EDITORIAL: Hold Canada’s fire on energy exports

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Prime Minister Mark Carney has so far resisted calls from Ontario Premier Doug Ford and others to tax or curtail energy exports to the United States, which is the right call.

However tempting it may be to hit back at U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs with the strongest weapons we have in our arsenal, throwing Canadian energy into the mix would be like tossing a hand grenade into the negotiations, whenever they resume, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Say, for example, we limit or tax Canadian oil shipments to the U.S.

What would we do if Trump responded by shutting down the 1,038-km Enbridge Line 5 pipeline, which transports 540,000 barrels of light crude oil and natural gas liquids daily from Alberta to refineries in Ontario and Quebec, by way of Wisconsin and Michigan?

Closing Line 5 would create an immediate oil crisis in Ontario and Quebec, since it supplies roughly half of the oil used in both provinces, endangering thousands of Canadian jobs, hiking the price of gasoline and increasing our overall cost of living.

Under that scenario, don't expect objections from U.S. Democrats.

While it would hurt the economies of several U.S. states, Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been trying to shut down Line 5 for almost eight years, opposed by the Federal, Ontario, Alberta, Quebec and Saskatchewan governments.

Whitmer argues a 7.2-km stretch of the pipeline anchored underwater at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, is an environmental hazard.

She has rejected Enbridge's proposed solution — constructing a concrete-lined tunnel costing $500 million in 2018 and about $ 750 million today — burying a replacement pipe deep beneath the bed of the Straits of Mackinac.

Curtailing or taxing our oil, natural gas, electricity and potash exports to the U.S. — the latter vital for fertilizer — would undermine Carney's argument that we are a reliable, rules-based energy supplier as we pursue more foreign markets.

As it is, Canada has a huge supply of counter-tariffs we can employ against Trump's tariff regime.

But the serious goal on both sides in this ongoing trade war must be to resume trade negotiations on sectoral tariffs and what will now be annual negotiations of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement on trade.