​PM Carney emerges unscathed From Kananaskis Conference, But with storm clouds for N.B.

Newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney appears to have done well in hosting his first G-7, at Kananaskis, Alberta. Carney first had his private meeting with U.S. President Trump and there was progress on bilateral trade, although the two leaders differ on the value of tariffs.

Then, with Trump’s early departure to address Middle Eastern matters, the atmosphere at the conference became positively convivial, with several leaders going for a glass of wine together…

Meanwhile, President Trump has been keeping the world guessing about whether the United States will join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites. He told reporters “I may do it. I may not do it.” In speaking so casually about war in this way, Trump simply adds worries to a worrying world situation.

For the U.S. to enter an all-out Middle Eastern war would be foolhardy, particularly as Trump has billed himself as the omnipotent leader who could stop all wars including the bloody Ukraine-Russia war in a matter of days of assuming his presidency. That did not happen.
 
Despite great concern in Canada’s Sikh community over Carney’s  invitation to the G-7 of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, there was an overall positive result with the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and Carney’s commitment that the RCMP investigation of the actions in Canada of Indian agents would continue, regardless.

On less solid ground is PM Carney’s method of launching economic recovery in Canada by encouraging the provincial Premiers to bring forward their projects of “national importance.”

Just last week the Against the Flow blog likened the Premiers to young kids lining up happily at the mall to meet Santa Claus to present their wish list for Christmas.

Now that process has soured somewhat, particularly for small provinces like New Brunswick.

Premier Susan Holt, still relatively new on the job after being elected with a majority government in November, has been placed in an awkward position in the new Carney process of choosing projects of national importance. One of the early projects she put forward was a good package giving a further boost to the spectacular resurgence of the Port of Saint John.

That sounded like very good proposal from the Premier. The Port now has upwards of five container cranes, those giants that look great blue herons hanging over their cargo.

Large containers are stacked along side the shipping berths, symbolizing the great importance of the port for trade with the world. The port also has important rail links via the N.B. Southern Line and CP Rail through the state of Maine and on to the province of Quebec. That is a great deal better for the environment than sending the large containers via transport truck.

Saint John has also become an important stop for major passenger cruise ship lines, with a whole infrastructure developed to accommodate these shipping giants.

Now though, it appears, at the urging of Dominic LeBlanc, the senior federal minister for New Brunswick, Holt has cooled on the port development support project. She has even floated the idea of building a second nuclear generating station at Point Lepreau.

A word of caution for Premier Holt, Point Lepreau One glittered for former Premier Richard Hatfield, because of all those construction jobs, but it was a financial boondoggle for the province and the already debt-ridden N.B. Power.

The original cost of Point Lepreau in the 1970’s was $480 million. That ballooned to $1.1 billion by the time it was completed in the early 1980’s. That perhaps does not sound like a huge amount in today’s dollars, but back then it was a very big number.

Lepreau was the largest construction project in the history of the province. Unfortunately, it fostered various forms of corruption for the then Conservative government and various Lepreau construction contractors.

Now, both the federal Parliament and the New Brunswick Legislature are on summer break, and there has yet to be a federal budget since the Carney government was elected.

It would certainly be premature for governments to commit to a very large project like Point Lepreau Two which would require full public debate, and a decade of planning, environmental assessment, ingenious financing, not to mention construction time, to put in place.