Wine war, bitumen battle between BC and Alberta could escalate

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Will the BC wine boycott blossom into a full-blown trade war with Alberta?

Premier John Horgan has warned Victoria will respond in the pipeline battle with our provincial neighbours, and that any arguments over how he is handling the Trans Mountain expansion project should be taken to the proper venue — the court system.

“Our consultation on proposed new regulations hasn’t even begun, but Alberta has seen fit to take measures to impact BC businesses,” Horgan said in a statement yesterday. “I urge Alberta to step back from this threatening position. We stand with BC wine producers and will respond to the unfair trade actions announced today.”

Should the bickering over bitumen escalate into a tit-for-tat trade war across the Rockies, at least one political observer believes there will be no winners.

“I don’t think it’s in anybody’s interest for a prolonged trade war,” says David Moscrop, a political theorist in the Scholarly Communications Lab at Simon Fraser University.

“Ultimately, this needs to be resolved because no governing party is going to come out ahead, no consumer is going to come out ahead, no producer is going to come out ahead — there’s no interest in seeing this through.”

Moscrop feels there is a lot of posturing going on.

“They have to be looking like they are defending the interests they’ve been elected to defend. For Horgan, it’s BC not getting the pipeline; for Notley, it’s Alberta getting the pipeline; for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it’s the whole country getting the pipeline. Everybody has a political incentive to look like they’re doing something and that’s exactly what they’re doing.”

But he says performative politics come with a risk.

“If you let it go too far, it will actually start to boomerang on you because, again, no one wins in these trade wars. They have a delicate balance to strike.”

Moscrop believes the trade tiff will sooner rather than later.

“Maybe that means the federal government will have to get the parties to sit down together and think of the long term interests of the country and each of the provinces. There’s a process here, there’s rule of law, no one wins a trade war, let’s figure this out. The economic costs of this will show up soon enough,” he says, predicting the trade war won’t last more than a few weeks.

Alberta has stopped importing BC wines, as that province’s premier threatens a series of bans aimed at forcing Victoria to withdraw a proposed halt on increased bitumen exports — potentially derailing an oil pipeline expansion.

Notley says BC can’t attack her province’s energy industry without expecting a response and she estimates Alberta’s ban will cost BC wineries about $70 million every year — although the president of the BC Wine Institute says it’s closer to $160 million.