In the same week that China’s National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) applied for federal approval for its takeover of Canadian oil company, Nexen, Kuwait’s state-owned company was reported to have signed a deal with Canada’s Athabasca Oil Corp. That’s two countries, known for poor ethics, buying a piece of the Canadian oil patch. And yet, our oil remains as ethical as ever.

Not everyone gets that, of course. Rick Smith, head of the anti-oil political activist group, Environmental Defence, suggests that even exporting Canadian oil to China would immediately compromise our legitimate claim to producing the world’s most ethical oil. It’s true that Rick Smith is an extremist who would say anything to undermine Canada’s oil industry. But even reasonable Canadians might wonder if allowing oil companies from unethical regimes to invest in our exceptional resource risks compromising our stellar ethical reputation. The simple fact is: Canada ranks among the most ethical countries on the planet. No foreign investor is able to change that.

Investors from unethical places have invested in Canada for a long time; it doesn’t change the values that Canadians uphold in our business and our society.  In fact, the Canadian values so integral to the way we operate is very much a part of the reasons that global investors from all sorts of places choose to invest here. When the Saudis — as unethical a regime as you’ll find anywhere — bought a stake in the Four Seasons hotel chain, founded by Canadian Isadore Sharp, they paid billions of dollars to get their hands on a world-class, quality brand known for having among the finest employees in the hotel industry. Investors pay a premium for Canadian firms because they want to own firms that operate by Canadian principles (CNOOC is offering Nexen shareholders 61% more for their stock than the pre-bid market price). If the Saudi royals introduced their abusive, unethical sharia values to Four Seasons, they’d destroy the very value of the company they paid so much to get their hands on.

The same is obviously true in our oil industry. Canada has an incredible amount of oil, but we don’t have on a monopoly on it.  What we do offer investors, that Venezuela, Russia and Nigeria do not, is a secure, peaceful place to business. We offer a stable and lawful investment climate where the government doesn’t whimsically seize property from owners. We don’t have corrupt politicians with their hands out for bribes as they cut regulatory corners, harming the public to help themselves.  And we boast a creative, educated and highly skilled workforce, full of workers proud of what they do every day and unwilling to settle for the shameful environmental and labour standards of conflict oil producers.

Investors — wherever they come from — also come here knowing that Canadians own the energy resources in this country, and we make the rules about how they can be produced. And our rules are stringent.  We have a diverse country that does not tolerate discrimination. The public insists, through our laws, that our environment is well taken care of and that workers are treated to the highest safety standards and rights anywhere. We even require, again through law, that aboriginals are included in any decision process affecting them. These codes of conduct are every bit as high, and mandatory, for CNOOC and Kuwait Petroleum Corp. as they are for Canadian-owned firms.

This is what being an ethical oil producer is all about: It’s about Canadians, and the values we uphold in society and business. The fact that investors continue to flock to our country in increasing numbers, from all over the globe, and agree to practice standards so far above what they’re used to at home, only proves that they appreciate the value of the way we do business. Canada’s oil industry has set a tremendous example for the world in so many ways — not least the pioneering innovation developed right here to extract previously unusable oil resources from the oil sands in an economic and environmentally sustainable way. But the most striking lesson we teach international businesses every single day is how unsurpassed ethics are good for business. Our profitable, globally admired businesses are coveted by investors not despite the way they operate, but precisely because of it.

Although CNOOC and Kuwait Petroleum are no doubt eager to learn as much as they can about how Canadians have melded unrivaled ethical standards with business success, it would be naïve to presume that their investments mean China and Kuwait are about to suddenly transform into peaceful, democratic, free societies intolerant of discrimination and abuse. But when capital from Kuwait and China comes to Canada, it does mean more support for our ethical oil. That not only means capital redirected away from investments in less ethical countries; it also means more capital used to bring yet more of our ethical oil to market. And the more ethical oil we can bring to the world, the more we can finally break the stranglehold that conflict oil countries have had on the global oil market for so long.

