Who will be demonized by Alberta Conservatives as this province’s official Bond villain now that Steven Guilbeault has announced he’s quitting politics?
Mr. Guilbeault made his announcement yesterday. It wasn’t exactly a bombshell. It’s been expected for a while. A lifelong environmental activist, he obviously sees Prime Minister Mark Carney’s volte-face on the environmental policies he championed as Justin Trudeau’s environment minister from October 2021 until last March as a sell-out, and he’s probably right.
He said on social media that he’ll be resigning his Laurier—Sainte-Marie seat in Parliament later this summer, but that he’ll stick around as a member of the Liberal Caucus until then. He promised to “pursue my fight for environmental protection and the fight against climate change in a different way.” So watch out! He’s unlikely just to fade back into the greenery.
Mr. Guilbeault adopted a diplomatic tone when he spoke to journalists, although he pointedly criticized the memorandum of understanding on a pipeline to the West Coast that Mr. Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed last fall.
“I wasn’t opposed to the idea of signing a memorandum of understanding with Alberta, but we shouldn’t do so at the expense of our plan to fight climate change,” he told CTV’s Vassy Kapelos.
This doesn’t sound like the wild-eyed boogeyman in an orange jumpsuit almost inevitably depicted by Alberta politicians and media every time he had something to say about the environment. But something about Mr. Guilbeault just drove Alberta politicians nuts, and not just the Conservative ones. Quite a few New Democrats succumbed to Guilbeault Derangement Syndrome too.
There was more to this than just his policies, which the oil industry hated and therefore Alberta politicians were willing to line up to publicly get hysterical about.
Maybe it was those dark Rasputin eyes. Maybe it was the memory his ill-considered pre-politics stunt, showing up uninvited in 2002 with a Greenpeace “crew” to install solar panels on the roof of then-premier Ralph Klein’s Calgary house.
His talents and conviction notwithstanding, this kind of history probably should have made Mr. Guilbeault ineligible for the post of environment minister. It was just too easy to paint the guy as a cross between Spiderman and Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The fact Justin Trudeau assigned him the environment portfolio in 2021 was a lapse of judgment not atypical of the former prime minister.
As former UCP premier Jason Kenney said of Mr. Guilbeault in 2021, “His own personal background and track record on these issues suggests someone who is more an absolutist than a pragmatist when it comes to finding solutions.” Ironically, the same thing could be said in almost the same words about Mr. Kenney’s successor, Premier Smith.
But most of all, I believe, what made Mr. Guilbeault such a lightning rod was the fact he actually had some power to make what he advocated come to pass. He was prepared, in other words, to do what no other Canadian environment minister can be accused of doing – he actually acted as if the principal purpose of the environment portfolio was to protect the environment and not merely piously greenwash profitable pollution.
Other prominent environmentalists like David Suzuki and Tzeporah Berman had the ability to drive Alberta politicians over the edge now and then just by saying stuff. But even Mr. Kenney couldn’t quite elevate them to the Bond villain status Mr. Guilbeault developed out here in Wild Rose Country.
Consider Premier Smith, reacting in 2023 to Mr. Guilbeault’s plan to get more Canadian drivers behind the wheels of electric vehicles:
“In another show of total disregard for the well-being of Canadians, the federal government has unilaterally imposed an unconstitutional edict with a bizarrely impossible timeline that will result in massive increases in the cost of vehicles and utility bills, vehicle rationing and wait lists, increased costs to businesses and elevated difficulty and safety risk for hundreds of thousands of Albertans and Canadians just trying to get to work and family activities in our unpredictable, and often cold, climate.”
Seriously, this is unhinged.
Her statement went on: “No legal or moral authority to tell Albertans what vehicles they can and cannot buy … sheer hypocrisy … disaster … trying to force increased demands on the electricity grid while simultaneously weakening Alberta’s … delusional timelines … freezing with their families in -30 C on the side of a rural road is not an option … destructive virtue-signalling …”
Well, she was right about one thing. The timelines were almost certainly delusional. But – gee whiz! – take a breath, lady!
