The Harper government's new best friends: Mao's heirs

[CHIMO]

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty somewhat undiplomatically tore a strip off the United States last week after the Obama administration decided to put the Keystone pipeline into the deep freeze. And then he made a direct geo-political threat aimed at America, his party's political model. The Keystone pipeline delay, Mr. Flaherty said, “may mean we may have to move quickly to ensure we can sell our oil to Asia through British Columbia.”

In other words, if you won't buy our raw bitumen, we'll sell it to China.

It is a little odd, this business of a Canadian neo-con minister, at the heart of the Harper government, threatening the United States with a closer economic relationship with Communist China. There's going to be a little splainin’ to do at the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. But it does give us the flavour of “oil disease” – of how the vast revenues associated with this resource can pervert even the geopolitical principles of conservative ideologues. There are people in that industry (and their poodles in government) who will do anything to infinitely expand their sales and their profits. Including, apparently, threatening Uncle Sam with a tighter embrace of Mao's heirs.

There is an alternative approach available, one that turns on four words: pacing; value-added; price; and transition.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/brian-topp/the-harper-governments-new-best-friends-maos-heirs/article2235312/