Wherever they come from, when investors come to Canada, keen to do business here according to Canada’s ethical standards, it only vindicates the importance of the values our country stands for, and only makes Canada’s ethical oil a stronger force in the world.

There are a few reasons for it, but a key point is that when Americans need more oil, they just can’t order up more of Canada’s ethical oil. And as long as they rely on conflict oil, they’re vulnerable to “a physical threat to U.S. supply as well as a potential price shock on a global level,” as David L. Goldwyn, former State Department coordinator for international energy affairs in the Obama administration, explained to the Times. “Until we have the ability to access more Canadian heavy oil through improved infrastructure, the vulnerability will remain,” he said.

Currently there just isn’t sufficient pipeline capacity for Americans to take on any more Canadian oil from our oil sands, so they have to accept more tankers from OPEC’s conflict regimes instead. It’s no secret why that is: environmental extremists did a thorough enough job spreading fear and disinformation about Canada’s oil sands that the Obama administration was harangued into rejecting a proposal for increased Canadian oil pipeline capacity.

The propaganda from anti-oil zealots like Bill McKibben mau-maued politicians and unprepared voters with claims that building a pipeline like Keystone XL to Canada would mean “game over for the climate” since Canada’s vast deposits would allow Americans to keep using oil — as if they would suddenly begin to fly planes using solar panels and power their pickups and cargo trucks with windmills.

The oil sands clearly aren’t going to stop expanding just because the Obama administration won’t approve a pipeline, and Americans won’t stop demanding oil just because environmentalist find ways to obstruct their access to Canadian crude. Just this summer, oil sands output reached a new record of 1.037 million barrels a day, according to calculations by Calgary-based investment firm FirstEnergy Capital. Instead, Canada will find ways to export its oil somewhere else — piping it to tankers in on the east and west coasts for sale overseas — while Americans call in tankers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Venezuela.

What an absurdly backward situation. Canada and the United States are among the closest allies in the world. We are next-door neighbours. And you’ll find no two countries more similar in values: in our respect for democracy, equality, freedom, rights and peace. Canada also has one of the largest oil deposits on earth, and the United States needs more oil. But, thanks to the warped agenda of the anti-oil lobby, Canada must work to get its oil to Asia, while America orders more oil from a the medieval theocratic, abusive, terror-sponsoring Saudi regime. Welcome to the bizarro world designed by the oil sands enemies. Surely nobody can believe this arrangement does either the U.S., or Canada an ounce of good. The only ones chuckling today are the Saudis and their conflict oil cronies in OPEC.

That disgraceful irony isn’t lost on a lot of Americans: Already the Republican party has promised, as part of its 2012 election platform, a strategy to move North America towards energy independence. A key part of that plan announced by Mitt Romney means building more pipelines, like Keystone XL, connecting U.S. refineries to Canada and American consumers to Canada’s ethical oil. We already know that’s what Americans — be they Republican or Democrat — desperately want: Public opinion polling shows that 85% of Americans want their government to support the use of oil from Canada’s oil sands, and 79% see pipelines as the best thing to move Canadian oil to U.S. markets.That’s as bipartisan an issue as you’ll find.

But for the anti-oil fanatics, what the vast majority of Americans want doesn’t matter. What Americans need to power their economy and create jobs doesn’t matter, either. It doesn’t even matter that the U.S. is being forced to increase its support for reprehensible, retrograde and repressive conflict oil regimes for lack of access to ethical Canadian oil — leaving Americans more susceptible to supply disruptions, price shocks, and a severely compromised foreign policy. All that matters to them is that Americans are blocked from getting access to a convenient, secure, peaceful and plentiful supply of oil. It’s a narrow-minded, perverted and dangerous crusade. And tragically, these days, it appears that it may be getting results.

The biggest test of that flawed and mushy moral equivalence is yet to come, though: Will they continue to claim that Canada’s ethical oil isn’t worth supporting over OPEC’s blood oil once Iran starts threatening the world with nuclear war? Because it’s looking like that day is approaching very quickly.

Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, a left-leaning publication generally skeptical of the more hawkish political strains in that country, is now reporting that the U.S. President has recently received a new National Intelligence Estimate report briefing him on the state of Iran’s nuclear program. And, alarmingly, it found the Iranian theocracy has made “surprising, significant progress toward military nuclear capability,” the paper reports.

Iran has always pretended to the world that it sought nuclear technology for civilian purposes, only. It was a pretty absurd claim, given that a country as oil rich as Iran had little reason for alternative power sources like nuclear, but it at least gave oilsands bashers at least a shred of cover as they defended conflict oil from OPEC — of which Iran is a founding member — as no more dangerous or morally flawed than Canadian oil.

Saudi Arabia treating its women as chattel, Nigeria waging war on its own people, and Venezuela giving military support to the tyrannical maniacs in Libya and Syria, were harder to ignore, but at least, as consequences of conflict oil regimes, they’re less visible to North American consumers. With Iran on the brink of threatening its neighbours, and perhaps all of us eventually, with nuclear attack — a regime that has promised a genocide that would wipe Middle Eastern Jews off the map, remember —  the danger of excusing, even supporting conflict oil over ethical Canadian oil will be that much harder for any of us to ignore. Even oil sands haters.

Because, truly, this threat to the world is brought to you very directly by consumers who have for far too long patronized conflict oil. The mullahs who run Iran have been absolutely awful; this is nothing new. The country, after all, is the Number One supporter of terrorism worldwide. It commits horrific human rights abuses. It threatens to annihilate its Middle East neighbours. And yet, consumers in Europe and Asia have continued to prop up Tehran’s depraved regime for want of Iranian energy supplies. Only recently, as a result of international sanctions against the rogue mullahs over their heedless rush toward nuclear arms, has Europe finally suspended Iranian oil imports.

Their decision to stand on principle has clearly come too late. Iran will no longer just terrorize its own people, or Jews, as in the past; it is now on the brink of terrorizing the world, using its nuclear threat as a threat against us all. Tehran relies on oil exports for the majority of government revenues, with 90% of its export income dependent on oil and gas resources; none of this would have come to pass had the world refused to prop up this vicious regime with by purchasing their conflict oil.

In the past, you could almost excuse it: Iran belonged to a clique of countries that held unparalleled oil reserves. There were scarcely any other suppliers. But now that Canada has discovered, and begun to mine, oilsands reserves larger than even Iran’s oil deposits and nearly rivaling those of Saudi Arabia, there is no longer an excuse for anyone, anywhere to not support Canadian oil as a replacement for conflict oil wherever possible.

And yet, astonishingly the oil sands haters — many of them foreign-funded activists — are still trying to keep the oil market from falling into ethical hands. They are working night and day to keep Canadian oil from coming to market, foiling plans for pipelines and shipping, so that consumers worldwide will have to remain dependent on conflict oil regimes. Once Iran does have its nuclear bombs, the anti-Canadian activists would see to it that the world has no choice but to go back to buying Iranian oil again. With its nukes in hand, Iran just might be able to insist upon it.

This is the true cost of supporting conflict oil over ethical oil. Anti-oil sands types may prefer not to spare a thought for the oppressed women, workers, gays and democrats who are beaten, tortured and murdered in so many OPEC countries. They may prefer to ignore the terrorist bombings and killings engendered by conflict oil regimes. But Iranian nuclear terror bought and paid for with the proceeds of conflict oil? Unfortunately for all of us, that very dangerous consequence will be a much harder thing for them to dismiss.

Here’s how: You hire Fernando Aguirre and let him alienate an export market of 33 million people by announcing your company will boycott one of their most important industries.

That’s what happened at Chiquita, the name nearly synonymous with bananas. Chiquita has announced that it is replacing Aguirre as chairman and CEO; as the Wall Street Journal reported “directors decided to replace him due to dissatisfaction over the company’s lengthy earnings decline.” Most recently, Aguirre managed to turn $78 million in last year’s earnings for the second quarter, into a paltry $6 million profit the same quarter this year.

