Tom Mulcair is just the latest resident of Stornoway to engage in a rite of passage that leads south.

But this time an opposition leader lands in Washington to find the elephant in the room is too massive to dance around.

The fate of the Keystone XL pipeline is perhaps the most contentious bilateral issue in a decade, since Jean Chrétien told George W. Bush what he could do with his “coalition of the willing” in Iraq.

Mulcair is taking the same trip that opposition leaders from Brian Mulroney to Preston Manning, Chrétien to Stephen Harper have taken, and although the list of meetings usually includes friendly political leaders, business leaders and foreign affairs specialists, the target audience is back home.

The goal is to introduce yourself to potential partners who don’t know you, attempt to turn around conceptions your government opponents have peddled and assure them that things will get better once the good guys are in office.

But mainly, you are looking for pictures that might make you look like a prime minister-in-waiting back home.

It rarely makes any difference come voting day, but rarely has the opposition leader’s ritual trip to Washington been accompanied by such street theatre back home in Ottawa.

If Mulcair is trying to style himself as that prime minister-in-waiting, he could hardly moonwalk around Keystone.

He adopted a stance he hoped would look statesmanlike, deciding on a “I won’t say, but you can ask me’’ Keystone position, stressing it is a uniquely American decision. No guns blazing, no lecturing.

But, when asked, he made it clear that he thought Keystone was exporting Canadian jobs, he pushed for a west-east pipeline that would preserve our domestic energy security and questioned Ottawa’s claims of environmental stewardship.

He told Postmedia News the Harper government was “playing people for fools,’’ in making those claims, saying that the charm offensive is disingenuous because Americans can read and know the Harper government has pulled out of the Kyoto accord and will not meet its Copenhagen targets on greenhouse gas emissions.

In a speech Wednesday to the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars, Mulcair is expected to address climate change and environmental sustainability, but there is only a single, passing reference to Keystone.

We know where Alison Redford and Brad Wall stand.

There is also no doubt of the views of Joe Oliver, Ed Fast, John Baird and Vic Toews.

The Alberta and Saskatchewan premiers and the quartet of Harper cabinet ministers have been invading the U.S. capital, Chicago, New York and Houston in recent days telling anyone who will listen how “green” Canada really is and how badly final approval of Keystone from the White House is needed in this country.

Natural Resources Minister Oliver, who met with reporters in Ottawa, claimed Mulcair had “abdicated any leadership’’ for not standing up for Canadian jobs while in Washington.

But Mulcair was operating in an environment where the words “carbon tax” are being bandied about, however tentatively, and he arrived the day after The New York Times published an editorial opposing Keystone.

The Conservatives, of course, would like the entire country to come together behind their view of resource extraction, but the nice thing about democracy is it accommodates dissonant voices.

Keystone faces credible and determined opposition in both countries.

There is a longstanding protocol in the U.S. that politicians do not criticize the government while abroad, but if that ever was the convention in Canada, it flew out the window after Harper took aim at successive Liberal leaders while representing this country abroad during his minority years.

Mulcair owes Canadians consistency. Without that, he cannot ask them to make him prime minister.

It is a delicate dance, however, to say, on the one hand, it is up to Americans to decide whether Keystone proceeds and on the other hand, express your disapproval of the project.

He need not worry how his comments will play out in Washington. The key will be the Canadian reaction.

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If U.S. President Barack Obama eventually kills the Keystone extension in a decision expected this summer, expect the Conservatives to blame Mulcair for “talking down” Canada while abroad, just as they tried to blame then-opposition leader Michael Ignatieff’s comments for costing them a seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2010.

The UN blame-game generally drew laughter. Blaming an opposition leader who carried a consistent message south of the border for a Keystone failure should similarly be met with guffaws.

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

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