Fixated as we Americans are on Canada’s three most attention-getting exports – polar vortexes, Alberta clippers and the antics of Toronto’s addled mayor – we’ve somewhat overlooked a major feature of Canada’s current relations with the United States: extreme annoyance.

Last week, speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s foreign minister calmly but pointedly complained that the U.S. owes Canada a response on the Keystone XL pipeline. “We can’t continue in this state of limbo,” he sort of complained, in what for a placid, imperturbable Canadian passes for an explosion of volcanic rage. …

After three years of review, the State Department found no significant environmental risk to Keystone. Nonetheless, the original route was changed to assuage concerns regarding the Ogallala Aquifer. Obama withheld approval through the 2012 election. To this day he has issued no decision.

The Canadians are beside themselves. After five years of manufactured delay, they need a decision one way or the other because if denied a pipeline south, they could build a pipeline west to the Pacific. China would buy their oil in a New York minute.

Yet John Kerry fumblingly says he is awaiting yet another environmental report. He offered no decision date.

If Obama wants to cave to his environmental left, go ahead. But why keep Canada in limbo? It’s a show of supreme and undeserved disrespect for yet another ally. …

The only rationale for denying the pipeline is political – to appease Obama’s more extreme environmentalists. For a president who claims not to be ideological, the irony is striking: Here is an easily available piece of infrastructure – privately built, costing government not a penny, creating thousands of jobs and, yes, shovel ready – and yet the president, who’s been incessantly pushing new “infrastructure” as a fundamental economic necessity, can’t say yes. (Read the rest.)