While U.S. President Barack Obama puts personal politics ahead of his country’s critical need for oil via the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada’s wooing of the Asian option should move quickly beyond simply courtship.

It should ramp up the Northern Gateway pipeline to our west coast post-haste.

We have the oil sands crude that China and India are lusting after.

If the faltering Obama administration doesn’t want it, and is willing to squander the opportunity in a “Hail Mary” attempt at winning back voters, then Canada should move forward immediately to secure oil exports to Asia-based clients.

The Northern Gateway pipeline is therefore key.

In politics as in comedy, timing is everything, and so Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the perfect stage during a recent meeting of Pacific-rim leaders to lay out his position to Obama.

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And kudos to him for doing just that.

In doing so, Harper made sure the international media was aware of Obama’s real reason for delaying the $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline which would hookup Alberta’s ethical oil with refineries in Texas.

Dumb political reasons, at that.

There’s Obama’s decision to breathe life back into the crippling “Buy American” rules for accepting foreign exports — like Canadian steel, for example — and the odious plan to raise $100 million by nicking Canadian travelers with a $5.50 “passenger inspection fee.”

He is grasping at straws, and knuckling under to the Hollywood crowd who can afford the hypocrisy of accepting unethical Saudi oil over oil sands crude, and supporting the no-longer-welcome Occupy mob.

Until the 2012 election is over, American politics will be contorting itself for at-home votes, and saying whatever is necessary to get them.

— The Ottawa Sun, Ontario, Nov. 14


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