It goes against every fibre of my being to be on the same side as Lucien Bouchard about anything, but an Oct. 23 report in the Financial Post almost has me rooting for the guy in his current efforts.
Bouchard, former No. 1 separatist in Ottawa and Quebec, and former premier, is trying to push the province to accept natural gas and oil development. He's the head of the Quebec Oil and Gas Association, if you can believe it.
It's a tough slog. On that same day, there were 389 active drilling rigs in Western Canada, and just one east of the Manitoba/Ontario border (not counting offshore rigs). Surprisingly, that one rig was in Quebec. I wonder if they had armed guards protecting it.
It's not like Quebec doesn't have oil or gas. Apparently it has quite a bit of gas. But it's that shale gas, you know, the stuff that requires fracking.
And heaven forbid one should frack in Quebec. The world would come to an end.
You see, in la belle province, it's perfectly fine to dam and flood every large river system imaginable in the north for the purposes of harvesting energy. You can profoundly alter entire ecosystems, displace native people, and that's OK. But drilling a seven-inch well - not on your life, pal.
Steve Jobs was said to have a "reality distortion field" about him. It seems to have enraptured Quebec.
Along the banks of the St. Lawrence, people don't need to know where natural gas comes from, as long as it heats their homes. They don't need to bother with where gasoline comes from, as long as it gets pumped into their gas tanks.
This is the same distortion field that had students banging pots and pans in the streets over tuition increases less than the cost of two or three textbooks. These people also seem to think daycare costs only $7 a day per kid. Well, it does, when the province gets huge equalization transfer payments from the oil and gas producing provinces.
I'm not joking when I say a drilling rig could find itself surrounded by pot-banging protesters. It would be fun keeping them off the lease.
A while back I talked to some seismic survey guys who worked in Quebec. Not much of that happening these days, I would gather.
There's a simple truth I've discovered in covering Saskatchewan's oil patch. Towns in the patch have every house occupied, either by renters or owners. Labour is in short supply. Businesses are growing.
Outside of these areas, rural Saskatchewan is doing better than it was a few years ago, but it's nowhere near the level of economic growth.
I don't know rural Quebec, but for a province with a stagnant economy, any help should be welcomed, you would think. Except that it's not.
Most jurisdictions would welcome the influx of jobs and industry, especially when times are tough. But why do that when you can have the supposedly dirty work happen in Western Canada and still get the money sent to you via equalization?
Maybe if Canada seriously rejigs its equalization formula, Quebec will realize it can have an oil and gas industry, and in fact, may need it. Until then, they're getting the milk for free, as it were, so they can turn up their noses as much as they like.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