At least some of that loss must have been the result of Aguirre’s bizarre decision to poke a finger in Canada’s eye by announcing that Chiquita wouldn’t be using oil from our country’s vital oilsands sector. Aguirre had rashly agreed to force Chiquita shareholders to submit to a boycott pressure campaign from the extreme American activist group, ForestEthics, which has been badgering Fortune 500 companies to join their futile, wrongheaded battle to keep Canadian oil out of the U.S., and Americans dependent instead on OPEC’s conflict oil.

Aguirre proved that when you’re in business to serve a fringe band of anti-oil, anti-Canadian extremists, and not your actual shareholders and customers, you risk not remaining a Fortune 500 company for long. Chiquita’s decision to boycott Canadian oil unleashed a massive backlash here in Canada, and a counter boycott, started right here at EthicalOil.org. We ran radio ads highlighting Chiquita’s awful record of supporting terrorists and other human rights abuses, without even having to get into the company’s dodgy environmental track record.

Federal MPs, including cabinet ministers Jason Kenney and Rona Ambrose went to Twitter to denounce Chiquita’s foolish attack on Canadian jobs and businesses. So did Alberta opposition leader Danielle Smith. We held an anti-Chiquita demonstration outside grocery stores. The Canadian Trucking Alliance protested, calling Chiquita’s decision uninformed. Businesses across the country began announcing they would no longer serve Chiquita products to their customers.

As the widely respected Economist magazine reported a few months ago, Chiquita’s owners paid dearly for Aguirre’s dumb boycott decision, which “may have pleased environmentalists, but it infuriated Canadians who depend on the oil industry.” The boycott, it said was “said to be costing the company a fortune. Chiquita would not quantify its losses.”

Now we have a sense of those losses: vanishing profits, and a CEO tossed aside, after proving far too keen to suck up to radicals — in exchange for ticking off an entire nation rightly proud of its excellent ethical and environmental record.

Hopefully Chiquita’s next boss will be smart enough to make winning back Canadian customers one of his earliest priorities. But even if Chiquita — which, after getting caught funding terrorist groups has proven itself to be of questionable principle, anyway — never does get around to fixing this colossal screw-up, there’s reason for Canadians to be encouraged by what became of Fernando Aguirre. After all, ForestEthics is still trying to bully other companies, like Dole and Wal-Mart into making the same stupid, anti-Canadian decision that Chiquita made. And you can probably imagine that not many Fortune 500 CEOs are right now feeling eager to risk attacking Canada and potentially finding themselves like Fernando Aguirre: with a record of bad earnings and out of a job.

blatantly violating Canadian charities law

TORONTO – EthicalOil.org sent a letter of complaint to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) today calling for Tides Canada’s charitable status to be reviewed for violating Canada’s charities law.

The CRA has strict rules that registered charities must follow in order to maintain their special privilege of tax subsidies from Canadian taxpayers. But the mounting evidence suggests Tides Canada is abusing that special privilege. The 143-page letter details three ways that calls into question Tides Canada’s compliance with the law:

1. Tides Canada is involved in an abundance of political activity, suggesting a collateral political agenda that goes to its core.
2. Tides acts as a conduit of charitable dollars, funnelling charitable donations to highly political, and non-charitable, groups like PETA and ForestEthics.
3. Tides Canada’s resources benefit people and organizations that are not arms length from Tides and its personnel.

PETA and ForestEthics are inherently political organizations that would never qualify for charitable status, but Tides Canada provides them with taxpayer-subsidized money.  They claim to be involved in no (zero) political activity, but the countless examples prove otherwise. Tides Canada is also the preferred clearinghouse for foreign billionaires to funnel millions into Canada to attack Canada’s resource industry.

