THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 19, Season 3
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Host: Tom Clark
Guest Interviews: Lisa Raitt, Jeff Rubin, David McLaughlin,
Geoff Norquay, Barry McLoughlin
Location: Ottawa
**Please check against delivery**
Tom Clark:
On this Sunday morning, another train derailment in British Columbia, and across the country, an explosion in another backyard. With three fiery derailments in the last seven months, is it just a matter of time before the next disaster strikes? Transport Minister Lisa Raitt joins us.
And Canada gives itself a failing grade on the environment. Why are we so far behind when it comes to cutting our greenhouse gas emissions?
More on Canada
- RCMP arrests alleged hitmen accused of killing B.C. Sikh leader
- Fall COVID-19 vaccine guidelines are out. Here’s what NACI recommends
- Some 2019 candidates ‘appeared willing’ to engage with foreign interference: Hogue inquiry
- Thousands of Canada’s rail workers have a strike mandate. What happens now?
Plus, political crisis management 101: does Chris Christie have some lessons for Stephen Harper or is it the other way around?
It is Sunday, January 12th. I’m Tom Clark from the nation’s capital, and you are in The West Block.
Well for the third time in less than a year there has been a major rail accident involving the shipment of oil and gas; the latest in New Brunswick. It has concern over rail safety increasing.
And before we get to that, here it is, your weekly West Block Primer:
A fireball lights up the sky near Plaster Rock, New Brunswick; 19 cars derailed and nearby homes evacuated. In Alberta, last October another derailment and another explosion just 80 kilometres from the provinces capital city.
And of course, the disaster last July in Lac Mégantic which killed 42 people and wiped out the downtown core. All of those trains passed through cities both big and small on their routes, and there’s going to be a lot more of those trains in the future.
Consider this, before 2009, hardly any oil was shipped by rail in this country but with pipelines now at capacity, companies have turned to trains. In 2009, just 8,000 metric tonnes were shipped. By 2011, that rose to nearly 375,000. And get this, the following year; 4.3 million metric tonnes were shipped across Canada’s rail network.
So as concerns rise about this, what is the government response? Well joining me now from Toronto is Lisa Raitt, the minister of transportation. Minister good to have you on the program again.
Lisa Raitt:
Thanks Tom.
Tom Clark:
We’ve had three fiery derailments in the last number of months. There’s a huge increase in the amount of crude that is being shipped by rail. What assurances do Canadians have that it is going to be safe?
Lisa Raitt:
Well the transportation system is safe and we transport dangerous goods across this country for the last 100 hundred years but the reality is, is that the type of dangerous good can change and we want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to ensure their safe travel. So in July of this year, I issued an emergency directive and I issued an emergency directive again in September, again in November. As things evolve from what we learn in Lac Mégantic, we’re able to adjust where our regulations are and ensure that people are safe and that the goods can move without incident from where they begin and where they end.
Tom Clark;
But I guess though, a lot of people would say this, that while it’s a good thing that new cars and new standards for these cars carrying this very explosive type of oil are being built. In the meantime, there’s a lag time there. And so anybody who lives in any community, which is virtually almost every community in Canada where these cars go through, I’m wondering, you know what assurance do they have that these old unsafe cars still carrying this type of crude are not going to blow up in their backyards?
Lisa Raitt:
Well they are safe and we want to ensure that we make them safer, and that’s always our goal. And our government’s done a lot in terms of ensuring increased safety within our rail system. But we have to remember that this is a North American continent market and we have to keep in step with what’s happening in the United States. They are moving on the issue as well but I just want to stress Tom, that these cars are safe. They can transport the goods and they do so safely 99.997 percent of the time. What we want to do is get it better and do it right in consultation with all the players; municipalities, the shippers, the rail companies, and of course our cousins in the United States.
Tom Clark:
Is there an underlying message in all of this though that shipping oil, and we’ve all seen the graph, the one that shows how dramatically more oil is now being shipped than ever before in history by rail. Is all of this a message to say that shipping oil by rail isn’t such a good idea?
