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And to date, more than two years after Guangzhou, the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement remains unratified by the Harper government, something the University of Alberta’s Jiang cites as an irritant to China.

Former Ambassador Mulroney says the February 2012 visit was the high water mark of relations. While many nations struggle with how to deal with China, he said “it’s very acute in Canada.” Reflecting back on Guangzhou, he added, “One speech does not a strategy make.”

Meanwhile, there is a Plan C should Gateway be stalled. It involves shipping oil-sands production through a series of existing and new pipelines across Canada to the large Irving Oil Ltd. refinery on the Atlantic Coast for export, along with a proposal to twin an existing pipeline that runs from Alberta into the port of Vancouver. Along with oil-by-rail and increases in capacity to other U.S.-bound pipelines, the oil sands is feeling some temporary relief.

Still, eight years after a rookie prime minister first laid out his energy vision for Canada, the country remains more energy warehouse than energy superpower, said Wendy Dobson, a former senior finance department official and pipeline company director who runs the Institute for International Business at the University of Toronto. She and former Ambassador Mulroney both see a real risk of changes in the Chinese energy market occurring before Canada gets its ducks in a row on Gateway. Jiang adds the Chinese will not sit around waiting. “They are actively pursuing everything at the same time.”

As with Keystone, the stakes are high for Canada and for Harper’s energy superpower goal. Oliver, who has lived the issue more closely than anyone, considers the pipeline challenges “pivotal to our economic future.” Without a major new outlet for the oil sands, “which is unthinkable, the resources are stranded and the legacy’s lost. There will be negative, if not dire, economic consequences.”

–With assistance from Theophilos Argitis in Ottawa.