Are Mark Carney and Danielle Smith playing Grey Cup football footsie about that bitumen pipeline scheme?

Mrs. Carney has been working in the climate arena for years and PM Carney likewise so I’m not too worried about what on the surface, appears to be a change of heart. I’m guessing that he is as aware as many of us are, that oil is close to peak use around the world due to the electrification push that is happening everywhere. And rather than fight daily with Smith, he’s chosen to let her exist in her dream world that oil will go on forever, knowing full well that the market place will burst that bubble of hers as the transition carries on. His one stipulation being that taxpayers will not pay for another pipeline and she has to round up her own investors. And that sounds like maybe it isn’t going as easy as she would hope.

Also too, he is still talking far more about renewables as part of Canada’s energy future AND every time he mentions that he’s including that carbon capture is an absolute must.

It wouldn’t be the 1st time Alberta was the object of the feds’ podophilic desires: that would be the TMX pipeline, footsie affection rebuffed by a bitchy UCP government. In Alberta’s case, any affection with a Liberal Ottawa is well overdue.

The habit predates confederation; colonial governments often played the fickle fortunes of pre-confederation foot fetish: This little pig went to market, this little pig went into land speculation, this little pig went into mining, &c. Of course Conquest, Rebellions, Irish republican terrorism, and profiteering dictated which colony would be courted by which suitor, the American dandy ever threatening to sweep innocent belles of British colonial balls off their mukluks.

While New France was easily overpowered by a British North America then over 30 times more populous, post-American-Rebellion BNA was left with a french-speaking, Roman Catholic colony comprising three-quarters the population of its six remaining colonies. After martial assault, political courtship lavished conciliatory gifts upon Bas Canada, guaranteeing its distinctive language, religion, and legal systems, vital cultural accoutrements which ironically inspired les Habitants to ally with their British conquerors of 1759 against British-American Rebels in 1775 and US invasion in 1812: Quebecois still understand the American “melting pot” as the greater threat to their distinctive culture.

Despite bigotry french and english homesteaders had for each other, political wooing saw the two Canadas announce their engagement in 1841 (creating the colonial province of Canada), followed by heavy petting until finally tying the knot as two separate federated provinces of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, securing Quebec a guaranteed minimum number of seats in the federal House of Commons regardless its relative population to the whole nation.

“Footsie” is a nice way of putting it. But ever since Quebec was separated at birth from its infernal twin, nobody’s ever played footsie with Ontario like Bas Canada once indulged with Haute Canada. The object of desire is rather predicated on its vulnerability, its dependence, and on other suitors—which in Canada’s case always means the American jingo.

The new federal government was on the hunt, the highly desirable,—one could say ‘exotic’— West Coast was courted next, all the more ardently since the USA was snapping up all the wall flowers Britain and Russia were dancing away from in the Pacific Northwest —Oregon Territory, ceded to the US by UK in 1846, and Alaska which the US bought from Russia in 1867. Britain, fain to extricate itself from the increasingly bothersome region, hurriedly negotiated a rough border between the Alaskan “Panhandle” and its remote colony before its final unburdening several weeks later. Since three-legged footsie is a crowd, Canada had to fête BC with generous inducements to confederate with a country 2,000 miles away instead of the one just over the border. A transcontinental railway won the hand of the Province of British Columbia, confederated with Canada in 1871.

Meanwhile, rumour had the USA lusting after Prince Edward Island, supposedly because it would give US fishermen rights in the gulf of St Lawrence. Although the orgy of Canada’s 1867 confederation took place in its capital Charlottetown, PEI coyly batted her eyelashes at the Southern suitor until Canada finally mollified it by buying out absentee British landlords, bailing out the Island’s railway, guaranteeing a minimum number of parliamentary seats, and promising a year-round ferry service to the mainland. PEI became the 7th province in 1873.

Colonial Newfoundland was nonplussed about Canadian blandishments to confederate, about half the population preferring its independent Dominion status, some a closer relationship with the USA, conservatives smitten with stimulus provided by US military bases established on the Island during the War. No pretence of romancing The Rock preceded very divisive Referenda which barely approved confederation with Canada in 1949: Canada sweetened the pot with the gift of Labrador —which it snatched from Quebec, causing repeated trips to the confederal marriage counsellor —and occasionally to divorce lawyers.

