Well, at least our premier no longer thinks us Albertans are like an embarrassing cousin no one else in that otherwise good and glorious Canadian family wants to mention.
It seems an age ago - in political terms it probably was - when a triumphant Premier Rachel Notley, fresh from her party’s shock elevation to power, came out with a classic line.
Announcing "it’s important to call a spade a spade" she declared this province – the one that had just made her premier – was an "embarrassing cousin that no one wants to talk about" because of our environmental record.
Ah, but that was then – September 2015 to be precise. This is now and that tune has definitely changed. Nope, we desperate despoilers of the earth aren’t embarrassing to Notley anymore, it would seem. Now it’s the rest of that once-saintly Canadian family who should be suitably red-faced.
Isn’t it remarkable how a looming election can alter a politician’s viewpoint? Of course experience helps as well, and the two and a half years that have passed since the premier offered that pointed critique of Albertans have been rather instructive.
After watching how those nice family members in Quebec effectively put the kibosh on the Energy East pipeline project aimed at taking our crude to the Atlantic only to be followed by their kissing cousins in B.C. with their current antics over the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, it isn’t surprising Notley’s realized what all Alberta premiers come to understand.
Because, while this indeed is the second largest country on the planet, when it comes to our politics that old U.S. warhorse Tip O’Neill was right - it’s all local.
Playing nice by imposing a made-in-Alberta carbon tax with promises of a fresh, greener dawn here in Wild Rose land didn’t get the reciprocal love our premier expected. So, left standing at the altar, she’s doing what most jilted lovers would do – preparing to make someone pay, while humming that old Who standard: "Won’t Get Fooled Again."
All the previous guff about social licence is in the non-recyclable dustbin of history. Instead it’s the federal Liberals who are once again in the crosshairs (Alberta versus Ottawa being a longer running soap opera than the Brits’ Coronation Street.)
So now the province is tying the Trans Mountain project into the application of any future carbon tax increases Ottawa wants to impose on Alberta.
We’re already being walloped with a $30-a-tonne levy that the NDP government itself imposed but the feds are demanding the whole country must be at a $50 level by 2022 – hey, maybe they need the extra cash to top up the Trudeau family’s exotic clothing allowance.
Not so fast, says the once bitten but no longer shy Alberta premier.
"Moving forward on additional hikes to the carbon levy will depend on the Trans Mountain pipeline," Notley told the legislature last week.
Meanwhile Notley is looking at ways to seriously up the ante in our battle with B.C. over that province’s pipeline delaying tactics. Banning wine is one thing; threatening to turn off the energy taps to our western neighbours is entirely another.
And that threat doesn’t just stop with B.C. It could be expanded to the rest of Canada.
“We had the wine ban and we’re talking now about giving ourselves the authority to impact how much of our refined product – or other non-renewable resource products – move around,” Notley said recently.
Embarrassing cousin or not, if we start turning off taps and thereby jacking up fuel and heating costs across the entire country one thing is certain. They will be talking about us.
