Potash Deal Pits Western Canada Against Ottawa Yet Again

Remember the National Energy Program scandal? Western Canadians do. And they're not likely to forget their anger at the Potash deal either if Ottawa lets it go through.

As of 5 pm Wednesday the expected announcement on whether Ottawa will allow the controversial takeover of Saskatchewan’s Potash Corp. by the Australian firm BHP Billiton had not materialized. So here are some last minute thoughts on the deal, possibly recorded just moments before it was approved and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s head exploded.

Wall has been actively campaigning for Ottawa to block the deal, raising specters of past conflicts between the federal government and Western Canada, like the National Energy Plan fiasco in the 1980s that has made the Liberals unpopular in the region ever since. In a typically insightful column by the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hebert, she writes “As often as not in the past, what was considered optimal by a strong section of Western Canada eventually turned out to not be considered best for the country as a whole by the federal government of the day … changing that particular equation has been a core aspiration of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.” Despite campaigning on respect for provinces’ rights, good relations between the provinces Harper is the exception, not the rule, and “most provinces currently have ongoing or pending litigation against the Harper government” over senate reform and financial regulation. Should the Potash deal go through, Wall promises Harper will have another lawsuit on his hands.

He’ll also lose some seats in Parliament. The Saskatoon Starphoenix issued this thinly veiled threat today against the province's 13 Tory MPs, now commonly referred to as the “Silent 13” for their refusal to vocally oppose the takeover.

The Montreal Gazette’s L. Ian MacDonald expresses some confusion at the logic underpinning objections to the takeover. Polls show 85 per cent of Saskatchewan voters oppose the deal. “You'd think BHP wanted to move the Rough Riders to another province,” MacDonald writes. The company is already majority foreign-owned, and BHP has promised to move its head offices back to Saskatoon from Chicago. “But don't tell that to Brad Wall and the people of Saskatchewan. To them, Potash Corp., is part of their identity, even if it's already foreign-owned. It's not business, it's personal.”