The Alberta NDP government desperately wants a pipeline expansion to the West Coast to proceed as fast as possible.

The NDP government in B.C. desperately wants to stop it

Which has left Justin Trudeau stuck in the line of fire. What he decides to do about that could determine the fate of one government or the other.

Both NDP governments have tenuous tenures: Rachel Notley’s government is low in the polls and faces an election in the next year to 18 months; in B.C., John Horgan’s NDP won only a minority in the recent election there and is propped up by three Green MLAs.

No question, both governments could be toppled if they don’t convince voters that they know how to grapple with issues that matter most to them.

So it wasn’t exactly surprising when B.C.’s environment minister announced last week that B.C. wants to restrict the amount of Alberta tarsands oil coming into the province via pipelines or rail cars. More studies are needed, he said, to determine if a spill of the sticky bitumen from ocean tankers headed for Asia can be thoroughly cleaned up from B.C.’s beaches and waterways. After that there will be public consultations on the matter.

It’s a stalling tactic that is very much in line with the way certain municipalities in B.C., such as Burnaby, have delayed issuing permits for TransMountain pipeline installations in their jurisdictions. Given that the National Energy Board (NEB) and the federal cabinet have already given the green light to the $7.4 billion TransMountain project, local resistance is seen by many as the only way to stop the project.

But so far they haven’t been successful. The NEB ruled in TransMountain’s favour when it asked for a ruling on the delays. And the B.C. courts upheld that ruling.

Horgan’s proposal will cause further delay. Will it be enough to cause the pipeline giant, Kinder Morgan, to throw in the towel? Will investors demand the company stop throwing money at a lost cause? That seems to be the goal of the stalling strategy.

Notley pretty much hit the roof when she heard about the latest move by B.C. to stop the pipeline. For her the pipeline means more money in the provincial treasury, jobs for people who work in the energy industry (still Alberta’s most important employer), and general investor confidence in the province’s economy.

She called B.C.’s move “unconstitutional” because it would interfere with interprovincial trade. She threatened to go to court, pushed Trudeau to do more to help her cause, and then said Alberta was no longer interested in buying electricity from B.C.

But is Horgan’s stalling tactic really unconstitutional?

“Talk is not unconstitutional,” said Nigel Bankes, an expert in natural resource law at the University of Calgary, during an interview. “So both the Alberta government and the federal government have few options at this point.”

But if B.C.’s latest move looks as though it will cause prolonged delay, TransMountain would likely seek a ruling from the NEB on the matter. It could claim that B.C.’s actions are creating too much uncertainty for the company and it needs to know sooner rather than later whether it can proceed, Bankes added.

After all, why build a pipeline if it won’t be allowed to ship the product it was designed for?

At that point does the Trudeau government side with TransMountain and intervene on its behalf? Since the federal government approved the project it can hardly remain neutral.

Of course, this all has to do with the law.

Horgan, Notley and Trudeau are more concerned with the politics of the situation.

Horgan could lose control of government at a moment’s notice if the Greens don’t believe he is green enough.

Notley has to contend with Jason Kenney, an old-style Alberta conservative who wants nothing more than to lead a fight against the federal government and any other province that gets in Alberta’s way.

He is now the leader of the opposition and the greatest threat to another NDP election victory.

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Trudeau has to decide if and how he is going to assert federal authority, even though that could upset a significant number of Liberal supporters in B.C. or Alberta.

Pipeline politics is about to get even more dramatic.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net

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