Naturally, when Mr. Guilbeault made his announcement yesterday, Ms. Smith’s response was surly and self-righteous. “I think that he has done more to damage national unity probably than any other politician,” she harrumphed.
There is at least one other candidate for that title, of course. Y’all know who I mean. According to that standard, I doubt Mr. Guilbeault is even in the running.
Be that as it may, Ms. Smith and her political brain trust are going to miss Mr. Guilbeault.
Who else can they paint as a supervillain? Even if she was his ministry’s Parliamentary Secretary, it’s going to take a lot of work to frame up Julie Dabrusin, who inherited Mr. Guilbeault’s portfolio just over a year ago, for that role. Face it, she just doesn’t look the part!
Yes, Guilbeault became a lightning rod for conservative attacks because he unapologetically defended his principles. Sadly even PP couldn’t resist a final kick at Guilbeault, proving that being petty and mean spirited is a fairly common trait for conservative politicians these days. Whatever happened to just wishing your opponents a nice life after politics and leaving it at that? In their own ways they are also as absolutist as Guibeault, but they are much better at pretending otherwise and denial, so I sense some projection by them here.
However, in his defense, despite a dark smouldering intensity, Guilbeault did not come across as menacing, but earnest. I feel he was no Blofeld with animosity and a big chip on his shoulder. However that earnestness made a lot of people connected to the energy industry uncomfortable, so part of the solution was to try manufacture a villan regardless.
Guilbeault is likely correct that he can be more effective outside politics now. Despite a good relationship with his leader, it seems the PM wants to go in a different direction. After Guilbeault leaves as an MP, he will be much freer to speak his mind for a cause that is obviously still important to him. Unfortunately he will not be able to visit Ralph’s place again and the CPC/UCP gang will have to find someone else to demonize. In that regard, he will be hard for them to replace.
The UCP have a poor track record when it comes to anything, including matters of environmental protection. I can trust them as far as I can throw them.
If Steven Guilbeault is a Bond villain, I must be Thanos. Honestly, if I were Thanos, there would be massacres of the Guilty every day. Who are the Guilty? Well, I’m Thanos and that’s all you need to know.
Guilbeault tried, I mean really tried. But it was either really poor communications or a strange desire to self-sabotage that did him in. I recall the gaffe — of which there were many — when Guilbeault declared, at a major environmental conference, that Canada was going to stop building roads. It was an obvious translation error, which was finally dealt with well after the damage had been done. Regardless, I don’t think there has been a public figure who has been more attacked, pummelled, obliterated, and thrown under the bus more than Guilbeault. So, why did he keep going in the face of such fury?
Because he’s a true believer in his mission. He was often clumsy in his delivery, slap-dash in his approach, and completely lacking any hope of presenting his cogent arguments as a means of building consensus. In fact, he probably hated consensus building, especially when the climate emergency is beating at the door with ever-growing intensity.
Guilbeault reminds me of the often maligned Tooker Gomberg. Both are/were true believers in their mission. Even when circumstances refused to play nice, in the case of Tooker, there was concrete work done on the environment file. It was Gomberg who made public waste management a solid priority, and brought forth enormous deployments of technologies and processes, resulting in considerable success.
But there was Tooker’s occasionally toxic personality that seemed to turn people off. Even then Mayor Jan Reimer admitted to finding Gomberg’s approach tiresome. So much so, she learned to tune him out. For all his successes and failures, Gomberg was a tragic figure. Sometimes the world treats the best of us with the greatest cruelty.
Maybe it would take Thanos to set the world right.
