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The country’s first pipeline crisis, as schoolchildren once learned, was in 1956. Trans-Canada Pipelines (TCPL) wanted to build an east-to-west pipeline to get what was then higher-priced Alberta natural gas to Ontario and Quebec markets. C.D. Howe, the federal minister of trade and commerce, was more than fully on board. In fact, he had helped put the TCPL consortium together.

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In early May of 1956, in that generation’s starkest instance of Liberal arrogance, the government imposed closure in the House of Commons so as to get financing set and construction started that very summer. The opposition parties — the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and Progressive Conservatives — argued that closure, which was rarely used, was an affront to the rule of law, or at least the rule of Parliament. The voters seemed to agree, turfing the Liberals in 1957’s election, giving John Diefenbaker a minority government, and then sweeping him to a majority in 1958, the year the pipeline was completed, with the biggest seat count in Canadian history to that time.

The contrasts with today’s pipeline crisis are manifest and many. The Liberals are still arrogant, of course, but they’re far from gung-ho for the pipeline. Quite the opposite: most Liberals probably wish the issue would just go away. The Conservatives (no longer Progressive) are fully behind the pipeline and want approvals streamlined so it could be built yesterday. This time round, delay, not decisive action, is the affront to the rule of law.