"A s day follows night, the United States' intervention in Venezuela triggered Canada's favourite response to international calamity: a call for more pipelines. Not just any pipelines, of course. "Canada must immediately approve a pipeline to the Pacific Coast," declared federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney a few days later. He was late to the party-the demand had already been made by Alberta premier Danielle Smith and captains of the oil patch,"
"as well as the Globe and Mail's editorial board. "A new oil pipeline to the Pacific coast isn't merely desirable," opined the paper's Sunday Editorial. "It is a national imperative." What these arguments prove is the vice grip pipelines have on our national imagination. They collapse a vast range of options for diversifying Canada's economy and reducing our dependence on the US to a single question: Who else can we sell our oil to?"
Canada's political and business leaders pushed immediate approval of a Pacific Coast oil pipeline following the United States' intervention in Venezuela. Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, Alberta premier Danielle Smith, oil executives, and the Globe and Mail called the project a national imperative. Pipeline advocacy narrowed national debate to selling oil to new buyers and accepted the notion that U.S. investment would quickly restore Venezuelan crude. Smith warned renewed Venezuelan production would increase heavy crude supplies to U.S. refineries and compete with Canadian exports. Historical U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya caused years of production collapse and slow recovery.
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