Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is showing a lot of backbone and common sense in his reaction to the Obama administration giving the green hell for wanting to build an oil pipeline that would have created thousands of jobs and made us much less dependent on oil imports from our enemies. I wish we had leaders like this here:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Even if President Barack Obama approved the controversial Keystone XL pipeline tomorrow, at least some Canadian oil would still flow to Asia, according to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In a public one-on-one interview here with Jane Harman, head of the Wilson Centre think-tank, Harper said Obama’s rejection of the controversial pipeline — even temporarily — stressed Canada’s need to find other buyers for oilsands crude.

And that wouldn’t change even if the president’s mind did.

“Look, the very fact that a ‘no’ could even be said underscores to our country that we must diversify our energy export markets,” Harper told Harman in front of a live audience of businesspeople, scholars, diplomats, and journalists.

“We cannot be, as a country, in a situation where our one and, in many cases, only energy partner could say no to our energy products. We just cannot be in that position.”

His wide-ranging question-and-answer at the influential non-partisan think-tank — which also touched on border security, trade, the Arctic and Syria among other topics — followed a meeting with Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the White House for the sixth North American Leaders’ Summit.

Harper also told Harman that Canada has been selling its oil to the United States at a discounted price.

So not only will America be able to buy less Canadian oil even if Keystone is eventually approved, the U.S. will also have to pay more for it because the market for oilsands crude will be more competitive.

“We have taken a significant price hit by virtue of the fact that we are a captive supplier and that just does not make sense in terms of the broader interests of the Canadian economy,” Harper said. “We’re still going to be a major supplier of the United States. It will be a long time, if ever, before the United States isn’t our number one export market, but for us the United States cannot be our only export market.

“That is not in our interest, either commercially or in terms of pricing.”

Obama is of course claiming that this is the fault of Republicans but the reality is he thought Canada would knuckle under and sit on billions of dollars of oil as a favor to Obama. Now China, an increasingly belligerent threat that is already a match for America in terms of military manpower and might, will have even more cheap oil to build their force projection capabilities. The liberals and greens in Hawaii and on the West Coast will get bombed first so i don’t really care.

But more expensive Canadian oil means food price will start climbing even faster in the future so factor that into your plans now. Store food.

h/t Hot Air