Lisa Raitt:
Shipping oil by rail’s been happening for a hundred years. And it is a good idea.
Tom Clark:
But not to this extent though. Not nearly to this extent…
Lisa Raitt:
Certainly we’ve been blessed in Canada where our production of oil has increased as it has in the United States too. And when you have constraint capacity and other modes of transportation, another mode will step in to fill the place, and that’s what we’ve seen in the past number of years. Our attention is on it though because as you increase the shipments of course, you want to make sure that you’re having every part of the system as safe as possible. So we’ve done things like increased inspectors, we’ve put more money into rail safety, we’re ensuring rail companies provide information to communities, and we want to make sure that on the specific issue; of the DOT-111 cars, that we’re doing everything we can. And I know that we have industry and the government in the United States and ourselves all focused on the matter. So this isn’t the end of what we’re doing with respect to the DOT-111 cars. There will be more to come.
Tom Clark:
Minister Raitt awfully good of you to come in this morning, I appreciate your time.
Lisa Raitt:
Thank you Tom.
Tom Clark:
Well one person who warns that rail disasters will continue to rise is Jeff Rubin, a former chief economist at the CIBC. He also joins us from Toronto. Mr. Rubin thanks very much for joining us this morning. You know we just heard Lisa Raitt say that the system is extremely safe, in her words and they’re just making a few tweaks. What do you think?
Jeff Rubin:
Well I couldn’t disagree more. I think that there are further accidents waiting to happen and I’m not really making a statement about corporate negligence or malfeasance, and I’m merely making a statement about probability, that when we start going from loading 500 tanker cars a year to 140,000, that’s another order of magnitude, particularly when we consider that we’re moving highly flammable shale oil gas and we’re moving it in DOT-111 tanker cars; tanker cars that both the Canadian Senate and the US Department of Transportation Safety Board have been warning against for years.
The email you need for the day's
top news stories from Canada and around the world.
Tom Clark:
Yeah and we just heard Lisa Raitt say that in fact those DOT-111 cars while they are being redesigned for greater safety, she’s saying they’re safe right now and these cars of course go through virtually every community in Toronto. With the lag time necessary to retrofit these cars or to build new ones, you know your proposition is, that an accident is just waiting to happen like another Lac Mégantic.
Jeff Rubin:
I’m sorry they are not safe and they are the tanker cars that have been involved in virtually every explosion. So the problem here is that we don’t really…by the time that we could refit these tanker cars, I mean the opposite is happening. Tanker cars have never been in more demand. I mean in the US, we’re now moving something like a million barrels a day. And by all projections, those numbers are going to double in the next couple of years to accommodate increased production from places like the oil sands, or the Bakken.
Tom Clark:
Yeah, and we’ve seen that graph about the incredible increase in amount; you just mentioned it So, you know shipping oil by rail is going to continue for a long time, but what’s the solution here?
Jeff Rubin:
Well I’m not sure if it’s going to continue indefinitely because unfortunately we’re probably going to have an accident in an urban area. A tremendous amount of oil gets moved through suburban Chicago as it does through Toronto, and it’s only a matter of time. And I think that’s going to change the economics of rail transport. I think there’s going to be huge legal liabilities. I think insurance rates will go up, and I think what it really underscores Tom, is that the Achilles heel of the Northern American energy revolution, this huge increase in oil production from the oil sands and shales is really we don’t have the transportation infrastructure to move it. Railways of course are the unintended consequence of environmentalists blocking new pipeline construction.
Tom Clark:
Well you brought up pipelines, is this in fact an argument to move away from rail and move towards pipelines?
Jeff Rubin:
Well I’m sure the pipeline companies are saying that but you’ve got to realize Tom that for the oil sand producers to reach their dreams of 5 million barrels a day, we’re not going to need one Keystone XL, we’re probably going to need two or three of them and we’re probably going to need a million barrels a day of oil on rail as well. I’m not sure that that’s something Canadians really want. And I’m not sure if you look at the share performance of oil sand producers that the market is really betting on.