“Whether engaging in highly political campaigns or using accounting tricks to fund highly political organizations, the mounting evidence suggests Tides Canada is political to its core and violating the law. It’s time for the CRA to investigate.”

–Jamie Ellerton, Executive Director, EthicalOil.org

To see the letter of complain click HERE

McMillan is clearly willing to abuse the truth every bit as shamelessly as his organization is willing to abuse Canada’s charity tax rules. Just weeks earlier, as a matter of fact, Tides well-sharpened political fangs were on full display in an interview the president himself gave to the Vancouver Sun. In response to Ottawa’s plan to monitor more closely how registered charities — like Tides — were adhering to rules restricting their political activities, McMillan couldn’t resist attacking the Conservative government.

Accusing the Conservative government of an “agenda” to “dismantle” environmental protections, while vowing to fight the plan, is an unmistakably political stance. So was Tides Canada’s support of the “Black Out, Speak Out” web demonstration by environmental activists protesting the Canadian government’s increased law enforcement of charitable rules. It isn’t difficult to see how: The Canada Revenue Agency policy statement CPS-022, defines a political purpose as “convincing or needing people to act in a certain way and which is contingent upon a change to law or government policy.”

If only Tides’ direct and blatant activism against this government policy — an activism heavily funded by foreign interests— were the extent of the problem. That, unfortunately, is only one of the many ways that Tides makes a mockery of Canada’s longstanding and important charitable rules.

Canadians take these charitable rules seriously, and for good reason. Charity is important to our country. The subsidies taxpayers support for charities are for very specific purposes, not for any group that feels its particular cause deserves a handout. Canadian courts have ruled clearly that to get the rich subsidies and tax-free benefits that registered charities enjoy, they must fit within one of four general categories of purpose: poverty relief, education advancement, religious advancement, and if it devotes its resources to providing a tangible benefit to the community in a legally recognized charitable fashion.

Political activism, beyond an extremely minimal amount, has been specifically and deliberately excluded from these categories. Trouble is, Tides has been taking full advantage of taxpayer-funded gifts intended for charities while funneling money to extremely political causes that would never qualify for charitable status because of their own political activity. Tides even brags about them on its website.

Tides uses its charity-sheltered dollars to fund PETA — the radical animal rights group that supports violence in its war on the meat industry.  It funds the politically driven Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, who until recently advertised its “star” staffer, former Senate page Brigette DePape holding the “Stop Harper” sign she used to disrupt last year’s throne speech. It funds the Dogwood Initiative, a group devoted to the purely political goal of changing the law to stop oil tankers off the B.C. coast, to foil the possibility of oil sands exports overseas. And Tides funds Forest Ethics, a group so viscerally political that it helped organized campaigns urging tourists and corporations to boycott Canada in protest of our energy policies. Tides gives money it claims is for charitable works to a group that wants to injure Canadians’ jobs and businesses from the energy sector to the agricultural sector. No one can reasonably call that anything like charity.

Tides isn’t just involved in political activism; it may even be connected to actual politics.  As the National Post reported in an investigation into Tides Canada in 2010, a number of donors to the Vancouver mayoralty campaign of Gregor Robertson “have been (either themselves or through their firms) on the receiving end of consulting fees paid by Tides, an organization that accepts American donations.” In short, American funds are flowing through Tides, and ending up in the pockets of people who then turn around and make donations to a politician with an agenda they back. Mayor Robertson, a former Tides director himself, has come through diligently, vowing to fight against oil pipelines and tankers that would support Canada’s oil sands related jobs and businesses.

Ross McMillan has overseen all this. He’s been part of it. And yet he only weeks ago stood up in front of a roomful of Toronto’s business leaders and said he’d seen “no evidence” of political activity. Perhaps he is naïve. Perhaps he doesn’t understand what the term “political activity” actually means. Maybe his staggering cluelessness is why Tides tells Ottawa it’s involved in “zero” political activity. That’s a far more generous explanation than the only alternative: that Tides has been cynically playing taxpayers for fools, scooping up rich subsidies intended for truly charitable work, and redirecting it to highly politicized campaigns against Canadian jobs, businesses, and government policies.