Guilbeault is a silly unidimensional fanatic. He said that “the fight against climate change” was the reason he’d entered politics, and that “the struggle for our planet is defining for our generation”. And then he claimed that he’d served his community and his country! I don’t think he did, really. Service to the community and country would have involved intelligent balancing of the downsides (and potential upsides) of realistically predictable global warming against the downsides (and potential upsides, to be fair) of the policies needed to prevent that warming, and I doubt that Guilbeault ever attempted that sort of cost-benefit analysis. He was too obsessed with fighting the downsides of global warming, at ALL costs.
@Corwin
{{{big sigh}}}
It’s the job of a Minister of the Environment to point out when the government is {{{gasp}}} NOT protecting the environment and debate with even their own party to gain concessions. It’s not up to them to point out the “downsides” or risk/cost benefits because that’s the *other* side of the debate (unless they’re proposing a strategy)–whether opposition or own party’s, job.
If I’m the Labour Minister, my job is to represent the concerns of labour. It’s not to propagandize and rubber stamp whatever labour abuses my party throws out there. It’s up to my party to convince me that there’s a better way or if they have an opposing stance, why?
This is basic politics 101 in a democracy.
Why so few people fathom this any more, baffles me.
If that’s true (and one might like to make that supposition), then why was Adriana LaGrange a health minister?
@Other Rob
I didn’t say they were necessarily good at it…
To make the vaccinations rates go down so we’ve had babies die of measles and flu in Alberta? I blame Smith and LaGrange for that.
I’ll admit that “silly unidimensional fanatic” was a bit harsh, but I stand by my view that Guilbeault was too much of a crusader and not enough of a technocrat in his role as Minister of the Environment. Yes, the holder of that portfolio should be an advocate within the cabinet for sound environmental management, but that should involve a sense of proportionality and a sensitivity to the costs of whatever policies one is putting forward. In addition, Guilbeault was unhealthily focussed on global warming at the expense of other environmental issues. Our host was right to describe him as a “lifelong environmental activist”, the problem being that he just kept on thinking and talking like an activist even when he was in cabinet.
Capt. Edward Smith of RMS Titanic was a silly unidimensional fanatic. He said that “the fight to keep his passengers safe” was the reason he’d become a ship captain, and that “the struggle to keep the ship afloat is defining for our generation”.
And then he claimed that he’d served his community and his country! I don’t think he did, really. Service to the community and country would have involved intelligent balancing of the downsides (and potential upsides) of realistically predictable iceberg collisions against the downsides (and potential upsides, to be fair) of the policies needed to prevent those collisions, and I doubt that Smith ever attempted that sort of cost-benefit analysis. He was too obsessed with fighting the downsides of iceberg collisions, at ALL costs.
Cap’t Edward Smith didn’t work in a coalition of people with the power to debate at an equal level or people above his station who could plain out refuse to implement it if they thought his plan was stupid.
Your analogy needs work, there 😉
For someone that doesn’t seem to have much of a grip on reality most of the time, Dingy Smith seems to like to use the word “unconstitutional” quite often when describing others like: judges, Prime Ministers, federal cabinet ministers and so on. Perhaps she should read the Constitution and moreover follow it rather than complaining about it?
The best thing I have seen in a very long time was the slamming of Dingy Smith came at the press conference after the western premiers meeting a couple of days ago, where the Manitoba Premier interjected, clearly fact checked and corrected Smith for her government not consulting with First Nations people regarding the separation petition, just after another one of her unconstitutional blathering sessions. This was the best egg on face, caught you lying or gaslighting moment that was clearly necessary.
@Old Abertan
Because “unconstitutional” is the biggest insult word Dani knows and it sounds important and legal so she throws it around at every opportunity.
Even when what she proposes IS “unconstitutional” (a document, like most Americans, she never read)
Great. Now I have an earworm stuck in my head. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Even during Rasputin’s time, political enemies spread nasty tumors intended to discredit their foes. Ra, Ra, Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputin_(song)
https://youtu.be/Nl_Eo2QzqU4?si=4ugVvdNpB_yGnGeo
Abs: Boney M was the high point of Disco. Disco was the high point of Western culture. And speaking of Bond villains, as we were, Disco Volante was the base for Emilio Largo’s evil deeds. DJC
They’re just pizzed off that he’s genuinely committed, a snappier dresser and better looking than they are.
