Surprising nobody, CBC pundit Rex Murphy has joined Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall in chiding Alberta Premier Rachael Notley for (allegedly) capitulating to demands that the oilsands industry improve its weak environmental performance in order to secure approval for pipelines to ship bitumen to Canadian and foreign markets.

“Oil and gas is a good thing. Let’s be proud of it,” Premier Wall told reporters in advance of the recent premiers’ conference, asserting that western energy creates jobs, funds equalization payments for have-not provinces and can replace foreign oil supplies. (Saskatchewan currently produces conventional oil, but Premier Wall also wants to develop an oilsands industry in his province.)

Murphy, who once told an approving audience of energy industry officials to “stop apologizing for what you’re doing,” added “the country’s economy is inextricably bound up with energy. Yet those provinces who supply it, and offer jobs and security to the rest of us, are the only ones continually on the dock.”

Murphy has given the same advice to the beleaguered East Coast sealing industry, which he sees as being similarly victimized by unscrupulous environmental activists. “We should not stop the seal hunt,” he said, “even if we were only to take a token dozen per year. We should not stop something we have been doing because outsiders — those who have no connection to Newfoundland, or to the seal hunt, and who have been telling wildly overheated fables about it for decades — tell us to stop it. To hell with them.”

It’s advice like that which has brought the sealing industry to its knees — and threatens to overturn efforts to build pipeline conduits for landlocked energy supplies.

The comparison between the oilsands and sealing controversies (and other environmental/resource disputes) is not farfetched. Organized activist groups — often, but not always, in collaboration with local interests and affected indigenous communities — oppose existing government and industry policies, using graphic images to attract public attention. Because it’s difficult to organize protest campaigns around big issues, the groups look for ways to exploit the targets’ vulnerabilities, especially market dependencies, for which they can more easily mobilize public support. This also gives supporters something they can do to aid the cause.

Rex Murphy’s ‘stand firm’ advice to governments and the energy industry is of dubious value, just as it was in the case of the seal hunt. Premier Notley is on the right track. Rex Murphy’s ‘stand firm’ advice to governments and the energy industry is of dubious value, just as it was in the case of the seal hunt. Premier Notley is on the right track.

The European export market for seal products and the need for pipelines to bring oilsands crude to prospective buyers both provide compelling templates. The groups often commission scientific studies and exploit weaknesses in opponents’ cases to enhance their own campaigns’ credibility.

The seal hunt controversy saw animal welfare groups use shocking images of sealers bludgeoning ‘baby’ seals to galvanize public opposition in Europe, where most seal products were sold. They also drew on contrary scientific studies and used the Canadian government’s own documents to challenge its defence of the hunt. The pressures culminated in a decision by the European Union to ban the import of seal pup products and a boycott of Canadian fish sales in the lucrative British market, which forced Ottawa to end the seal pup hunt and to rebuild the industry based on older seals.

But Ottawa’s unwise decision to substantially increase the size of the hunt and careless comments about a leading anti-sealing group made by the premier of Newfoundland revived the protests. This led to a complete EU ban on seal products in 2009 — and the near-collapse of the industry.

Environmental groups opposed to oilsands expansion have taken the same approach, focusing their pressures on proposed pipelines, the preferred method of transporting energy to markets. The groups work with concerned local communities and native groups along projected routes for the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would bring heavy crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners; the Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipelines that would move bitumen to British Columbia ports for shipment to Asian markets; and the Energy East pipeline that would send oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan to eastern Canadian refineries and ports.

Government and industry officials have tried to deflect their opponents’ attacks with a competing narrative centering on North American energy security, jobs and environmental stewardship. But the groups have been quick to contest the officials’ claims. They point out that the energy security argument has become less compelling now that the United States is approaching energy self-sufficiency — and that plunging oil prices, which limit investments in oilsands development, favour low-cost foreign producers over high-cost oilsands energy firms.

They also dispute defenders’ economic contentions, citing studies that show that 75 per cent of all the jobs created by oilsands expansion have been in Alberta and that more than 90 per cent of the increase in GDP from the growth of the industry has remained in the province.

The groups’ case on the environment has been aided by the absence of federal oil and gas regulations and Alberta’s admission that existing efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions are not getting the job done. Missteps by opponents, too, have helped. A report by the Pembina Institute used rival and industry documents to challenge 23 government and industry claims about the oilsands environmental record on issues ranging from carbon emissions and the safety of tailings ponds to land reclamation.

These pressures have had a telling effect. The Keystone and Northern Gateway projects are in serious trouble. Approval of the Kinder Morgan and Energy East pipelines is not assured.

Rex Murphy’s “stand firm” advice to governments and the energy industry is of dubious value, just as it was in the case of the seal hunt. Premier Notley is on the right track. She has made an important move in committing to double Alberta’s $15 per ton carbon tax on large emitters. The National Energy Strategy, approved by Canada’s premiers is also useful, although it is vague on protection of the environment. But more needs to be done to ensure the pipelines will be approved.

Donald Barry is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary. He is the author of Icy Battleground: Canada, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Seal Hunt, published by Breakwater Books.

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