Preston Manning says environmental thinking is here to stay

The father of Canadian conservatism advocates creating national conservation watchdog agencies

By Gordon Jaremko

October 01, 2009

Industry can’t afford to coast if Preston Manning is right. The father of modern Canadian conservatism believes a political turning point has been passed.

For the first time, an economic slump has failed to knock the environment off the public agenda, Manning says. As author of an autobiography titled Think Big, founder of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, and aspiring leader of a fledgling movement called green conservatism, he advocates creating national conservation watchdog agencies.

He is a star speaker in arenas such as the Fourth National Stewardship and Conservation Conference, an event for chiefs of environmental organizations that was held at the University of Calgary this summer. By way of confirming that Manning is onto something with his take on the political scene, the event also lured out Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, Lieutenant Governor Norman Kwong, provincial cabinet ministers and Liberal leader David Swann.

But outside urban ivory towers, the other side of the political coin is face up. All the festivals of concern over carbon emissions and waste management have failed to dim the desire for decent livelihoods.

As in Alberta’s oil sands, visions are big in the emerging natural gas belt of northern British Columbia. Although development is in the trial stages of working bugs out of new drilling and production technology, the beginnings already make a difference.

“It’s probably over 50 per cent of our economy,” reports Chetwynd Mayor Evan Saugstad. “The gas industry is by far the biggest [tax] contributor to the municipality.” Talisman Energy, ConocoPhillips Canada, BP Canada Energy, EnCana Corp. and Shell Canada are household names in his rugged area 160 kilometers west of the Alaska Highway’s first milepost at Dawson Creek.

Gas inherits its role as a budding B.C. economic mainstay partly by default. Forestry mills are mothballed or running below capacity. Coal mining is uneven. The first wind power project on breezy northern ridges, built by Calgary’s AltaGas Income Trust, is starting up with federal help, but bigger plans by other green energy entrepreneurs stalled.

In private life, Saugstad works for a rare stable economic fixture of the region, doing community relations for Spectra Energy’s B.C. gas pipeline and processing network. He voices the perennial hopes of northern communities to develop permanent industrial operations that free them from boom-bust resource extraction cycles. He is under no illusions that economic nirvana will be easy to attain.

“When things shut down, it’s the highest cost operations that shut first,” says Saugstad, who is also a veteran of Yukon cycles. “We should all work together to have the lowest costs. We’re competing on world markets. If they can produce gas cheaper in Texas, they will. Nobody really has a solution.”

One clue that might point to a magic formula is the title of Manning’s autobiography. Part of Saugstad’s job is teaching urban corporate personnel to think big about adapting industry and communities to one another, starting with basics like allowing enough time to develop relationships by measuring travel in 100-kilometer legs instead of city blocks.