Whatever the reason McMillan continues to promote his laughable charade, taxpayers shouldn’t accept it. The federal budget’s vow to beef up enforcement against registered charities who are not playing fair received huge support from Canadians:  80% liked it according to an Angus Reid poll conducted shortly after the budget was tabled, higher than any other budget initiative measured. Canadians have made it clear: they want their charitable subsidies going to genuine charities, not activists promoting anti-Canadian boycotts or working to block shipping traffic, or animal rights extremists out to bankrupt our farmers and ranchers. That’s why EthicalOil.org has complained to the Canada Revenue Agency, making the case that Tides refusal to play fair and play by the rules should be investigated.

Ross McMillan and his group are entitled to be as political as they want — it’s a free country, after all — but they are not entitled to use taxpayer subsidies intended for charitable work to do it any more than any other political activist group is. Canadians know that those subsidies and tax breaks are intended for real charities, doing genuinely helpful things in our communities; charities that manage to ethically observe Canada’s reasonable, fair and long-standing charity rules. They’re the ones who need and deserve our help. Tides, with its billion dollar funders in foreign countries, doesn’t need taxpayers’ help, doesn’t deserve that help, and it needs to be told to stop dodging our tax laws to take advantage of it.

Northern Gateway Pipeline: The Canadian Press is reporting this afternoon that the Federal Government, acting on recent changes made in this year’s Federal budget, set a deadline for the Northern Gateway Pipeline project’s environmental assessment and report from the NEB to be completed by Dec. 31, 2013.

Ethical oil coming to gas pumps in Ontario: Back in May EthicalOil.org released a radio ad to raise awareness of the opportunity to bring Canadian oil to Ontario and lessen our reliance on conflict oil from OPEC’s tyrants. GREAT NEWS! The National Energy Board approved Enbridge Inc’s application to reverse a portion of the Line 9 pipeline that will bring Canadian oil to Westover, Ontario (just outside of Hamilton). The reversal will bring up to 50 000 barrels of Canadian oil per day to the Imperial Oil refinery in Nanticoke and, most importantly, means Canadians east of Manitoba will be consuming more ethical oil and importing less conflict oil from places like Saudi Arabia and Algeria.

The reversal to bring Canadian oil to eastern Canada was supported by Thomas Mulcair, Elizabeth May and the federal government. Canada’s Building Trades Union also publicly applauded the decision. Robert Blakely, the Building Trades Unions Director of Canadian Affairs said “Keeping our natural resources moving securely within Canada means more jobs for Canadian workers and better security for those who are already employed.”

Keep following the news as it relates to Line 9 as Enbridge has announced their intention to reverse the flow of the pipeline so that Canadian oil can be shipped all the way to Montreal. Suncor and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada support bringing Canadian oil to Quebec.

Pipeline Safety: With all the news of late regarding pipeline safety, Enbridge President Al Monaco responded to critics with an open letter the Facts About Pipelines. In it Monaco states “Over the last decade we’ve (Enbridge Inc.) transported almost  12 billion barrels of crude oil with a safe delivery record better than 99.999 per cent.  That’s good, but for us, it’s not good enough.  We will never stop striving for 100 per cent.”

One of EthicalOil.org’s Facebook fans also posted this US Department of Transportation FAQ on pipeline safety.

Have a good weekend!

pipeline reversal in southern Ontario

TORONTO –Canada is taking concrete steps to choose ethical oil and lessen our reliance on imported conflict oil, with the news late Friday afternoon that the National Energy Board (NEB) has approved the application to reverse the flow of the Line 9 pipeline in southern Ontario.

The regulatory approval means the flow of the Line 9 pipeline will be reversed to bring ethical oil from western Canada to refineries in Ontario. Once the reversal is complete, when Ontarians fill up at the gas pumps they will be increasing their support for Canadian industry and Canadian jobs.

