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Tough selling job Alberta business advocacy group tries to win friends for resource projects in British Columbia, Canada’s new economic growth leader GARY PARK For Petroleum News
It has long been understood that Alberta and British Columbia are divided by more than just their common border on the Canadian Rockies.
For decades they have looked at each other, scratched their heads and wondered what was driving their neighbor.
As one Edmonton Journal writer put it: “They might as well exist on separate planets.”
Until this year, only British Columbia had turned the controls of government over to the socialist New Democratic Party, while Alberta remained unyieldingly right-wing in its political leanings.
Then, in May, Alberta stunned all of Canada by swinging to the NDP, following which it elected four left-of-center Liberal Members of Parliament in the Oct. 19 federal election.
It will take time to determine whether these results represent a clear shift from the Conservative party dynasties that have dominated elections as far back as anyone can remember.
But Alberta has little time to ponder the political meanings as it adjusts to the loss of 63,500 jobs in the first eight months of this year and braces for even worse to come.
Reaching out However difficult it might be to swallow, Alberta business leaders have opted to reach out to British Columbia, which is expected to lead Canada’s provinces in economic growth this year, a position previously viewed as Alberta’s right.
“We’ve taken it upon ourselves to promote Alberta and do it in a different way from what was traditionally done by governments,” said David MacLean, vice-president of communications and policy with the non-profit Alberta Enterprise Group, whose corporate members employ about 150,000 Albertans.
A delegation of 40 from the AEG spent three days in Vancouver earlier in November to explain the importance of the energy industry to all of Canada and do a better job of selling crude oil pipelines to tanker ports on the British Columbia coast.
They may already have been too late to save Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, while the balance is rapidly tilting away from Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion.
“Make no mistake, we support pipelines to get Canadian energy to market, but we want to talk in a broader sense, whether it’s LNG, oil, agricultural products, or any other commodity,” said AEG President Josh Bilyk. “British Columbia is the gateway to important markets.”
He said the priority for AEG is to “work more closely with British Columbians to find solutions that will benefit Canada.”
Entrenched distrust The challenge is dealing with an entrenched distrust of the oil and mining industries among British Columbians.
Selling the expertise Albertans have acquired in managing and servicing mega-projects, such as LNG, the AEG delegation spoke to “hundreds” of business leaders and political decision-makers, including Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, First Nations Energy & Mining Council Chief Executive Officer Dave Porter and Iain Black, chief executive officer of the Vancouver Board of Trade.
Bilyk said he hoped his members were able to showcase “the prosperity that responsible resource development is already creating in B.C. and help to bridge the disconnect by finding middle ground.”
MacLean said trips by the AEG to Ottawa, Montreal, Washington, D.C., and Geneva, Switzerland, have forged important new relationships and spurred investment in Alberta, although he said the results are hard to quantify.
He concedes the AEG faces a similar challenge in British Columbia as tries to change attitudes and gain a “social license” for resource projects.
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