Tom Clark;
Jeff Rubin, far too little time to talk about this but I appreciate your contribution today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Jeff Rubin:
My pleasure Tom, take care.
Tom Clark:
Take care.
And coming up, Canada says it’s missing key targets for greenhouse gas emissions. What will it mean for you and for Ottawa’s relationship with Washington?
And then later, did an American governor school Stephen Harper in crisis management? A West Block debate.
Break
Tom Clark:
Welcome back. Well critics have long said that the government won’t meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets, but now the government is saying exactly the same thing. Canada committed to bringing emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2020, but in a report to the United Nations, Environment Canada says we are not on track to reach that goal. Now while countries like the US are making progress on their targets, Canada’s emissions are only heading up and the government says our current policies are not enough to rein them in.
Take a look…
Under the Copenhagen agreement, this is where we agreed to be (612 megatonnes).
This is where we are now (700 megatonnes).
And this is where we will be if we don’t make some changes (734 megatonnes).
Well joining me now David McLaughlin, the former president, in fact the last president of The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, currently serving as the strategic advisor to the Dean of the Environmental program at the University of Waterloo. David thanks very much for being here.
David McLaughlin:
My pleasure.
Tom Clark:
Your final report in 2012 flagged this problem about not meeting our targets. What did the government tell you at the time?
David McLaughlin:
Well other than shutting us down as an organization, we didn’t hear very much in response probably because they themselves would not have been surprised. They see their own data, they know their own results, they model this themselves, but they add the fact the minister, minister Kent, the minister of the environment at the time had asked the round table to look at this and so it was now public. I think the more important thing was that now everybody knew that you know across the country, if they wanted to take a look at this, that Canada was not on track to meet its 2020 emission reduction targets and that we needed to take more action. And that was the core conclusion of the report.
Tom Clark:
Okay, but some people might say we’re not at 2020 yet, there’s still time. Is there time with policies to bring us to that target?
David McLaughlin:
Theoretically yes, but it’s getting tougher. And it’s getting more expensive. The closer we are to the target in terms of trying to get to it, the more measures we have to take and the higher the cost it’s going to be. So we need one sector in particular, we need to get the oil and gas sector into Canada’s climate plan. Until and unless we get that sector in, we’re not going to meet the target. And it’s just going to cost us more to achieve the target the longer we delay getting on track.
Tom Clark:
Listen, your mandate before was not just environment but was also economy. So put those two things together and tell me the consequences for us as a country if we don’t meet those targets by 2020?
David McLaughlin:
Well you’re absolutely right. I mean the environment is now an economy issue. It is about the two together. It’s become a market access issue. Just look at all the debate over pipelines, you know people are trying to oppose them on the basis of they’re going to impact on the climate change and it never used to be that way. They’re becoming chokepoints for protestors and saying well okay, let’s stop producing fossil fuel, let’s keep that carbon in the ground. So it’s now a market access issue and I think we would have been better prepared as a country if we had recognized that earlier and put climate policy in place as an economic…you know it’s in our economic self-interest to actually have good climate policy. It’s not just an environmental issue.
Tom Clark:
In the absence of these regulations on our oil and gas industry in this country and the government keeps on saying we’re 50 per cent there in terms of regulating the other sectors, automobiles and that sort of thing. Fifty per cent left is the oil and gas sector. In terms of our relationship with Washington, if we don’t bring those in, if President Obama has nothing to point to, to this country, what do you suppose the immediate outcome of that is going to be?
