Walkom: Enbridge pipeline saga shows limits of Stephen Harper’s bully-boy tactics

[CHIMO]

Back in January, Stephen Harper made the strategic decision to bulldoze through a proposed pipeline from Alberta’s oilsands to the British Columbia coast.

Eight months later that Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is in mortal danger, in large part because the prime minister’s take-no-prisoners approach has had the perverse effect of galvanizing the project’s opponents.

But the pipeline saga has also revealed the limitations of Harper’s particular brand of deceitful politics.

The Conservative government imported classic smear tactics to demonize pipeline opponents as anti-Canadian subversives. Yet those tactics didn’t take.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1238464--walkom-enbridge-pipeline-saga-shows-limits-of-stephen-harper-s-bully-boy-tactics

[Joe Shlabotnik]

1. The pipelines are far from dead.

I still have a bad feeling that one way or the other, the tar is going to flow either west or south or both.

Piping oil to eastern Canada is a ruse to appear sensible to the crowd that questions why we import oil on the east coast.
The talk of a pipeline through NWT is just an empty threat.
But the danger that Christi Clark or aboriginal groups may have a price that has simply not yet been met could still mean Northern Gateway gets the go ahead before any heads roll. Good luck putting that genie back in the bottle.
Keystone XL isn't dead either, just wait until after the US elections for a revised route approved by greased palms.

As Bush so perfectly, yet inadvertently put it: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." Harper, his lackeys, backers and his US counterparts don't quit either. Do Harper and Clark really care about public opinion anymore, when golden parachutes are waiting? That giant sucking sound... (ugh, I don't even want to go there).