Three confederations—Manitoba (1870), Alberta and Saskatchewan (1905)—didn’t get any footsie at all but, instead, foot soldiers deployed on trackless Prairies to quell Red River and Northwest Métis Rebellions in 1875 and 1885. All Métis leader and federal Member of Parliament Louis Riel got was a lousy necktie (d.Nov.16,1885). Alberta and Saskatchewan, formerly in the Hudson Bay commercial charter, didn’t have colonial legislative assemblies in which to tie the knot with Canada in 1905; particularly parsimonious of Canada, neither province got sovereign control over its natural resources until the 1930s. The feds had relocated the most desperate of persecuted people from Eastern Europe to the remote Canadian Prairies where they organized their communes, farmers’ wheat pools and political parties. The Great Depression and ten lost years of drought were the seedbed of the religious fervour, Socred “funny money”, the CCF “communist fifth-column” Eastern elites loved to ridicule.

Even as the feds collected corporate tax and royalties from the post-War oil boom, love from Canada felt much overdue in the West. When Trudeau pére capped the price of domestic oil sold in Canada it didn’t even feel like footsie, let alone love—eternally symbolized by elder Trudeau’s middle finger. Decades later, Albertans instantly remembered that name when Trudeau fils was elected PM—and when he imposed the federal carbon tax, that flipped-bird.

There once were sunny days in Alberta, back when Liberal and United Farmers’ parties governed the province, back before wars, oil, and bitumen. However, the confluence of money and climate through the Crash of ‘29 and the Dust Bowl 30s strained relations with Ottawa such that weaponization of newfound petro-wealth was easily justified and ginned, as it’s been for decades. Thus it’s hard to imagine PM Carney and premier Smith playing footsie when her government is behaving like the most conceited bachelorette at the ball whose dubious dowery is ‘Buy me a pipeline to the moon, or else…’ Carney appears a gentleman discretely wary of insincerity but not so impolitic as to slight it.

Musta been some pretty smooth footsie that Smith didn’t freak out when her Super-Duper-Rupertube wasn’t shortlisted —which, in fact, it can’t possibly be, even if the financial, legal, and constitutional hurdles were magically accelerated past the speed of light. There’s no physical route surveyed, but even if there were, the physics of such a mega project simply preclude completion in any timeframe as precisely short as the electoral cycle of any Canadian parliament.

And. As if to atone for his father’s chilly relationship with western Canada, JT offered Alberta the olive branch of a brand new pipeline to the existing tidewater port in Burnaby, BC, paid for by all Canadians. Every time Danielle cites Prince Rupert she affects the spoiled princess by implication that TMX just isn’t good enough. But, sweetheart, it’s not even operating at full capacity yet, the heartbroken suitor implores over her turned shoulder, her nose turned up in a snit. Yet it only took Carney’s smooth podiatry to quickly elicit her real desire: I want Rupert!

Prince Rupert always was by far the superior port for exporting dilbit, contrasting so completely with Harper’s Northern Gateway terminus at Kitimat, the riskiest route possible, that one wonders if Kitimat was a stalking-horse for the real objective at Rupert. Northern Gateway omitted so many important requirements that its sincerity was always suspect. Trudeau didn’t kill it; a judge found that the plan wouldn’t build as submitted, and the new Liberal government simply dropped it. Naturally Alberta freaked out, but before it gave away any hint of bait-and-switch JT bought out Transmountain and committed to completing the twinning project, TMX, with a huge price tag that should have won over the snootiest princess—if indeed “Asian buyers” was really what she wanted. But no…vehement vitriol instead of any thanks at all. And no footsie. It’s Ottawa, it’s a Liberal, it’s a Trudeau —and, thud!

The supertanker ban JT legislated for the north Coast was in no way retaliatory or spiteful. The reality is simply this: TMX was so expensive (eight figures!) it will take a long, long time to pay for itself—but an eternity if it had to compete with a pipeline to Rupert. It’s just lucky for princess Danielle that it’s federally owned and whatever footsie footwork is needed to dance around TMX will be with Mark Carney, not with BC Premier David Eby. Have you ever checked it the size of Eby’s feet! He might even be a thinly disguised Sasquatch —you know, the one Jason Kenney’s War Room swore it saw sabotaging the Albetarian Empire of Bitumen. On the other hand, footsie with Big Foot might feel as warm and cuddly as a worn pair of favourite furry flip-flops.