How Stephen Harper cast aside principles when he had oil to sell to China
Canadian leader went from criticising to wooing China to buy output from nation's oil sands when Barack Obama stalled on Keystone XL pipeline
The Canadian prime minister was in need of a new friend with a big appetite for oil. The Americans just weren't cutting it.
It was February 2012, three months since Barack Obama had phoned Stephen Harper to say the Keystone XL pipeline, which was designed to carry vast volumes of Canadian oil to US markets, would be delayed.
You can't engage the second-largest economy in the world in such a way
Harper found himself on the banks of the Pearl River promoting Plan B, a pipeline from Alberta's landlocked oil sands to the Pacific coast, where it could be shipped in tankers to a country certain to take it - China.
It was a country to which he had never warmed, yet served his current purposes.
Harper stood before a business audience in a luxury hotel banquet hall in Guangzhou, putting on his best pro-China face while touting his nation's virtues.
"Canada is not just a great trading nation. We are an emerging energy superpower," he said, surrounded by a phalanx of red Chinese and Canadian flags.
