Joel McKay: Not all coasts are equal

Why is a pipeline to the north a terrible idea but one to the south is fine? Because British Columbia is just more comfortable about it that way.

By: Joel McKay

I suppose we could blame Sir George Henry Richards for all this.

He was the British naval officer who named the waters between B.C.’s north coast and Haida Gwaii after his ship the HMS Hecate in 1861, unknowingly sowing a reputation for that stretch of brine as a near-mythical, unnavigable body of water that today means it is off limits for oil tankers (but just oil tankers).

One-hundred and sixty-five years later, our intrepid prime minister, himself no stranger to British conventions, has reinforced our previous prime minister’s Gandalfian proclamation that said tankers shall not pass those waters, as though this liquid strait bridged Khazad-dûm itself.

Probably most British Columbians nodded along as he did so, being perfectly accustomed to the sacred grandeur of our province, especially the far-away bits like the north coast that few of us bother to visit.

But the rest of Canada?

I bet you’re wondering what the hell is so different about the north coast than the south coast, which apparently is far less sacred.

You see, in British Columbia, there are coasts and then there are coasts.

I grew up on the coast. I’ve spent a lot of time on B.C.’s coasts, experiencing and learning about each community, its history, as well as funding and building things there. B.C.’s south coast isn’t any less environmentally unique or sensitive than its central or north coast — or put another way, it’s all environmentally sensitive.

Then again, so is Alberta’s Wood Buffalo region…

Yet in B.C., more of us are comfortable with a pipeline running to the Lower Mainland than through the north because we’re used to that industry there — at this point, tankers moored in English Bay are as much a part of the skyline as the coast mountains.

Not so in the central and north coast, renamed not so long ago from the prosaic, colonial Central Coast Timber Supply Area and Queen Charlotte Islands to the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii, respectively.

There aren’t any more orca, grizzlies, or wolves there now than there were before the new branding, and all those things can be found in and around the Strait of Georgia too.

Yet what the central and north coast don’t have is the density of population, the magnitude of heavy industry, the comfort with the co-existence of these things.

It’s the combination of symbolism — be it the kermode bear, sea wolves, our five distinct species of salmon —alongside the sheer lack of people up north, and a very well-heeled environmental movement that birthed what we unaffectionately call “pipeline politics” today.

That aside, few dispute the economics of investing in a northern pipeline route. Yes, it makes more sense to export oil from the north coast than the south if the target market is Asia. Yes, Prince Rupert is Canada’s fastest growing port and already exports everything from minerals and grains to wood and petroleum products. Yes, Alaska has a near identical environmentally sensitive coast and seems to have no problem at all balancing conservation, tourism, and bitumen exports from that coast to the Strait of Georgia and points abroad without fuss.

And, yes, prior to Sir George’s naming convention, the Haida and Nisga’a were comfortable enough with the Hecate’s conditions (known then as siigaay or ocean) to cross it in war canoes.

I’ve sat in a war canoe. They’re impressive. But if I had a choice whether to cross the strait in a war canoe or a tanker, I’m climbing aboard the tanker.

Which is a sarcastic way of saying, this isn’t about economics. This is about people, culture, and working with Lotus Land’s idiosyncrasies, which, sadly for the rest of Canada, is the only reasonable point of egress to Asian markets.

So, Mark Carney, Danielle Smith, and David Eby cut a deal. A decent one, I’d wager. And I applaud them for it, truly. The deal feels so good, so finely threaded in fact, that I’m reminded of Oprah’s famous “You get a car!” episode.

Yet it remains to be seen whether this is the Corvette for the Canadian economy that it has been billed as — or a Corolla. Given that it’s the south coast and our product will take a little longer to get to Asia, it’s probably somewhere in between, maybe a Camaro.

But I remain skeptical. The deal is so clever, so obvious that if I step back, it looks ham-fisted.

Basically, it boils down to this:

• We need this for the economy, but don’t worry about the economics;

• We want the private sector to pay for it, but you, my fellow Canadians, are going to pay for it;

• It’s extraordinarily expensive and complex, but we’re going to slip it in beside the existing pipeline through one of the most densely populated urban areas in North America; and

• We’re going to be an energy superpower, but, like Iran, we’re going to concentrate our market access infrastructure at one single port and force all traffic to navigate a very narrow strait.

Maybe it’s the recovering journalist in me, or all these years funding and overseeing significant public-sector capital projects, but I hold to the axiom that the devil resides in the details.

Oprah learned that lesson, though she didn’t have to pay for it. It turned out all those audience members had to pay several thousand dollars each in taxes for their new cars.

I get the feeling that eventually the bill will come due and we’re all on the hook for it. I just don’t yet know what that bill is.

For now, it looks like we can all look forward to a new pipeline, same as the old pipeline.

Joel McKay is the current city manager of Quesnel, the former chair of the University of Northern British Columbia, and former CEO of Northern Development. He’s a Mr. Jokey-Joke-maker and writes scary stories by night, which you can find at www.joelmckay.ca

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