Why are the wizards of ottawa (a.k.a. the Stephen Harper government) asserting so vehemently that the proposed $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline project is such a marvellous economic opportunity? At the moment, it’s beginning to look a lot more like smoke and mirrors.

The 1,000-kilometre pipeline would transport raw bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to British Columbia’s tidewaters at Kitimat for export to Asia. But, putting environmental concerns aside for the moment, the project is not necessarily the sustainable, job-creating slam dunk the wizards would have us believe.

This concern has surfaced now that the three-member National Energy Board Joint Review Panel has launched its extensive public review of Northern Gateway. Thousands of witnesses will be heard before the hearings conclude almost two years hence.

While En-bridge Inc. has built its case for the pipeline around exporting raw bitumen to Asia, wouldn’t it be better to build new refineries in Canada, then have value-added energy product available for export?

Critics charge that if the project’s proponents have their way, exporting raw bitumen to Asia will equate to exporting long-term jobs there, too. The value-added process will occur offshore, with the finished products produced overseas and sold back to Canadians at higher prices.

Here in B.C., this is a familiar scenario, given that a debate still rages over the steady, alarming increase in B.C. raw log exports to Asia. During the first six months of 2011, for example, more than 40% of trees logged on the West Coast were exported. This coastal harvest used to represent about 10% of the cut.

Although many aspects of this debate are highly complex, the ultimate impact is remarkably simple: more domestic jobs and wealth are created through harvesting your own trees and adding value at home via manufacturing of wood products than by simply harvesting the trees for export.

So, why export raw bitumen all the way to Asia, when, by building new refinery and pipeline infrastructure at home, we could add value here to Alberta’s oilsands? There’s even a ready-and-waiting eastern Canadian market, which now imports its oil from the North Sea and the Middle East.

I’m told the domestic pipeline rights-of-way already exist, the eastern Canadian market certainly exists and, once that market is served, surely any surplus could then be exported to the U.S. or Asia.

Unfortunately, what’s missing here is a solid national energy plan, which should have been in place long before the Northern Gateway project review began. With no guiding strategy in place, notes recent report by Canadian energy analyst David Hughes, the tripling of our oilsands production from 2010 levels, which Northern Gateway requires, also will compromise Canada’s long-term energy security — we could be out of oil by 2050.

And the Northern Gateway project is not the only economic-development game in town for northern B.C. Other solid projects — new electricity transmission lines, an aluminum smelter expansion, a liquefied natural gas plant and up to eight new mines —already are on the front burner.

The last thing we need are the wizards of Ottawa leading us down a yellow brick road.  IE