviour was not "acceptable"?
We already have a Criminal Code that tells them this behaviour is not acceptable.
I'm a Jew, and I love being Jewish. But I remember listening to Rudner on CHQR radio in Calgary once, when he was declaring -- on behalf of all Jews -- that Canada's freedom of speech needs to be infringed.
It was the most condescending lecture I have ever heard -- on southern Alberta's biggest radio station.
And -- if you've ever heard Rudner speak -- you know it was delivered with his trademark Elmer Fudd lisp.
I have nothing against people with a speech impediment. Hell, Moses himself had one.
But when you are sending out a spokesman, fraudulently in the name of all Canadian Jews, to tell the massive listenership of CHQR that "the Jews" are against free speech, and "the Jews" are for censorship, why the hell would you choose the most annoying, irritating, grating spokesman around?
Maybe we could call down to central casting and get Fyvush Finkel to do the censorship circuit, perhaps while conspicuously counting some money. That ought to endear the Jews to the general public.
I swear, if I were not a Jew myself, Rudner's appearance on the radio that day could have turned me into an anti-Semite.
I can only imagine how many people listened to him and blamed the whole of the Jews for that one moron's comments.
And now he's at it again.
It's Rudner's human right to be stupid, and I'm all for his freedom of speech through which he advertises his stupidity.
But he does so falsely in my name, and in the name of the rest of our tribe.
Gentle reader, just so you know: Len Rudner and the other buffoons at the Canadian Jewish Congress don't speak for me.
They don't speak for any of the Jews I know.
They don't speak for the Jewish interest.
And they certainly don't speak for the Canadian interest.
I can't even detect what possible interest they're serving, by making utterances such as Rudner's today.
Rudner's boss, Burny, once mused that human rights commissions are the "dumping ground" for failed political hacks.
It's the one thing I can think of where I have ever agreed with Burny.
Well, if the HRCs are a dumping ground for politicians who can't hack it, the CJC is surely a dumping ground for Jewish men like Rudner and Farber who couldn't cut it as doctors or lawyers or accountants or start a business.
They're a shanda for the goyim.
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