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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/411627
42 BCBusiness December 2014 support could collapse if the B.C. government is seen to support oil pipelines. "You do one at the cost of the other," says one Clark government insider. And yet, there is a potential story- line where the B.C. government could, in the final chapter, come around to support the expansion of Alberta bitu- men products crossing the Rockies to the coast. B.C.'s five conditions for the approval of new heavy oil projects add up to a relatively short manifesto—one that was quickly dismissed by critics as a desperate shopping list from a pre- mier who wasn't expected to survive the last election. Today, they look more like an adroit political creation: just vague enough that the door remains open a crack, if Alberta, Ottawa and industry each plays the role scripted for them by the Clark government. The conditions require stricter environmen- tal standards from Ottawa, meaningful accommodation of First Nations' inter- ests and a bigger financial share of the benefits for British Columbia. If all of that can be done, the B.C. premier will be able to say that she fought for her province and won. If the efforts don't win over British Columbians, however, she still has the option of saying no to an unpopular development. Already, Clark can claim some prog- ress. In the spring, the federal govern- ment announced measures designed to answer B.C.'s demands for tougher reg- ulation of oil spills on land or at sea. On the East Coast, Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced a series of measures in mid-May aimed at bolstering tanker safety, including a requirement that industry pay all cleanup costs in the event of a spill. The next day, Raitt was on the West Coast promising tougher regulations for pipelines, giving the National Energy Board increased regulatory control over the 73,000 kilometres of pipeline that transport more than $100-billion worth of oil, gas and petroleum products across Canada each year. These changes are the result of what the B.C. government calls its "construc- tive federalism," even if the province never comes around to supporting Northern Gateway, it will have nudged the nation toward more stringent environmental protection for the movement of heavy oil. "If the five con- ditions were implemented, Canada's environment would be safer from coast to coast," says one B.C. official. "This would be our gift to Canada from B.C.— this will be the legacy item." Meanwhile, Enbridge officials have finally come to understand that they need to tread more carefully in B.C. and have offered assurances to the B.C. government that they will try not to start a conflagration as they wade through the National Energy Board's conditions—a process that will likely carry on through 2015. The governments of Alberta and B.C. have a group of senior bureau- crats also working together on how to address Clark's five conditions. Part of Alberta's objective, here, is to develop a national dialogue around the economic benefits of natural resource development that isn't drowned out by the politics of pipelines in B.C. "This isn't just about LNG, oil, mining or forestry. It's about natural resource development generally, and it is essen- tial for the West to be able to move forward with that development," says one Alberta official. "Nationalizing that conversation needs to happen." In B.C., the economic benefits of resource development have long generated a debate about the cost to the environment. For decades, politi- cians have struggled to span the gap between job creation and green values. At a speech last March at a Globe Conference in Vancouver—a gathering of "environmental business" interests— Clark used her stance on oil pipelines to demonstrate that her government is straddling the two often-conflicting positions. "British Columbia is very much open for business," she told the del- egates. "We are open for business, in particular the business of leaving our province, our country and our world in better shape than we found it." She reminded her audience of the "war in the woods"—a protest over logging old-growth forests in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island that spread and threatened to grind the province's forest industry into the ground with civil disobedience and international boycotts in the early 1990s. Clark said successful resource industries have learned from that battle that, in her province, they have to earn social licence. "The industry did not shrink from those challenges. Instead, they found a way to grow, a way to collabo- rate, a way to cooperate and a way to do it right. And so now, today, forestry is again a very profitable business in our province because they are innovat- ing. They are embracing change." ClarK's CoMMents were not just for the benefit of her audi- ence that day. It was also a message to the oil industry and to the government in Alberta. Alberta Premier Jim Prentice—the former Conservative MP who served variously as Stephen Harper's minister for Indian affairs, industry and the environment—won the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives in B.C. Premier Christy Clark. cpimages 62% Of Albertans "would be OK with B.C. getting a share of oil revenues from Northern Gateway" the west speaKs out