To hear the Canadian government tell it, Barack Obama's administration has yet to approve the Keystone XL pipeline because it won't stand up to environmental activists. Exhaustive new reporting offers a more persuasive explanation: The oil pipeline hasn't been approved because the Canadian government keeps screwing up.
Today's story by my colleagues at Bloomberg News bureaus in Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary, the result of more than 75 interviews, lays out how Canada's failure to secure a green light for Keystone can be traced to a series of miscalculations, missed opportunities and flat-out mistakes. (The story is worth reading in its entirety.)
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-25/no-keystone-xl-blame-Canada
-- Toning down the public campaign isn't the only advice Canada chose to ignore. The Obama administration told the Harper government that getting the pipeline approved would be easier if Canada would regulate its oil and gas emissions. Harper failed to impose those regulations, despite promises to do so.
What today's story reveals as the thinking behind that decision:
The regulations didn’t surface because Harper and his closest advisers were dubious they mattered. They had come to the conclusion that Obama swallowed concessions whole and gave nothing back. Without an administration commitment to a joint approach, they felt Canada would be digging itself into a competitive hole, according to people familiar with the back-and-forth of the discussions.In other words, the Canadian prime minister blocked vital national environmental regulations out of spite: He didn't want to give Obama anything without getting something in return. That's not only the wrong way to set policy but also had the effect of setting back his cause. The result, writes Greenspon, was Canada "allowing itself to become stigmatized as an environmental laggard," and "leave Obama little to work with."
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