The bosses of 38 Canadian oil and gas corporations signed a letter of congratulations to Prime Minister Mark Carney after his April 28 election victory and pitched their favourite policy options to him, we were according to by The Canadian Press.
Those policies, no one will be shocked to hear, would if adopted in full or substantial part amount to a surrender of the Government of Canada to the dictates of the fossil fuel industry, rather like present and past governments of Alberta.
On the oil bosses’ wish-list: Gutting the Impact Assessment Act, and sinking the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, neither of which would be particularly popular in some parts of Canada but which oil execs see a chance to have pushed through Parliament if they can persuade MPs to act expeditiously. Donald Trump, ya know!
The big worry for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, naturally, is that Carney might just do what she demands. After all, our still new and now properly elected Liberal prime minister, is for all intents and purposes a Progressive Conservative, just like Rachel Notley was, and therefore almost as willing to bend a knee to the petroleum industry as Smith, if not quite as likely to be so self-righteous about it.
Then what will Premier Smith complain about? It’s possible there might soon be nothing left to demand!
Don’t you worry, Dear Readers, Smith and her fellow United Conservative Party (UCP) Alberta separatists will think of something and set to whining about it. A few modest environmental restrictions? Or how about the inevitable opposition to that pipeline to Prince Rupert in, you know … Prince Rupert?
Still, to paraphrase the Duke of Wellington, I don’t know what kind of effect this will have on the UCP, but, by God, it ought to frighten Pierre Poilievre!
After all, nonsense about how “easterners” (including British Columbians) hate Alberta and the fossil fuel industry and do nothing but take money, money, money away from us Albertans may sell in Wild Rose Country. But it isn’t going to have much impact in those parts of Canada where the Conservatives, if they ever hope to form a national government, have to prove they have a meaningful industrial policy difference with Carney’s Liberals and are more than just MAGA blowhards with cozy ties to Prairie separatists and 51st staters.
Anyway, as Alberta-born economist Jim Stanford pointed out a few days ago, the Alberta oil industry has never done better – largely thanks to Ottawa, not in spite of it. It’s true that Albertans aren’t getting their fair share of that wealth, he explained. “It wasn’t Ottawa that laid them off, cut their pay, froze the minimum wage, drove up electricity and insurance costs, and put their health care at risk. It was the enemy within. Alberta’s oligarchs aren’t speaking for the province, they are speaking for themselves.”
The seatless Poilievre’s choice of ridings in the heart of rural southern Alberta for his eventual re-entry into Parliament, not to mention his ability to hang onto the housekeys for Stornoway despite failing to meet the only qualification for residence, isn’t going to help his ambition in the rest of Canada. Neither is his apparent inability to step off the MAGA train, even for a minute.
As for Carney, he certainly sounds convincing when he says he’s serious about taking up Stephen Harper’s failed crusade to make Canada an “energy superpower” – although, probably, one with a few more insignificant environmental safeguards that the former Conservative PM would have countenanced.
Likewise, since he is not a MAGA ideologue like Smith, Carney will probably have room for a few windmills and solar arrays in his version of the energy superpower scheme.
“It’s a critical time for our country,” he told some of his new admirers in the Alberta oilpatch on Sunday when he sat down with industry bigshots in Calgary to talk turkey. “The world’s certainly more divided and dangerous and the imperative of making Canada an energy superpower in all respects has never been greater.”
That’s a bit of a non sequitur, actually, since there’s nothing about Canada being an energy superpower that would make the world less divided or dangerous, as I’m sure everybody in the room understood. Still, I’m equally sure they all reckoned it might sell to the rubes, especially the ones on social media, so what the hell!
This could create an opportunity for the NDP to restore its fortunes – one that, given its recent history, Parliament’s erstwhile “party of conscience” is unlikely to recognize, let alone to act on. To wit: It could act like the only party in Parliament with any regard for the environment, or the fate of the planet.
Alas for the NDP, Avi Lewis – no spring chicken any more as he nears 60 – is still not a member of the party’s Parliamentary Caucus, so there’s not likely to be much call for the party to do anything but continue to defend its now defunct confidence and supply deal, which contributed as much as any factor to its loss of party status in April’s federal election.
This will be considered good news at least for the Alberta branch of the party, which entertains separatist ambitions of its own, if only from the federal NDP.
If nothing else can come from this, maybe the the petro-bosses could tell Smith to take it easy on her separatist schtick. It’s bad for business, dontcha know?
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Nick Seebruch, editor