David McLaughlin:
Well it means more delays probably for Keystone pipeline. We’re not giving anything to the US administration to make the case that in fact we’re not climate laggards, that we get this as part of where the environment is going; the climate change is an economic issue. So we’re not offering anything up that makes it easier for the US administration to take a step and approve Keystone. And in fact, we’re seeing the same thing in Europe with the fuel quality directive as well. I mean the government, interestingly, the government in 2007 had its own climate plan, a made in Canada plan called Turning the Corner. This was moving independent of the US. Now all of a sudden…well a few years after that, the US is the problem. We have to align with the United States. We’ll only move in concert with the US. Well that wasn’t the case before but now that it is, we say well we’ll move only in lock step. But there’s a whole different energy profile, whole different emissions profile. For the US, oil and gas is about 6 per cent of emissions. For us it’s 23 per cent, so there’s big differences. So we’ll have to see whether or not the Canadian government actually takes the step to move with a little more alacrity, which I think will help us in the market access issue and help us with our relations with the US.
Tom Clark:
So we still have time left but it’ll be costly…
David McLaughlin:
It’ll be costly and time is running out Tom.
Tom Clark:
David McLaughlin thank you so much for joining us today, I really appreciate your time.
David McLaughlin:
My pleasure.
Tom Clark:
Well still to come, saving face; two politicians, two very different styles. Which one will keep a political career afloat? That’s coming up next.
Break
Tom Clark:
Welcome back. Two leaders, two scandals, and two very different ways of handling them.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie finds out that his senior staff had a serious lapse in judgement, did something beyond stupid and kept the whole thing from him. The next day, the governor holds a two hour press conference.
Chris Christie: “Ultimately, I am responsible.”
Tom Clark:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper finds out that his senior staff had a lapse in judgment, did something beyond stupid and kept it all from him. He holds no press conference and takes no personal responsibility.
Stephen Harper: “Mr. Wright himself has said this was a decision he took himself. He admits it was an error of judgement and he’s taken full responsibility.”
Tom Clark:
Okay so, which approach was best? Well, joining me now, in this corner, media consultant Barry McLoughlin, and to my right, Geoff Norquay, principle with Earnscliffe Strategy and a former press secretary to Stephen Harper. Welcome to you both. Okay, Geoff let me start with you and let’s turn the question around on its head a little bit. What are the advantages of handling this the way that Stephen Harper handled it, which is basically to dodge?
Geoff Norquay:
Apologies are always useful and valuable because they imply the taking of responsibility. I think though that the kind of apology that Governor Christie provided the other day has some problems. An apology works best if the situation is understandable, clean; there aren’t a lot of details hanging out. It may not work as well where the situation is complex and has a whole bunch of moving parts. So, as I watched Governor Christie the other day, I was thinking you know this apology may degrade over time and how could that happen? Well it would happen because saying you’re sorry, even in great glowing detail the way he did, will not stop the questions, such as what did he know? When did he know it? How much did he cover? Why didn’t he tell the complete truth? He spoke for almost two hours. He’s laid down an awful lot of hostages to fortune, hostages to the future when the real story comes out.
Tom Clark:
So Geoff’s point is, that if there are still a lot of dangling questions out there saying you’re sorry, humiliated and upset is not necessarily a bullet proof way of dealing with it; the situation here on the Hill, Senate. A lot of moving parts, a lot of dangling questions, did Stephen Harper do the right thing?
Barry McLoughlin:
Well I think there was a real difference in the way it was handled. I mean, to Geoff’s point, it is true that you don’t know everything. I mean one of our principles is, if you wait ‘til you know everything, you’ll never say anything. I mean of course it’s true we don’t know everything but I think he knew enough. Each of these leaders knew enough that they had to step up to the plate. I think people do want to hear you say, I’m sorry. I think Christie definitely did that, you know I’m heartbroken, I’m sorry. The prime minister himself did actually use the word I believe, I’m sorry, I’m sad, I’m angry. Angry tends to dominate everything else the prime ministers anger was the dominant thing. Taking responsibility; this was the key difference. You heard loud and clear, Chris Christie say I take full responsibility for what happens in my office.
Tom Clark:
You just saw that in that clip, yeah.
