Those American hypocrites who yelp so loudly about alleged subsidies to British Columbia softwood lumber are about to pass an energy bill that will hand $10 billion in loan guarantees and many billions more in subsidized floor price guarantees to Alaska producers of natural gas. It's the guaranteed floor subsidy -- it would kick in automatically if the price for natural gas fell below $3.25 per 1,000 cubic feet -- that has most appalled Canadian producers because of its potential to utterly distort the market.

What makes it worse is that it follows a shameless $180-billion subsidy to American farmers growing everything from peanuts to cotton at a time when even the most efficient Canadian farmers are on the ropes. The farm subsidies parallel the erection of a punitive tariff wall to protect U.S. steel producers from offshore competition.

For all the free market, free enterprise sermons from politicians, it's clear that supposed tough guy President George W. Bush is little more than a puppet for special interest groups that favour market intervention by government on their behalf. In siding with them, the U.S. has fundamentally abandoned the principles of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

So what's to be done? Well, Stephen Kakfwi, the premier of the Northwest Territories, suggests that his fellow premiers and Ottawa stop behaving like a bunch of hand-wringing wusses and do something dramatic to get the Americans' attention.

For example, perhaps it's now time for Canada to link the way B.C. is treated on softwood lumber to the way Alaskans will be treated on natural gas, he says. But to pull that off effectively, our provincial premiers and Ottawa have to start marching to the same drummer.

"We are in disarray," Kakfwi says. "Right now we've got B.C. upset over some silly remark [by Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew] -- frankly, people are taking too narrow a regional interest. [Premier Gordon Campbell] hasn't tuned in yet that the world is a little bigger than B.C. and that he might be just about to take another huge hit."

If the Americans succeed in this subsidization scheme for Alaskan natural gas, the NWT premier says, the direct impact on B.C.'s economy might be $500 million or more.

But Kakfwi points out that by adopting precisely the same argument the Americans use to justify their huge duties on softwood lumber, Canadians -- in particular British Columbians -- can justifiably apply countervailing duties to that soon-to-be subsidized Alaska natural gas.

To get gas from Alaska to market, a $20-billion pipeline has to be built from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope. That pipeline must pass through the Yukon and northern B.C.

"Alaskan gas has to cross Canadian territory and Canada does have some say regardless of what the Americans might think," Kakfwi says.

Along those lines, one thing we might do is put an import duty equal to the American subsidy on softwood lumber on any gas from Alaska that crosses the border into B.C. Maybe the B.C. legislature should pass a resolution asking Ottawa to intervene in just that way. Maybe it should pass some draconian environmental levies. Maybe it should declare some of those sensitive northern regions off limits to any pipeline development.

So far, Canadian politicians, particularly those from the east, have flinched at the prospect of linkages -- the tying of one trade issue to another -- but since the Americans are subsidizing their own industries so heavily and socking Canada with such onerous tariffs on so many fronts, Kakfwi suggests a fairly vigorous response is required.

"I think they do have to be linked," says the NWT premier, of Alaskan gas and B.C.'s softwood lumber. "People say you can't connect gas and softwood lumber, but in my view they are linked.

We need to let the Americans know that they can pass their bill but that doesn't give them free access to Canada.

"For me, it's time to get tough and take a stand," says Kakfwi. "I think we've all been too soft. I grew up as an aboriginal person and I've always had a dislike for bullies. I've stood up to bullies in my time -- big companies, big government. Well, the Americans are behaving like the quintessential bullies and you don't deal with bullies by cowering."

Kakfwi knows what he's talking about. More than 30 years ago, as a militant young leader of Dene groups in the western Arctic, he helped mobilize the resistance that faced down both federal Liberals under Pierre Trudeau and some of the world's biggest oil companies in their plans to build the first pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley.

It's not that the Northwest Territories government is entirely altruistic in the present call to arms.

These days Kakfwi is at the forefront of those who want to build a pipeline down the same Mackenzie Valley route he once opposed. Today, he says, small northern communities are much better equipped to share in such development.

The NWT premier readily acknowledges that part of his motivation for trying to persuade his political colleagues to stand up to the Americans springs from the potential for the flooding of U.S. markets with heavily subsidized Alaskan gas. That, he says, could both kill exploration in the western sedimentary basin which includes Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C. and the NWT for decades to come and deprive the west of the economic spinoffs from a gigantic made-in-Canada megaproject.

Late last year, a consortium called the Mackenzie Delta Producers' Group comprising Esso, Shell, Conoco and ExxonMobil Canada agreed to form a partnership with the Mackenzie Valley Aboriginal Pipeline Corp.

In January, the partnership announced it was spending $250 million preparing for all the regulatory pipeline construction permits and applications necessary to bring proven gas reserves from the Mackenzie Delta to market as early as 2008.

"Everything is basically a go," Kakfwi says. "It will be the single biggest project in Canada in the past half century. So the implications are huge." But, he says, huge volumes of subsidized gas from Alaska, flowing across Canada in a subsidized American pipeline, would flood U.S. markets, driving down the prices for Canadian gas while artificially propping up the price for Alaskan gas.

The stakes for Canada in this game are enormous, Kakfwi points out. Ottawa stands to lose up to $18 billion in revenue from Mackenzie Delta gas royalties. Alberta, B.C. and Ontario will all suffer the foregone benefits from lost markets for labour, goods and services on pipeline construction spinoffs worth up to $57 billion to the national gross domestic product.

So Kakfwi has a message that Campbell and the B.C. Liberals would do well to heed -- stop the empty blustering and start pitching a few fastballs high and inside.

"You can't just say you're unhappy," Kakfwi says. "You have to be very clear about what you are going to do in responding to some punishing actions being taken by the Americans -- but whatever you do, it's got to be tough, clear and abrupt."

Got that? If we want to get the Americans' attention on softwood lumber, one way to do it could be to pitch the Alaskans a beanball of their own making on subsidized natural gas.

shume@islandnet.com