The string gets ever shorter for Danielle Smith.
It’s not really her fault, as there’s little she can do other than watch this game play out. But when it does all eyes will turn to her.
The string in question is firmly tied to Mark Carney, but what Alberta’s premier has to decide is just how long she can pretend our prime minister actually means what he says when promising to fast track energy development in this country.
Sadly, this isn’t going to happen. Smith’s probably figured this out already, but she desperately wants the Liberal leader to follow through on his grandiose chatter about making Canada an energy superpower.
Of course, Carney’s already shown himself a master of the superlative promise. Unfortunately those promises become diametrically opposed when they’re stacked together: what’s said about future energy pipelines in Quebec and BC differs quite markedly from what Carney utters here in Alberta.
Meanwhile various Indigenous leaders will no doubt get an altogether different set of promises while meeting with the prime minister over the course of this summer.
The latest word out of the Smith camp is the premier wants to see something tangible from Carney by mid-September. Until then she’ll be keeping everything crossed that her fears aren’t realized – that eventually what’s offered to Alberta is nothing but one giant, spoiled goose egg.
But let’s face it, if the Liberals were indeed serious about this much-ballyhooed rush to build national infrastructure projects as some surefire way of boosting our anemic GDP and therefore making Canada less reliant on the United States and its endlessly belligerent president, we’d have seen something tangible by now.
This ‘build it quick’ chatter got Carney elected for heaven’s sake, so something more substantial than endlessly regurgitated word salad is overdue.
Of course, we’re told this is a time for negotiation and partnership building, before these vital mega-projects are wisely chosen and subsequently built.
What a bunch of hooey. There’s nothing stopping the Grits immediately axing the very laws and regulations they themselves put in place during the dreadful Justin Trudeau decade that remain a barrier to such projects ever getting past the hot air stage.
The list is long. But for Alberta’s benefit this would include deep-sixing oil production caps, kicking into touch the ‘no more pipeline’ law, killing the industrial carbon tax and ripping up legislation preventing tankers docking on BC’s northern coast.
To understand how ludicrous it is to keep such measures on the books while simultaneously touting Canada as some fabulous future energy super-state, simply immerse yourselves in the total bafflegab BC Premier David Eby spouts on the subject. (Spoiler alert: his minority government only stays in power thanks to the support of a couple of Green MLAs.)
Eby tells us he’s not opposed to some new oil pipeline crossing his province. Heck no. But, despite waiting ever so patiently, no private company has stepped forward to build one.
You don’t say. Why in heaven would any major energy outfit propose building a pipeline to the west coast when the law still on the federal books prevents tankers from docking to take the delivered crude to Asia? Are we supposed to fill up jerry cans by the million and float them over to Japan?
Nope, the fix is in. And Smith knows it.
She doesn’t want to acknowledge this because as soon as Alberta’s premier does so the first question asked is whether she therefore now backs separation.
Ouch. That’s a biggie by anyone’s standard. So, for now, Smith’s playing out this ever-shortening string, hoping against hope Carney delivers. He won’t.
