VANCOUVER

The fate of the $5.5 billion Northern Gateway pipeline could also define the political futures of three strong Canadian western women.

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, running behind the NDP and facing a serious threat from a resurgent Conservative party on the West Coast, has chosen to skate, rather than staking out a position on a pipeline which is opposed by environmentalists and First Nations in her province.

Opposition to tanker traffic off the northern coast is overwhelming and northern B.C. communities have passed resolutions formally opposing the project.

She faces pressure from neighbouring Alberta and her allies in the Stephen Harper government to get on board.

Should she need any reminder of the looming showdown, the opposite poles were on display in Ottawa Tuesday.

Conservatives on a parliamentary committee recommended streamlining environmental assessment hearings after the government railed against “radical” pipeline opponents slowing the National Energy Board hearings on Northern Gateway.

“Groups should not be allowed to filibuster economic growth,” said Calgary MP Michelle Rempel, the lead Conservative on the committee.

At the same time, an anti-pipeline delegation journeyed from B.C. to Ottawa to warn they would turn to the courts to block Enbridge if the company gets the green light from the NEB.

So Clark waits, hiding behind NEB skirts, drawing comparisons to U.S. President Barack Obama who punted the Keystone XL pipeline decision until after the November U.S. election.

The NEB decision will come after Clark and her Liberals face B.C. voters in May, 2013.

First, pipeline politics will play out in Alberta, where Premier Alison Redford strides in lockstep with Stephen Harper, both casting the Northern Gateway as a national priority for reaching the coveted Asian market.

She has pushed Clark to get off the fence and create a common western front.

But the woman challenging Redford in Alberta this spring, Wildrose Alliance Party leader Danielle Smith, has tossed out the most counter-intuitive proposal.

She sees exports blocked southbound and westbound and calls for the pipeline to head east.

She didn’t invent this idea — much of that credit must go to former New Brunswick premier and Canadian ambassador to Washington Frank McKenna, who raised it following Obama’s Keystone deferral.

But Smith has the opportunity to test-drive the proposal with Alberta voters this spring.

McKenna is proposing using existing pipelines, reversing them, then laying larger pipes in the same right-of-way.

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Refineries in Sarnia, Montreal, Quebec City, Come by Chance, Nfld., and Saint John, N.B. can be used.

A pipeline would have to be built from Montreal to Saint John.

“A pipeline to Saint John would be longer term but clearly doable,” McKenna says. “The terrain is easier, aboriginal treaty issues are largely settled, larger tankers already come to Saint John and the refinery is already equipped to handle heavy oil.”

Eastern access is being taken seriously by the oil industry, shippers and refiners, he says.

Smith channels many in the Harper government when she talks about a flawed environmental review process she says has gone “off the rails.”

“How did it end up that Enbridge — a private sector pipeline company — is on the front lines of a review process that will ultimately involve aboriginal land claims, the legitimacy of oil sands development, the use of gasoline as a transportation fuel, the safety of pipelines and tankers to transport oil, and the future of mankind?” she says.

With resistance to pipelines in the south and to the west, the “all-Canadian solution,” moving the flow east, is looking increasingly attractive, Smith says.

Of course, there are flaws with this proposal.

It does not dovetail with Harper’s Asian urgency and would almost certainly run into more environmental and First Nations protests. But from the West Coast perspective, it is difficult to envision the Northern Gateway ever being built.

Clark can dance and Redford can bull ahead.

Smith is anything but an environmental progressive, but she may be a realist and we will shortly know if her eastward gaze captures the imagination of Alberta voters.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca

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