Bell: Mark Carney is now on a collision course with Danielle Smith
'It's like saying you'll win an Olympic swimming medal with an anvil tied around your foot,' says Alberta Premier Smith, on how Canada will never be an energy superpower with anti-oilpatch laws
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If Liberal Leader Mark Carney thinks Danielle Smith is just going to go away he has got another thing coming.
If Carney wins the election and remains prime minister and ignores Albertans, he is in for a fight with the Alberta premier.
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The smart money says this will shape up to be a battle Carney will not be able to stickhandle around.
Buckle up.
“It’s not rocket science,” says Smith.
As long as Liberal laws and regulations punishing the oilpatch remain in place, Canada will never be an energy superpower.
Smith insists Carney ditch the bad policies. Simple. Do it.
“Anything less is like saying you’ll win an Olympic swimming medal with an anvil tied around your foot.
“Now is the time for Ottawa to get serious. We need action.”
Sadly but predictably, it appears Carney is not taking Smith seriously.
Carney was in Calgary this week talking about his big plan to make Canada an energy superpower.
Members of the press dutifully recorded Carney’s words and then told Canadians about this grand scheme.
But that wasn’t the real story behind Carney’s proclamation from on high in the heart of oil country.
The Liberal leader and prime minister was asked if he would make a commitment.
A solid concrete commitment to do everything in his power to see that new oil and gas pipelines and new LNG projects will be on the list of projects he wants built.
Carney made no such commitment.
He did spend time trying to convince us since he grew up in Alberta he knows Alberta and he doesn’t need anyone to tell him what Alberta is like.
Carney was also asked about the nine demands presented to him by Smith when they met last month.
These demands include scrapping the No More Pipelines Law. Carney won’t.
They include lifting the cap on oil and gas emissions. Carney won’t, though he said he would.
There is also deep-sixing Ottawa’s net-zero power regulations. Crickets.
There is also doing away with the tanker ban off the west coast. More crickets.
Smith wants the demands worked on in the first six months after the election.
Playing games will lead to a national unity crisis.
What is Carney’s response, the man touted as a genius at negotiations by his party and its supporters?
“I could spend my time writing letters back and forth,” Carney tells us in Calgary.
“I’m going to put in place things that work.”
TRANSLATION. Premier Smith can take a hike. I will do what I want to do. Carney has spoken, the matter is ended.
There are some who think they know the Carney play on this energy superpower stuff.
You put out the story. The story is spun as an attempt by Carney to make Alberta happy.
Then, if anyone in Alberta pushes back and they are, Carney can tell his Liberal-NDP followers he tried his best but you just can’t please some people.
Alberta, the whiner. Masterful B.S.
The fact is Alberta will no longer tolerate being treated as it has been treated by the Liberal government over the past 10 years.
Albertans are on guard.
Folks who are plugged into reality know all about Carney’s past record of wanting to keep oil in the ground.
People know Carney’s team includes many of the same Liberal politicians and the same Liberal hacks who gave Alberta a rough ride this past decade.
Then there is Carney telling people what they want to hear. Different messages to different people in different places at different times.
And the man hasn’t even won the election and he has already ruled out some of the things the Alberta government wants to see done.
No surprise.
After all, many Liberals think unrest in Alberta over the prospect of another four years of Liberal government is confined to a fringe group somewhere out there on the prairie.
In a recent Angus Reid poll, fewer than one in four Albertans think the province is respected by the rest of the country.
Two out of three in Ontario think their province is respected. I am surprised the number isn’t higher.
They call the tune and we pay the piper.
Unless you’re doing the sticking-your-head-in-the-sand trick, it is reasonable to assume a Carney win will get more than a few Albertans wondering if they really fit into what Canada has become.
Yep. Looks like this is not going to be pretty.
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