RED DEER, Alberta – Their anger may be genuine, but it seems likely Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and British Columbia Premier David Eby are both relieved and even delighted to have the excuse to yell at each other about the Alberta Government’s half-baked plan for a bitumen pipeline from the Athabasca tarpatch to the Pacific Coast.
After all, the premiers of Canada’s westernmost provinces each have sound political reasons to want to distract voters from the difficulties they are experiencing in their own bailiwicks and to engage instead in an opportunity to drive a wedge between their principal rivals and voters who might be tempted to abandon their respective parties.
Smith needs to divert attention from the provincewide teachers’ strike in Alberta, the fraught state of the province’s public health care system, and miscellaneous corruption scandals. At the same time, she’s presented the federal Liberals with a list of demands that they couldn’t deliver by her deadline even if they want to, and they may, to advance her separatist agenda. She’s also trying to tie Opposition Naheed Nenshi’s New Democratic Party to the party with the same name in B.C. that she’s now added to her long list of Enemies of Alberta.
This is classic Alberta politics, with a MAGA-era spin.
As for Eby, his party has a one-seat majority in the B.C. Legislature and newly reconstituted Conservative Party of B.C., which bears a startling resemblance to Smith’s Trump-inspired United Conservative Party (UCP), breathing down his neck.
What better target in such circumstances than Smith’s undercooked pre-plan for a study of a plan for a proposal to get a private company to build a pipeline that no corporation will touch with a bargepole and few coastal British Columbians, including many who might be tempted to vote for the B.C. Conservatives, are likely to want in their front yard.
Smith calls Eby’s position un-Canadian. Eby says Smith’s pipeline scheme “fails on every count” and is “an entirely political creation in the lead-up to their election for wedge politics at the expense of British Columbia and Canada’s economy.”
This in turn seems to be giving the conservative commentariat the vapours. Don Braid of The Calgary Herald accused Eby of being vicious, partisan and unhinged. “What election? No Alberta vote is scheduled until the fall of 2027,” he grumped. “Eby could scent a chance to expand his teeny majority with a snap election,” he also wrote.
Once described as the dean of Alberta political commentators, one would have thought Braid would be aware of the constant buzz in these parts about Smith calling an early election next spring. Why else would she delay that judge’s report she commissioned on the still-roiling scandal about sketchy health care contracts?
Meanwhile, over at The Globe and Mail, in a column just as incensed as Braid’s, Andrew Coyne was accusing Ms. Smith of sending a pipeline ransom note to Prime Minister Mark Carney while holding Canada for ransom.
“As blackmail notes go, this is right up there,” Coyne said of Premier Smith’s pipeline strategy.
C’mon, boys! Aren’t you supposed to be on the same team? Keep this up and you’ll ruin one of my favourite conspiracy theories!
On balance, I’d say it’s harder to argue with most of Eby’s assessment of Smith’s proposal – which is so serious her government has budgeted a piddling $14 million to its preparation – than Smith’s attack on Eby’s motives or her claims about the viability of her North Coast pipe dream.
The Alberta announcement generated lots of social media posts and press releases, but, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, California, “there’s no there there.”
For what should be obvious reasons, neither premier strikes me as unhinged. This is rational, calculated behaviour on both their parts.
Be that as it may, it’s worth repeating that if a pipeline to Prince Rupert or Kitimat is ever built, it will be paid for by taxpayers, and probably by Alberta taxpayers.
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