Barry McLoughlin:
And I think this is why this is a big gap here. The prime minister was keeping the responsibility on Nigel Wright; on senators not on…he is…the buck stops in the PMO. And I think that this created a huge problem. And so now you’ve got a very different platform to manage these issues.
Tom Clark:
But you know it’s interesting, there was a poll done a couple of days ago in New Jersey, after Chris Christie did the full humiliation routine. And it showed most people in New Jersey don’t believe him. Now, the problem is, okay that strategy may not have worked, but on the other hand, Stephen Harper’s way of dealing with it, which is basically to say, nothing to see here folks, move along and besides which it’s all Nigel Wrights fault from start to finish, hasn’t done him any favours in the polls either. Maybe in scandal there’s no way out?
Geoff Norquay:
Well there is if you follow some pretty basic rules, and what are those rules? Number one: when faced with a scandal, lock the doors, question everybody, find out what happened, write it all down, understand what you know, understand what you don’t know, pick a story and stick with it, and pray for the best.
Barry McLoughlin:
And that’s exactly what unfortunately with the prime minister, his first five day story was, oh thank god he wrote the cheque instead of the taxpayers. So suddenly he was kind of defending the action. So it’s very, very hard then five days later to reverse course which is in affect what he had to do. I think secondly, we have an office for many years in Princeton, New Jersey; we kind of watch Christie over time and he has this brand of the truth teller. He has this brand, he may not like it, it’s not always pretty but you can count on him to cut through all the usual garbage of politics and tell the truth. And I think the prime minister’s brand interestingly enough is also straight shooter he’s not going to be warm and cuddly but he’s a guy who you’ve got to count on to tell you the truth. So I think what happened here was he brought into question, and each of them, it’s interesting you say this Tom because each of them, the majority of the public doesn’t believe their word on the issue. The question is, if you say something that is subject to future contradiction, you will really, really hurt your brand. So I think what’s happened here in this situation with the Senate, a parliamentary system, as you know we got the prime minister standing up in the House of Commons. You’ve got Tom Mulcair firing all kinds of shots at him. This is a disadvantage in crisis management that Chris Christie has to his advantage. He doesn’t have to stand up on the legislature day in and day out.
Geoff Norquay:
But he will face investigations and you know that’s where the true story will be told.
I think there’s another difference though between the two situations. In the case of what happened with the senators and PMO, there was no malice involved. It’s hard to find malice. One can find lack of judgment, an unfortunate error in judgement. In the case of what happened in New Jersey, this is out and out malice. The governor’s office set out to inconvenience people to make a political point. By the way, what I don’t understand in this, if you’re punishing people wouldn’t it be great to tell them. But if you tell them then you’ve blown yourself up. That’s what I don’t get about this entire story.
Tom Clark:
Can you though, if you’re halfway through a crisis like this and you figure, gosh the strategy, either the Christie strategy or the Harper strategy isn’t working, is it possible to change strategies in midstream or do you just have to keep on right to the end?
Barry McLoughlin:
Well, okay, I mean the facts can be your best friend or your worst enemy, and I think as long as you get out there, and this is what I know of it, it could be new evidence that comes to the fore. This is why this initial ultimate two hour news conference…he’s able to say for years later, and I believe you’ll hear this in the 2016 election from Christie; I stood there and took every question they asked me. The prime minister cannot say this and I think this is a disadvantage in the handling of this issue.
Tom Clark:
Last 15 to you…
Geoff Norquay:
I think it’s very difficult to change horses in midstream. And as I said earlier, Christie has laid down a whole bunch of markers for the future and they will check them off one by one by one as they go through his explanation.
Tom Clark:
Geoff Norquay of Earnscliffe Strategy and Barry McLoughlin of McLoughlin Media thank you very much for being here. Great discussion today.
Well that is our show for today, for this week. Stay tuned to Global News for all the latest on Chris Christie and Stephen Harper as the week progresses. I’m Tom Clark. Have a great week ahead and we will see you back here again, next Sunday.
Comments