They’re afraid, like Hans Gruber, he’ll be the best part of the movie.
(Not saying there’s no greenwashing nor that he’s perfect or even, that Alberta’s MOU was ever designed to pass.)
Nah, Guilbeault more closely resembles Harry Ellis, the hotshot salesmen whose hubris brings about a bullet to his head.
Mr. Blogger you’ve done it again. Steven Guilbeault, Dr. Evil and his henchman Mr. Bigglesworth. Can there be a more dangerous trio?
DJC: “As former UCP premier Jason Kenney said of Mr. Guilbeault in 2021, ‘His own personal background and track record on these issues suggests someone who is more an absolutist than a pragmatist when it comes to finding solutions.'”
The atmosphere does not negotiate.
It operates on known laws and properties of physics and chemistry.
Either we reduce emissions or we do not.
Either we meet our emissions targets or we do not.
Either our elected representatives respond to the issue of our time — or they do not.
If not now, when?
Our house is on fire. “Pragmatic” is putting the fire out.
Fossil-fuel expansion and new pipelines are not “pragmatic” politics — just plain lunacy.
What could be more pragmatic than basing climate policy on the best available science?
What could be less pragmatic than letting fossil-fuelled denialism determine climate policy?
Given the limits of Guilbeault’s power and influence, he will not be much missed in Ottawa. He served more as a lightning rod and punching bag.
As for Guilbeault’s replacement, Julie Dabrusin may be Canada’s most compliant, least courageous, and least memorable Federal Environment Minster ever. All decisions around climate and energy and endangered species will be made in the PMO.
Or do I mean Bay St?
Why don’t more people nail the cons to the wall on the elephant in the room here, which is that our formerly reasonable Progressive Conservative Party has devolved into the “Convoy Party of Canada?” Which means they’re deniers of SCIENCE for gawd’s sake, obviously including medical science and the science of CLIMATE CHANGE?! Why will no one SKEWER them with their stunningly willful IGNORANCE?
It’s their Achilles heel, that stupidity, that ham-fisted hayseed persona introduced by Manning’s Reform Party takeover that’s never gone away any more than that old bastard’s religious AGENDA that echoes the appalling Project 2025 and is now being fully manifested by the avid UCP, thin edege of the wedge for TRANSFORMING SOCIETY. What else explains all the weird backwardness of their rapid fire BILLS?
I hear you. But now is, unfortunately, not the time. They’re still on a high with the Trump/MAGA movement and any criticism of the type you suggest will be worn as a badge of honour by them and their fellow travellers. But give it time…the sheen is coming off of MAGA in the U.S. as it will with it’s key components (which the separatists have consumed and digested…pretty soon we’ll all have a stomach ache).
Just recently I heard Premier Smith being asked about climate change and basically dodging the question, trying to avoid offending deniers and realists.
I don’t rec all if Poilievre has had the guts to even mention climate change for years. But he’s not smart and may be a denier.
We have plenty of villains right here in Alberta. We don’t have to import any. Let’s do something to rid ourselves of our homegrown villains, those who re taking our province in a direction most Albertans don’t want to go.
With all the Bond villains/boogeymen (boogey persons?) leaving public life, where will Ms. Smith and her supporting Postmedia cabal lay blame for the perceived ills of Alberta?
So long Guilbeault, we hardly knew ya Trudeau (ironically the ongoing invective applies to both Sr. and Jr. although Sr. has been in the ground for nearly 26 years). Thanks for the memories Notley. Who will we surveille now Phillips? Sing a goodbye song for Singh. The good ship Conservative will continue to fight the demons (to them) of the past.
