NEW YORK — In what is perhaps his most direct challenge to U.S. President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a harsh threat Thursday that Canada won’t take no for an answer on the contentious Keystone XL pipeline.
“My view is that you don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” he said at a Q&A session with the Canadian American Business Council. “We haven’t had that (refusal) but if we were to get that that won’t be final. It won’t be final until (the pipeline) is approved and we will keep pushing forward.”
He argued that economic, environmental and energy security facts all support the ultimate approval of the 1,900-kilometre cross-border pipeline.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]“So I think the logic behind this project is simply overwhelming,” he said.
Harper indicated that he thought Obama was guilty of playing “bad politics” over Keystone XL.
“We will do this project eventually for the benefit of both countries,” he continued. “As I said it is just politics and ultimately over time bad politics make bad policy and I believe that in strong, advanced countries and economies like ours bad policies ultimately get reversed.”
Harper’s statements were the strongest so far to counter the apparent opposition to the project coming from the White House. Obama has disparaged the project claiming it will create few jobs and that it could lead to the expansion of the oilsands industry, resulting in excessive emissions of greenhouse gases.
Obama’s stance has been welcomed by a broad alliance of U.S. environmental groups that have made TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline a symbol of their struggle to reduce atmospheric emissions linked to climate change.
Their main argument is that because oilsands extraction and refining produce up to three times more carbon emissions than conventional oil, any pipeline that would allow the expansion of the oilsands should be denied a permit. The oilsands are Canada’s single largest producer of greenhouse gases. Their emissions are predicted to more than double over the next 10 years.
Harper, however, claimed that the pipeline would allow the U.S. to replace dirtier heavy oil from countries such as Venezuela.
“The fact of the matter is that as the (U.S.) state department itself says, the environmental impacts of the Keystone pipeline are negligible,” he said. “In fact it will displace a crude that in many cases comes from not just higher-emitting sources of oil but frankly from places where the environmental standards of production are very poor.”
The company contracted to perform the Keystone XL’s environmental review is currently under investigation for allegedly failing to report its conflict of interest with TransCanada and other companies that stand to benefit from the pipeline. The investigation has further delayed the final decision, which is not expected until 2014.
Harper said that in regular conversations with Obama the U.S. president has made it clear that his decision will be based on what’s best for the U.S.
The debate, he said, has “opened Canadians’ eyes” to the dangers of having a single market for its energy products.
“Here’s our most critical and valuable set of exports and there has been no attempt at diversification at all,” he said. “So I think this has highlighted for all of us this political situation in the United States why for all kinds of reasons including really solid economic reasons we need to diversify our energy export markets.”
He said there are proposals to export Canadian energy products through western and eastern pipelines. “The demand in the world for these products is so overwhelming that I remain confident that a number of these projects will proceed.”
In response to a question about redirecting energy sales from the U.S. to countries such as China, he said, “I don’t think it will ever be our plan to lock out the United States.”
He added, “If I were an American the last thing I would want to see is Canada selling its oil anywhere else.”
Keystone XL has wide support among Republicans and Democrats in Congress and with governments along the pipeline route.
The proposed pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels a day of oilsands bitumen and heavy oil from the Bakken fields in North Dakota to Gulf Coast and Midwestern refineries in the U.S.
Asked about Canada’s non-resource industries, Harper appeared to stumble as he struggled to mention key areas and failed to mention, for instance, its sizeable aerospace industry as well as its train, recreational vehicles and computer-software sectors.
He said free-trade talks with the European Union have made him more aware of the needs of Canada’s industrial sectors “than I ever thought I would need to know.”
“But, look, there’s a range of sectors that produce a range of opportunities for people and as I say just speaking very generally I don’t think there’s a better place to be than Canada,” he said.
