Canada: Bitten by the deal that once fed us

Canadians should hope for an Obama presidency and the reopening of NAFTA

…If Mr. Obama wins in November and brings his issues – labour and environment standards – to the table, Canada should prepare its own list. At the top should be getting out of the “energy proportionality” straitjacket that mandates that Canada must offer a majority of its oil and gas to the United States, even if Canadians freeze in the dark. Proportionality is “unique in all of the world’s treaties,” writes Richard Heinberg, a noted California author on energy. In no other developed country are citizens denied first access to their own resources. “Canada has every reason to repudiate the proportionality clause,” Mr. Heinberg continues, “unilaterally and immediately.”

Why did Canada agree to proportionality and why is it a bad idea now?


Canada entered the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement and NAFTA 15 or 20 years ago under very different circumstances. Then, it was widely believed that the world had plenty of cheap oil, and there were no limits to ever-increasing energy consumption. Few had heard of the catastrophe of climate change. Pre-Sept. 11, security of energy supplies was on few people’s minds.

In the early 1990s, it appeared to make sense for Canada to get virtually guaranteed access to U.S. energy markets and, in return, to give the United States first call on the majority of our seemingly limitless reserves of oil and gas.

None of those assumptions now hold. Elsewhere, governments are making plans to drastically cut greenhouse gases, meet the challenge of very expensive gasoline and natural gas, and are preparing for the sudden shut off of fossil fuels.

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