Mr. Suzuki is still among us, so he will be continue to be vilified (perhaps propose an honorary degree from the U of Calgary to be presented by a member of The School of Public Policy, although that might cause the universe to explode), as will Mr. Nenshi. New targets include Mayor Farkas, who had the temerity to highlight the negative consequences of separation on his city, and Avi Lewis, who is already being given mythical status as a destroyer of Industry, despite being leader for two months and leading a party of five MPs.
The final irony is that the career politicians still slopping at the trough all seem to be Conservative. Go Figure.
Please refresh my memory. Wasn’t Guilbeault part of the Justin Trudeau administration that built, at great public expense, the Trans Mountain Pipeline for the benefit of the Alberta oil industry? So, how does that make him an environmental fanatic? It looks like the Carney administration is going to allow projects that effectively exterminate rare populations, like the west coast orcas to give even more to the fossil fuel gang.
Where do you draw the line between rational compromise and capitulation? In light of the latest Liberal attacks on agricultural science and environmental protection, it looks like Mr. Guilbeault is no longer prepared to be complicit.
Yes, Mr. Guilbeault was part of Mr. Trudeau’s ministry. I’m sure he argued against the project in cabinet, but he went along with it, presumably on the grounds that the theoretical cap remained in place. I’m sure we’ll hear from him again, and possibly in ways that make the prime minister less happy than his mere resignation. DJC
@DJC
Just wait until he comes riding in on a humpback whale like an Evil Aqua Man and proceeds to sic dolphins with grenade launchers on the Alberta oil fields.
Oh wait, Alberta is landlocked. Uh, they have no sea access but they want to separate?
Never mind.
The Trudeau government re-approved the TMX project on June 18, 2019.
The TMX project was approved several months before Guilbeault was elected MP on October 21, 2019.
Steven Guilbeault first joined the federal Liberal Cabinet on November 20, 2019, when PM Trudeau appointed him as the Minister of Canadian Heritage.
Guilbeault became Minister of Environment and Climate Change on October 26, 2021.
Smith’s over-the-top estimation of Guilbeault’s EV promotion and that he has, she said, damaged national unity “more than any other politician [!]” is truly and seriously “unhinged.” While the premier’s blithe double-talk and habitual resort to gallingly glib and gormless hyperbole is nothing new, I got this nagging feeling that I’ve heard it elsewhere exemplified—but where?
Orwell’s 1984? Naw, I don’t think so. Animal Farm? Closer, but not that close. What about her predecessor, Jason Kenney? Although books have been written about the K-Boy (Dr Duane Bratt’s 2023 “Blue Storm: The Rise and Fall of Jason Kenney,” for example) he hasn’t written one himself (which doesn’t necessarily hint whether he plans to re-enter politics or not since political autobiography may either precede or follow a public-office career, à la The Art of The Deal or Inconvenient Truth); short of that, one must search news-media coverage and Hansards of the federal HoC and the Alberta Legislative Assembly for quotable Kennyisms that equate with Smith-speak.
Yet I kept feeling there was something in my not-inconsiderable home library that might inform or encapsulate Danielle Smith’s style, if not mind. And I was right! Suddenly “Eureka!”
Perhaps more surprising was how quickly I accessed it. My darling, a trained librarian (ret.), says Dewey is impossible with my eclectic shelving, occasionally warning me: “You’ll be injured or killed if that stack of books [by my reading chair] ever falls over…” Whatever.
A bibliomaniac often classifies books by size instead of subject, and the volume that occurred to me was easily found in the 4-inch section, QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN ZALM–MEMORIAL EDITION (©1989 Stephen Osborne & Mary Schendlinger, Little Red Books, Pulp Press Publishers, Vancouver), facilitated by the fact that 4-inch-high shelving is never at floor level.
