In an attempt to connect with the ever-greening Canadian electorate, Stephen Harper has decided to try his hand at bleeding heart conservatism.
At a campaign stop in Calgary on Sept. 26, Harper promised that, if elected, the Conservative government would ban the export of bitumen to nations whose environmental laws weren’t as stringent as those in Canada. The immediate reaction to this statement was the provincial government’s concerns that the feds, in applying such a policy, would be stepping into their jurisdiction. This may be, but there are other reasons this proposal falls flat.
Bitumen is an extremely heavy type of petroleum that is extracted from the oilsands in northern Alberta. Its extraction is incredibly costly to the environment, which is the primary reason that Harper’s promise is so ridiculous. It is effectively the same as the United States harping the importance of developing democracy around the world while actively executing plans that are detrimental to that end. The Conservative pledge is hypocrisy of the highest order and can do nothing but erode Canada’s credibility when it makes any statement about environmental concern.
Beyond this, the plan’s environmental advantages are deceptive. Currently, most bitumen is exported to the U.S. While Canadian regulations are stricter than those in the U.S., given the volatility of the initial extraction of the material and the fact that it’s processing and end use will remain detrimental to the environment, despite the tighter Canadian guidelines, the actual benefit to the environment falls far short of being meaningful progress towards a greener future.
It is worth considering that there is a pipeline currently being constructed to the coast that will allow bitumen to be shipped to other nations, possibly including China. These regulations would conceivably lead to a more environmentally friendly development in that nation. In some sense this is true, but the actual impact that this move will have is, again, hardly praiseworthy. Restricting bitumen from entering China won’t greatly reduce the environmental damage of such a large nation’s rapid development. Besides, it would be unreasonable to laud Harper’s policy as being a forceful move in the right direction when all it does is ban something that is not happening as of now anyways.
Lastly, there remains the dubious fact that if the processing of bitumen was limited to Canadian facilities, there would be a great number of jobs gained in this country.
In the end, the proposal seems less like a legitimate effort at positive environmental policy than a minor ploy for environmentally leaning voters or perhaps those who would stand to gain work processing bitumen. The proposal wins a small victory by shifting the processing of the material to a more regulated location, but does not actually address the extreme environmental damage caused by its extraction and later usage. If the Conservatives actually want their environmental policy taken seriously, they will have to author a serious environmental policy.