EthicalOil.org commends the NEB for seeing the merits of the project in the face of opposition from radical environmental groups who are opposed to Canadians using Canadian oil. The Line 9 pipeline has brought imported OPEC oil through Quebec to Sarnia since 1999.

“By reversing the Line 9 pipeline, Canada is seizing a tremendous opportunity to choose ethical oil from Canada and lessen our reliance on imported oil from OPEC’s tyrants.”

–Jamie Ellerton, Executive Director, EthicalOil.org

Things have changed in B.C. It is, thankfully, today a much healthier province, economically. But with her province’s good fortune, B.C. premier Christy Clark seems to have overlooked the spirit of interprovincial cooperation underpinning the Canadian federation. Alberta wants to bring its oil to overseas markets and requires pipelines that run to tanker ports on B.C.’s coast. Clark, however, is suddenly demanding that Alberta cough up its energy royalties before she’ll let the oil pass.

Yet even Clark herself acknowledges that the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline is “good for Canada.” And it is: the pipeline is expected to pump, in addition to ethical oil headed for markets stuck relying on conflict oil, an additional $81 billion in tax revenue into the Canadian economy. Plus, as federal natural resources minister Joe Oliver has noted, opening markets beyond the U.S. to Canada’s ethical oil will create here at home “hundreds of thousands of new jobs” and “trillions [of dollars] in economic benefits.” All provinces will benefit handsomely from the successful development of the oil sands industry — in jobs and tax transfers — as the Canadian Energy Research Institute has exhaustively detailed; British Columbia will help us all by helping the oil sands — or at the very least not blocking the way.

It’s no secret that Christy Clark’s Liberal party is struggling to connect with voters in advance of an election next May. But playing a dangerous political game with a project of such profound national importance is a seriously misguided maneuver. Especially since virtually all of Clark’s demands are already in the process of being addressed.

Clark has insisted that for B.C. to agree to allow Northern Gateway into its province, it must pass the National Energy Board’s environmental review. But getting a passing grade from Ottawa has always been a precondition for the pipeline proposal to proceed.  She wants Enbridge, the company behind the proposal, to prepare “world-leading” response plans to any spills that might occur on land or sea. Already pipelines are the safest form of oil transportation available, anywhere, but Enbridge is also preparing these response plans, as part of its application to the N.E.B.

Another of Clark’s demands is that Enbridge address the rights claims of First Nations and ensure they, too, benefit from the pipeline project. But again, she’s insisting on something well underway. As it happens, Enbridge reports that 60% of aboriginal groups within 80km of the pipeline route have now agreed to sign on as equity partners in the project, meaning they’re already set to enjoy a share of the revenues from Northern Gateway.

The only demand not already in the process of being addressed is Clark’s new insistence that B.C. get their “fair share.” This explosive political rhetoric was void of details. If she’s referring to oil royalties, they constitutionally belong to Alberta. Michael Percy, the former dean of the University of Alberta’s business school,  warned such a precedent would be “so destructive to Canadian federalism.”

The repercussions of such a bizarre and unheard of arrangement aren’t hard to imagine. Pipelines are, after all, just another mode of transport. If Clark would hold Alberta’s exports ransom in exchange for a cut of royalties, then other provinces could do the same to B.C., commanding, for instance, royalty payoffs for allowing trains or trucks carrying B.C. minerals eastward.

Would Clark really redesign our federation into one where provinces interfere with the mobility of one another’s goods in order to extract maximum kickbacks? That isn’t just a depressing vision for a nation, but an economically destructive one — and this coming from a province that once heartily, and wisely, embraced lowering interprovincial barriers, even signing in 2006 a groundbreaking free-trade deal with Alberta aimed at doing just that.