“Chairman Zalm” is none other than former BC premier Bill Vander Zalm who led BC’s government 1986-91. The flamboyant, “Fantasy Gardens” theme-park operator literally drove the long-ruling Social Credit government into the ground with controversy and scandal, was eventually fired by cabinet and replaced by BC’s first female premier, Rita Johnston who soon led the thoroughly Zalmized Socreds to a disastrous defeat from which the veteran party never recovered. In 2010, however, “The Zalm” returned to public notoriety when he initiated the anti-Harmonized Sales Tax Petition under BC’s Citizens’ Initiative legislation which, ironically, the Socreds proffered to voters on a ballot referendum during that same disastrous 1991 election in hopes it would save their incumbency (voters said ‘yes’ to CI but ‘no’ to the Socreds). The Petition led to the HST Referendum and ultimate demise of the roundly hated tax, the first time in 8 centuries of Westminster parliamentary history that a legislated tax was repealed by force of popular measure. QUOTATIONS, however, refers only to his term in office all those decades ago.
Yes, starting on page 37, “THE PITFALLS OF DEMOCRACY,” and on through to p.89, “ON BEING AND NOTHINGNESS,” are found many selectable quotes equating closely with Danielle Smith’s insubstantial style and hubristic blitheness of mind, such as: “Politics is marketing…Much in life is marketing. Even a strong marriage involves a degree of marketing…Life is marketing.” (P.41) Well, probably a good thing for Danielle that it’s not a degree IN marketing.
Or, how’s about: “I don’t believe there are any [indigenous] land claims”(ibid), reminding, as Premier Kinew did Smith at the recent Western Premiers’ meeting, that Aboriginal Rights in the Constitution (S.35) are not a matter of debate, opinion, or personal belief ( nevertheless, she parried that the premiers need to debate whether the Constitution is interpreted properly—that is, the way she wants it interpreted).
Onward through this trove of applicable Zalmisms: “We’re not withholding information [from the public]. It’s a matter of there are no details”(p.44); “I like to say what I’m thinking” (p.55); “What is culture? I’m not sure Canadians are all that concerned about what is traded away in culture. Canadians are pretty influenced by American culture, and they don’t seem to mind it that much. I don’t think there’s much wrong with the marketplace determining what people want in culture” (p.55-60); “I try to say what I think as openly as possible. It gives me comfort. I can fall asleep at night knowing the answer tomorrow will be the same”(p.59); “Why are some of these school trustees so upset about dealing with the people’s business on a hot-line show? What better way?”(p.62)
Naturally like any Western premier, Vander Zalm had something to say back then about Pierre Trudeau—who had retired two years before the Zalmer became premier : “He needed a distraction, a political fog, and out of the east came the sound of a frog”(p.70), a nice touch from the guy who claimed, “I cannot be a liar or a hypocrite,”(p.61) but lost his cool when someone threw an equally bigoted comment at the Dutch-born premier by calling him a tulip-bulb eater (Nazi occupiers forced famine upon the Netherlands who were compelled to eat the toxic bulbs out of desperate starvation).
Or how’s about: “I view an oil spill as a person drowning. Whoever is nearby and can swim reasonably, they jump in and attempt to rescue the individual”(p.71).
Smith is often described as a “superb communicator” and Vander Zalm would concur with regard provincial-federal communications: ” I’ve sent off a nasty message and I’m waiting to hear back”(p.88)
The Zalmer had quotable opinion about leadership: “You know me. I can get on TV every night”(p.73); “You never get a second chance to create a first impression”(p.74); “Real leadership is being able to get back up, dust yourself off and grow stronger from the experience”(p.75); “People…serve at the whim of cabinet”(p.84).
Danielle knows as well as Bill that things can go wrong in politics and she would probably agree with him that at such times a little hubris and a dash of historical revisionism is in order: “Remember when I am accused,” Vander Zalm was quoted in 1988, “of exaggerating or overstating or using words too strong, the same thing first was said about those who described the Holocaust”(p.78).
