Article content continued

If only it were that simple. The federal government has delayed its decision on whether to approve construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline it bought to ensure its construction, claiming additional consultations are needed — that’s in addition to the additional consultations in which it has been engaged until now, after the original additional consultations were ruled inadequate. Indeed, the government says there is no guarantee it will make a decision until after the federal election.

The suspicion is that the feds are dragging their heels in response to the Alberta election, a suspicion fed by the timing of the federal announcement — right after the Alberta election. The provincial Conservatives, after all, had not only promised to cancel the provincial carbon tax, which the NDP government had imposed in order to help assure Trans Mountain’s progress but had frozen at $30 in response to Trans Mountain’s failure to progress, but had also pledged to scrap the 100 megatonne cap on emissions from the province’s oilsands. Surely, then, the federal Liberals have no choice but to retaliate?

If only it were that simple. The 100 MT cap may have been provincial policy under the NDP, but the regulations to give it effect were never implemented. Even if they had, emissions are currently so far below the cap it is estimated it would not begin to bite for at least another 12 years — maybe not even then.

Photo by Ian Kucerak/Postmedia

How can the Conservatives promise to lift a cap that doesn’t exist? Simple, Kenney now says: they didn’t. The promise appears nowhere in the party platform: “We have not committed to amending the legislation.” Indeed, he doesn’t have to — he just has to leave the regulations undrafted.