I suspect this has something to do with the Keystone XL pipeline approval. At present, Alberta is full to the gills with unsold oil, and other pipelines to the west and east coasts are er, several years further down the pipeline. The prime minister and several other cabinet ministers are from Alberta, and they are no doubt feeling the heat from their constituents. There is a lot of lobbying going on by Canada in the US at this very moment, and I would expect that some American politicians are making ACTA approval their price for supporting the pipeline.

The approval process for pipelines has been re-written in Canada to pretty much guaranty that the pipelines to the west and east coasts to carry oil to China will go ahead and any opposition to them will be squashed. The Canadian government has spent a lot of time in China recently getting the Chinese interested as customers. The Chinese have just bought one of Canada's largest oil companies and are investing lots of money in minority stakes in other oil and gas export projects. However, all of these are several years behind the Keystone XL pipeline in terms of going into service. In the mean time, Alberta is feeling a revenue squeeze primarily due to the Conservatives being such amazing spendthrifts, and they want revenue now.

If the Keystone XL pipeline doesn't get approved, then I won't at all be surprised if the proposed ACTA legislation (that that nothing has actually been introduced into the house) gets dropped like a dead fish. Also, the treaty itself doesn't go into effect unless a certain number of countries approve it. The Canadian government may be counting on that never happening. That sort of cynicism is par for the course in Ottawa.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]