ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the nep decision. It explores the larger Liberal view of national priorities as the Trudeau government saw them in 1980. The National Energy Program (nep) was announced as the centrepiece of the ressurected Trudeau Liberals’ first budget speech on October 28, 1980. It was a burst of political aggressiveness initially attributable to Ottawa’s perceived need to break the bitter deadlock with the Alberta Lougheed Government. There is no doubt that senior public servants in the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, Finance, and Petro-Canada influenced energy policy and the nep. The nep and energy policy in general involve both the dimensions, and we are required to examine both. The strengths, principles, strategies, and miscalculations of the Alberta Lougheed government in the specific pre-nep discussions are also integral to the formulation of the nep and thus to the relations of power between ministers and bureaucrats.
