As a non-native-Albertan academic (in particular one from back east), I have learned that there are two golden rules to follow when in Alberta – don’t mention the National Energy Program, and don’t mention the National Energy Program. This post, and my next one, are going to break both of those rules.
After writing last night’s long post on Energy Security and Energy East, I got to thinking about the use of the term energy security here in Canada. This took me on a (thus far fruitless) quest to find copies of some of Pierre Trudeau’s speeches from around the time of the National Energy Program. I came across a gem though – the 1980 Budget Speech in which the National Energy Program was introduced. The parallels to today are almost uncanny – the government was both looking to combat stubbornly high unemployment, while at the same time dealing with a, “shortage of skills in this country.” In fact, the Finance Minister lamented that, “even in the midst of recession, those shortages were apparent in many trades and employers have had to look for skilled craftsmen in other countries.” Luckily, the government of the day was to introduce a, combination of “manpower training and mobility programs…to deal with this problem.” Interestingly, the details of these retraining programs were to be announced at a latter date.
3) fairness, with a pricing and revenue-sharing regime which recognizes the needs and rights of all Canadians.
The NDP’s Peter Julian was quoted in the Toronto Star as saying that, “(the NDP) favours the project in principle because it would allow Canadian crude to be refined in Canada and would decrease eastern Canadian dependence on imported oil.” The 1980 Budget was right there with him, worried that, “the chink in (Canada’s) armour is our dependence on imported oil…(and we are)…therefore, unnecessarily subject to the vagaries of the world oil market.” Like the Liberal government of 1980, the Quebec Chamber of Commerce today sees access to western oil supplies as key to the competitiveness of eastern Canadian businesses.
Now, by no means am I suggesting the Energy East represents a reprisal of the National Energy Program. Far from it. What I do find interesting is that the project, and some of the rhetoric surrounding it, would have been very much at home in The Honourable Allan J. MacEachen’s Budget Plan of 1980. Of course, the last time this sort of rhetoric was bouncing around Ottawa with respect to Alberta oil, Peter Lougheed was preparing to take the Federal government to court.