Both politicians, then and now, betrayed a habit of jousting with news-media by way of projection. As Vander Zalm said: “I think you [a reporter for a vancouver newspaper] have very effectively used nothingness and you’ve built it into story after story after story”(p.89).
The parallels extend to acts as well as words. Vander Zalm triggered the demise of the Socred regime which ruled BC for most of 38 years (minus the NDP term, 1972-75) and Albertans will recall that in 2014 Smith infuriated voters for the Wildrose opposition —of which she was leader— by crossing the floor with nine other Wildrose MLAs, and outraged supporters of the 44-year ProgCon party which accepted the turncoats, ultimately leading to the Denise of both Alberta’s parties of the right after a protest vote elected the NDP in 2015. Neither party ever contested another election. The exception is that Vander Zalm tried unsuccessfully to re-enter politics by way of the Christian Heritage Party but Smith resurrected her own political career by replacing the ousted UCP founder and first premier, Jason Kenney. Nonetheless, both revived their political influence one way or the other.
Books about Danielle Smith’s UCP are, like obituaries, probably already written for the most part and just waiting for the propitious moment to publish them, possibly pre-election but definitley post-UCP government. Of course post-Vander Zalm political books were published too but I’ll wager that Danielle’s will be much more voluminous. I offer QUOTATIONS as a short parallel to Smith’s political arc. I hope y’all enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it. I remember when BC was the place with the crazy politics and Alberta was boring. Well, when a previous premier was called Wacky Bennett…
I recall cartoons of Vander Zalm pulling the wings off of cartoonists (they were responding to his lawsuit against one cartoonist who drew him pulling wings off flies).
https://web.archive.org/web/20080530194230/http://www.canadiancartoonists.com/news_pantheon_bierman.html
“His own personal background and track record on these issues suggests someone who is more an absolutist than a pragmatist when it comes to finding solutions.”
Where being a “pragmatist” means that in a warming world and the melting of Arctic ocean sea ice there is further opportunity for unlocking the value in resources and resource rents not yet exploited.
It will be interesting to see how long the infinite growth acolytes will continue to operate in a business as usual fashion when the physical realities are no longer easily deniable:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/1.5-degrees-tipping-points
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-delusion-of-infinite-economic-growth/
Pierre Poilievre,
a fascist troll
Who lost his seat,
for he has no soul
But he’s back on his feet,
as parachute Pete
Rhetoric and all,
it will be his final fall
So David, did you see a certain columnist coming for Guilbeault? Or did someone order him to respond to this post?
I think Danielle Smith is desperate not to be considered a traitor to Canada, so yes, she needs a scapegoat. As far as I am concerned, it won’t work. She is the cause of the surge in separatism, and she chose to force her Smith-initiated referendum on us, b ecause not one citizen asked foer the mess she has produced, nor for those other nine questions, which may cost us some $100 million to $200+ million to count.
People like Mr Guilbeault — and Mr Pounder here in the comments section — fail to consider, as they push for the winding down of our fossil fuel industry, the elephant in the room: fear.
This fear is the fear that in oil & gas-reliant communities like Cold Lake, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, High Level, Leduc, & so many others, the future of the fossil fuel industry in this province is going to look like a prairie version of the 1992 Newfoundland cod moratorium.
That event devastated fisheries communities all around the Newfoundland & Labrador coastline, many of which have never recovered. The fear is that the impending contraction of global demand for fossil fuels will do the same thing to the people of Alberta. They worry that high-cost-of-extraction oil sands will not be the only stranded asset… their homes will be too.
It’s all well & good to suggest that an oil & gas worker in Peace River or Grande Prairie can find a geothermal job in, say, Fort McLeod… but when he goes to sell his house, will he have to sell it for pennies on the dollar? Because nobody else wants to live there? (Does anyone here recall how home prices in Tumbler Ridge BC tanked when the coal mine shut down?)
The current geopolitical spike in demand for oil and gas is likely transitory, and will subside once the Mango Mussolini’s war is over.