There Is No Plan B.

. . . The more Canada’s vital national interests are made to depend on high oil prices, the closer our interests will have to be realigned to depend on what’s good for the Saudi finance ministry, Iran’s ayatollahs, Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin. It seems like only yesterday that whatever threatened harm to that lot was to be regarded as a thing to put a smile on the face of anyone with even a passing commitment to “Canadian values.” All that’s just the jetsam you now see disappearing in our wake.

Ottawa used to clamour for the overthrow of Khomeinist despotism, but if sanctions on Iran were suddenly rendered unnecessary and all that Iranian oil started gushing through western economies it would be “bad” for Plan A. Heaven help us if Beijing fails to crush any reformist tumults that could curb Chinese oil appetites. . .

- from my Ottawa Citizen column today.