Scorched Earth

Ignatieff’s embrace of the oil sands is both cynical and self-defeating.

Exploitation of Alberta’s oil sands is now a gamble worth billions. | Peter Essick / The National Geographic

Where to begin? According to The Toronto Star, Michael Ignatieff told a crowd of Calgary Liberals that Alberta was the "beating heart of the Canadian economy, the beating heart of the future of our country." (Never mind that Ontario is still a full third of the Canadian economy and has twice Alberta’s economic output without the luck of having one of the world’s largest energy stores.) For Ignatieff is now a huge fan of the "awe-inspiring" Alberta oil sands, defending them even after National Geographic published a damning story on the country-sized mess out West.

"No other country in the world would toss away such an advantage with a moratorium or a pause or a stoppage," the Liberal leader said to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, according to Star columnist Gillian Steward, in a not-so-subtle dig at his predecessor’s green plan.

That doesn’t sound like the conscientious, principled progressive intellectual some might make Ignatieff out to be. In fact, it sounds more like Rod "you don’t just give it away" Blagojevitch, or any number of tin-pot dictators sitting on valuable natural resources they’d leverage for Tolkien’s ring of power.

Ignatieff, in fact, sounded like a politician—but rather, like the craven, cynical image that a Harvard-bred human rights champion might have in his head when he thinks of a politician. For Michael Ignatieff, known all too well for pandering and gaffing in the same breath, is not a crafty, Machiavellian schemer who knows the means to his well-defined end. He’s no politician at all. Iggy just plays a cartoon version of one on TV.

Do the math

Alberta has just below 3.7 million people and 28 members of parliament, none of whom are Liberal. With a 2.4% annual growth rate assumed constant, it will have the population of Ontario (about 13 million) in a century, assuming no growth in that province. That’s about as many years as Ontario has members of parliament.

In a stroke of genius that better resembles a stroke of the medical kind, Iggy is betting he can wrest away votes in the heartland of the Conservative Party in a province that has less members of parliament than the Greater Toronto Area, where his party has steadily lost ground. The neoconservative logic being: We’re losing on home turf. Why not fight them over there instead, where we know for sure we’ll lose?

Top Banana, Banana Republic

But isn’t Ignatieff’s vision one of a more national Liberal Party that takes positions on the center-right in order to dominate the center, like Jean Chétien did in the 90s? Isn’t this about appealing to all Canadians, not just Montrealers and Mississaugans?

That might be what he’s thinking, but that’s certainly not what’s happening. Ignatieff defending oil sounds like the deluded autocrats Ignatieff once made sport of criticizing, those who consolidated power and quashed dissent, funded by diamonds or oil or what have you. Except Iggy’s the well-intentioned but patronizing leader who thinks to himself, if I can just get rid of these pesky rebels, I can establish a great democracy and market economy! while his capitol is being surrounded by the troops of the incoming military junta.

It’s a shallow, cynical play for a man who thinks being an effective politician is being shallow and cynical.

This is a recipe for the continued ascent of the Conservative Party and the utter destruction of the Liberal brand—progressive, bold, visionary, diverse, competent—that has held this country together for decades. It’s a recipe for regime change, with Ignatieff—the head of what was once the party of the majority, the natural party of governance and one of the most successful political parties in the democratic world—playing the guy on his way to some cushy European exile, rather indistinguishable from his replacement except in competence and strategic thinking.

For boosting the tar sands doesn’t make a single Ontario job, and pisses off more Quebecers than there are people in the combined populations of Calgary and Edmonton.

Also: Really, really bad policy

This is all aside from the fact that the tar sands are the most environmentally destructive single project on the planet, unless Al Qaeda is managing to build a doomsday device.

And from the fact that giving oil an even more prominent place in Canadian politics, policy and trade has the corrosive effects it has had on such progressive places as, oh, one-party Alberta, not to mention a slew of unstable petro-states whose names begin with "I" or end with "stan." It empowers the most radical of conservative politics, and like Senate Democrats to the so-called Gang of Six, gives something for nothing.

So what is the end game? What is the brilliant vision that underlies such a flawed strategy? What does Canada gain from such a cowardly compromise? What’s the big idea from the great mind from Harvard?

Not holding my breath over here. End.