Corey Pierce

Much has been made of the fact that the Liberals now have a new leader who is much more formidable than the previous one. However, while Michael Ignatieff’s shaggy eyebrows and sharp mind may get the better of Prime Minister Stephen Harper once in awhile, it’s not the princely Ignatieff who will most influence him. It will be another liberal — Barack Obama. He will have been U.S. president for only a week when Harper presents his much-anticipated budget for a blue economy at the end of January. Already the Harperites are trying to attune themselves to Obama’s song sheet.

Neo-conservatives such as Harper and Jim Flaherty, his subservient finance minister, must be gagging over the huge amounts of U.S. taxpayers’ money that has been funnelled into insurance companies, banks and the auto industry by none other than their hero, George W. Bush. They soon followed suit, held their noses and turned over $4 billion to the Canadian auto industry. They didn’t have much choice and they knew it.

This is likely only the first of many such moves, as the Harperites try to march in lockstep with a much different administration than that of Bush. Not that Harper will have much room to manoeuvre: he’s about to be hemmed in by all sorts of liberals and left-wingers; the ones at home and the ones on the other side of the border.

Perhaps the stickiest issue, the one that will cause him the most grief at home, will be the energy and environment portfolio.

It seems like a long time ago now, given all the political chaos of early December, but shortly after Obama became president-elect, Harper and his key ministers floated the idea of a climate-change pact with the U.S. that would see Canada provide a secure supply of oil and gas in exchange for adopting common standards and mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gases.

Since Obama has said that he wants to reduce U.S. dependence on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela, Canada is in a good position to become an even more important supplier than it is now. And much of that oil would come from the tarsands.

However, Obama has also said that he intends to implement a cap-and-trade system that would include limits on total emissions of greenhouse gases. This is much different than the federal and Alberta government plans, which are based on reducing the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of production. With this scheme, industry can reduce the intensity of emissions per barrel of oil produced in the tarsands, for example, but increase production and thereby increase total emissions of greenhouse gases.

That’s not what Obama has in mind. He has said he aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050. To harmonize with the U.S. means we would have to substantially rejig our climate-change policies. Needless to say, the petroleum industry is not thrilled with this idea; the plan will eat into its profits. Neither is the Alberta government, which has long seen a cap-and-trade system as a carbon tax that drains money from Alberta.

Even U.S Republicans are pushing for polluters to pay, however. Bob Inglis, a Republican representative from South Carolina, and Arthur Laffer, a former economic advisor to president Ronald Reagan, are promoting a system that would impose carbon taxes but reduce income and payroll taxes.

“We need to impose a tax on the things we want less of (carbon dioxide) and reduce taxes on things we want more of (income and jobs),” they recently wrote in the New York Times.

Sounds just like former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift. The same Green Shift that Harper and Premier Ed Stelmach attacked as just another Liberal plan to siphon money out of Alberta and spread it around the rest of Canada.

That was then, and this is now. Obama is coming to Canada, and Harper is eager to talk to him about oil supply and climate-change policies. Federal environment minister Jim Prentice wants to get down to Washington as soon as possible after Obama’s inauguration in order to synchronize efforts on climate change with the Americans. He has already met with U.S. Senator John Kerry, who is scheduled to take over as the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee next January and will be lining up support for a successor to the Kyoto Accord.

Stelmach is still dead set against any form of carbon tax. He prefers to focus on carbon capture and storage even though the technology is expensive and far from proven. He has also insisted that Alberta be part of any negotiations with the Americans that involve climate-change policies. In other words, he’s not happy with Harper.

What we are seeing here is a spat between Conservatives. The provincial wing wants to circle the wagons and stand up to the federal government as Alberta premiers have always done. Their big brothers in Ottawa see things differently. They have to look after the interests of the whole country; Canadians from Toronto as well as Trochu.

I’m betting that in the end, Obama will call the shots when it comes to climate change and environmental policies, and both Harper and Stelmach will have to suck it up.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary-based journalist who has covered politics since the Lougheed days.