In fact, B.C. has been home to pipelines from Alberta for years. More than half a century, actually: Since 1953, when Kinder Morgan built its Trans Mountain pipeline to carry crude oil and refined products from Alberta to the coast. Right now, that pipeline is delivering 300,000 barrels of ethical, Canadian oil for export to tankers at the Burrard Inlet — just as oil tankers are right now ferrying up and down B.C.’s coast (despite the fictional claim of a coastal tanker “ban” promoted by anti-oil groups). Kinder Morgan, by the way, has applied to expand the capacity of Trans Mountain to 750,000 barrels a day, and would invest $4.1 billion into the Canadian economy to do it.

That proposal and the Northern Gateway plan are significant opportunities for Canada’s economy. But they also represent a critical step to opening world markets to a new, massive, and ethical source of oil from Canada, further weakening the stranglehold that conflict oil producers like Iran and Saudi Arabia have held over oil importers for decades. The more ethical oil we can get to tankers on Canada’s west coast, the more international buyers can choose our oil — produced in a secure, peaceful, environmentally responsible way and to the highest standards of human rights and workers’ rights — over conflict oil from nations supporting terrorism, war, misogyny and repression. Getting Canada’s ethical oil to market is too important for Canada, and for Canadian values, to let political game-playing stand in the way.

Protectionists and hard-line China critics will oppose the deal, hoping Ottawa’s heavy hand will scuttle the deal in a similar fashion of BHP Billiton’s attempt to buy Potash Corp. What will Nexen’s shareholders do when they vote on the deal this fall? The cash offer of $27.50 (US) per share is a 60% premium to what Nexen’s stock closed at on Friday. If you were selling your home and asking $150,000, would you accept a $240,000 offer from the buyer? Would you still accept the offer if it was the Chinese government wanting to buy it? That’s what is on the table with the sale of Nexen to CNOOC and all indications are that shareholders will say yes.

The Chinese government has a deplorable human rights record, but that has not stopped Canada from doing business with China while standing up for our values. As John Ibbitson noted this morning, the mix of state-capitalism with Western capitalism is the way of the world today. In 2011 Canada imported $48.1 billion worth of goods and services from China, while only exporting $16.8 billion in return. Direct foreign investment is a win-win for our economy and projects like the Northern Gateway Pipeline could potentially double the value of our exports to China and cut our present $31 billion trade deficit with them in half.

What would a Chinese company owning an oil sands mine mean for Canada? A foreign state-owned company producing Canadian oil may seem like an affront to our values at first blush. They’re communists! It will be argued that this is selling out, but if you are looking at this deal through a moral lens in the context of the world’s reality, surely China using part of their nearly $3 trillion in foreign currency reserves to invest in Canada’s ethical oil industry is better than Chinese money propping up Omar al-Bashir in Sudan or the theocratic dictators in Iran.

The investment by CNOOC in Canada will increase Canadian prosperity and will allow our industry to grow. The oil reserves leases they are acquiring will have to be produced here in Canada. It is not whose name is on the share certificates that matter when looking at the ethics of oil, it is how the oil is produced and where it comes from.

Whoever owns an oil company operating in Canada, be they Canadian, America, French or Chinese, they must abide by Canadian laws and regulations. In Canada we protect human rights, we have safety rules, we have labour laws, we have environmental laws, and we have regulators and independent courts to enforce them all. This ensures Canadian values and our standards are upheld. That is what makes oil produced in Canada ethical. It is what makes it the ethical choice over conflict oil from OPEC’s tyrants.

Regulators in Canada, the US, and the UK will all have to approve this free market deal, including proving to Minister Paradis that this deal will result in a “net benefit to Canada.”  Unlike the manufacturing sector, the jobs at Nexen will remain right here in Canada. The oil sands mine will remain in Canada and Canadians will continue to be the ones that are employed in good paying jobs to remove the oil from the ground. CNOOC has also stated they will invest more to increase the mine’s productivity and establish their hemispheric HQ in Calgary. Perhaps most importantly, the oil being produced will be to Canada’s ethical standard.

As Canadians learn about the deal and what it means for Canada in the coming weeks, let’s stay true to our values, the same free market and cultural values that have made us prosperous and free for generations.