A week after bleating about foreign radicals slowing the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, you have to figure Joe Oliver just wishes he had kept his cakehole corked.

Instead of turning public opinion against the interference of well-heeled American environmentalists, Stephen Harper's natural resources minister succeeded mainly in A) awakening Canadians to the growing extent of Asian influence in the Alberta oil patch and B) alerting the rest of the world that the Canadian cowboy now wears a black hat.

When did the Americans sell us to China, Canadians asked.

When did Canada become a global bad boy, asked the foreign media.

To the rest of the world, seeing erstwhile good guy Canada pump out pollution and stifle dissent in a manner reminiscent of, well, the Chinese government is like finding Tom Hanks smoking crack with an underage prostitute.

In a Jan. 20 piece headlined "Is our neighbor to the north becoming a jingoistic petro-state?" the influential Slate online news magazine suggested with barely restrained glee that the new ugly American is actually Canadian.

"OK, so our friendly northern neighbor isn't exactly Saudi Arabia or Venezuela," it wrote. "But neither is it the verdant progressive utopia once viewed as a haven by American liberals fed up with George W. Bush. These days Canada has a Dubya of its own. And judging by a flurry of negative press from around the world - the latest: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other African leaders are taking out newspaper ads accusing Canada of contributing to famine and drought on the continent - it seems anti-Canadianism could be the new anti-Americanism."

While Harper, "the son of an oil-company accountant," hasn't actually sullied our international image to the point that Canadians are sewing the Stars and Stripes on their backpacks, Slate said, even our new BFF China, the world's greatest polluter, has called our decision to pull out of Kyoto "regrettable."

Others have also seen a shift. Time magazine last month contrasted the new reality to the days when Canada "was seen as a leader on human rights and the environment, a progressive counterweight to its lurching neighbor to the south."

And Britain's Guardian newspaper raised its eyebrows at Oliver's "extraordinary rant," running an opinion piece that said the U.K. should stop backing Canada's efforts to weaken European fuel rules that would make Alberta's "dirty oil" unattractive.

Back home, Oliver's warnings against foreign influence backfired, critics noting that PetroChina has just taken full control of the Mackay River oil sands development, which is expected to eventually produce 150,000 barrels a day after coming on line in 2014, while Chinese statecontrolled Sinopec recently bought a nine per cent stake in Syncrude, the oilsands' largest consortium, for $4.6 billion. The Asia Times says China invested $15 billion in the Alberta oil patch in 2010 alone.

China's investors want that oil shipped to Asia from Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, as opposed to being pumped to our traditional U.S. market via existing routes or the proposed Keystone pipeline recently shelved, if only temporarily, by Barack Obama.

This alarms the United States. Even Harper fan Newt Gingrich, the American right's favourite philanderer, warned in his victory speech after the South Carolina primary Saturday that the prime minister is "going to cut a deal with the Chinese and they'll build a pipeline straight across the Rockies to Vancouver."

While showing his grasp of geography is every bit as firm as Sarah Palin's, Gingrich did get to the heart of the matter: why send Canada's oil to Asia via Kitimat, adding the risk that comes with shipping it through tricky coastal waters by tanker, when we can pipe it to the U.S. instead?

Because it's not Canadian money driving this decision. And because the Canadian government really does want to reduce our dependence on the U.S. market and Americans' pesky environmental standards.

The thing is, while the Americans might have environmental concerns that trouble neither the Chinese Communists nor Canadian Conservatives, the U.S. still needs our oil. As dirty as Alberta's bitumen may be, at some point it will be seen as too valuable to leave in the ground - and since it's a non-renewable resource, why the rush to ship it away by the riskiest method possible?

jknox@timescolonist.com