With friends like these...

In 1969, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau told the Washington Press Club that "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." Five decades on, those words still ring very true.

Joe Biden's very first act on assuming the presidency back in January was to cancel the Keystone pipeline project, which would have boosted exports of Canadian crude oil from Alberta to Gulf coast refineries.  Money that had been spent on construction of the pipeline went up in smoke, along with thousands of jobs. Nine months later, this egregious act of virtue signalling contrasts sharply with Biden's pleas for OPEC to boost oil production, as global crude prices head for $100/bbl. Canada is by far the largest supplier of US oil imports, but the lack of pipeline capacity makes it hard to boost those shipments when they're most needed. 

The centrepiece of Biden's domestic agenda is his so-called infrastructure spending plan -- "so-called" because the definition of infrastructure seems infinitely elastic. The size of the package is still in dispute -- $1.5 billion? $ 3.5 billion? Who knows?  But what is clear is a strong "buy American" theme running through the entire deal.  No surprise there -- protectionism runs deep in the US, particularly in the Democratic Party. This poses a particular threat to Canada, most notably the auto sector, as this article explains. It seems likely that many of these provisions will turn out to be in breach of the revised North American trade deal, but there's plenty of scope for damage to be done before that gets proved in court.

Then there's the border. The US and Canada closed "the longest undefended frontier in the world" to all but essential traffic back in March 2020, and that closure has been extended on a month-by-month basis ever since. (Travel by air has never been closed off). Canada reopened its border to fully vaccinated US travellers this summer, but the US kept Canadians (and Mexicans) out, even though Canada has done a much better job than the US in controlling the COVID pandemic. The land border will finally reopen for Canadian travellers on November 8, but the extended closure on the US side looks like a gratuitous slap in the face.

We started with virtue signalling and pipelines, so let's end there. The Line 5 pipeline carries Canadian oil and gas across Wisconsin and Michigan to supply Ontario and Quebec, as well as parts of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio. It has been in operation since 1953 and has a good safety record. The pipeline crosses beneath the Mackinac Straits in northern Michigan. That state's Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has declared that portion of the pipeline is "a ticking timebomb" and wants it closed. 

This would cause serious harm not only to the two Canadian provinces, but also three US states, including Whitmer's own. The pipeline operator, Enbridge,  is resisting Whitmer's demand, backed by the Government of Canada and, it should be noted, by business interests and unions in the three affected states. The Biden administration has not responded to Canada's pleas for Federal intervention in the matter. It all seems set to wind up in court. In the meantime Enbridge's plan to build a tunnel to carry the pipeline safely under the lakebed is being reviewed, bizarrely as it seems, by the US Army Corps of Engineers. 

It's hard not to notice that Governor Whitmer's supposed concern for the purity of the waters of the Straits of Mackinac stands in sharp contrast with her state's failure to ensure safe drinking water for its citizens: just ask the people of Flint.  Really, with friends like these, Canada surely has no need of enemies.