WITHGuilbeau's bitches were on Everybody's talking about it On Nov. 30, he took a drink at the end for comic relief after getting stuck in his throat trying to explain what it was like to resign from a cabinet post over Prime Minister Mark Carney's energy deal with Alberta. I think he has proven himself well. This is not the first time I have wished that this country had an English-language talk show that would take center stage in the national conversation.
After a tumultuous and unexpected week, the country inevitably settled into a familiar and comforting routine: booing compromise in Edmonton, counting on favor in Montreal.
“Carney worked in Alberta. What about Quebec?” rereads the title Column by Yasmine Abdelfadel last Monday Montreal Magazine. “Because, remember, it wasn't Alberta that brought Mark Carney to power,” writes Abdelfadel, a former provincial Liberal party official turned public relations consultant. “This is Quebec. This is where the Liberals saved the furniture. And yet, since he came along, we have felt no recognition or respect for the nation that gave him his mandate.”
I suspect that if Abdelfadel picked up the phone and dialed 1 (403) followed by any seven random numbers, whoever answered would be full of ideas about what Carney's party has done for Quebec lately. Here are two examples I would name. Guilbault was either the fifth or seventh consecutive Quebec-Canadian minister, depending on how you count the ministers who were kicked out and then brought back. Mark Miller – sixth or eighth. This raises questions about what the ruling party believes constitutes Canadian heritage. And Carney handed two projects in Quebec to the same Major Projects Authority, which has yet to receive the actual pipeline project in Alberta, including the one expand the capacity of the Contrecoeur terminal at the Port of Montreal by 60 percent.
Some readers will say that there can be no comparison between the eastbound boats and the cargo that the westbound boats are ultimately able to carry. I have no objections. American commentator Ben Shapiro wrote that “facts don't care about your feelings“, but the opposite is at least as true: feelings are not interested in facts. as former Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKennaIf you think that any attempt to sequester carbon emissions to mitigate this is “blatant greenwashing” that “makes Canadians look like fools,” then I'm unlikely to change your mind.
Likewise, if you're an Albertan who, as of 2022, believes that Premier Daniel Smith is a better shield and sword against Central Canadian liberalism than Jason Kenney ever was, you're probably less likely to delve deeply into memorandum of understanding (Memorandum of Understanding) to obtain evidence that she is still on Alberta's side against Ottawa. Seeing her cordial with Carney was probably all you needed to know, and it's not surprising that some of Smith's longtime supporters view her deal with Carney as a betrayal. From this point of view, Guilbeault's departure from the Liberal cabinet (but not from the Liberal faction!) was a carefully thought-out kabuki designed to make him seem as if Alberta hadn't been screwed again.
The facts are still there, and they still matter, but in a political culture that has become deeply polarized and confrontational, it is difficult to imagine a more emotive issue than whether oil from the Alberta oil sands should be transported in much larger quantities to a British Columbia port. Because Justin Trudeau's liberalism is different from Carney's, one might expect Team Trudeau to focus on the Alberta Memorandum of Understanding as evidence of difference and their superior virtue. I will be surprised if Trudeau can resist the urge to make public and critical comments for long.
This fertile ground is not only for liberal struggle. Deep and long standing hostility Between much of Alberta and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, little noticed in the rest of the country, Indigenous politics are coming to the fore again. Carney and Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson may have already squandered their chances of success by consulting first with Alberta and then with everyone else, although the Premier of British Columbia, like the Premier of Alberta, still seems amazingly impatient find some housing.
In a televised speech Sunday, Guilbeault said it is “inconceivable right now” that Canada will meet its 2030 emissions targets. This sentence was one adverb too long. Last Wednesday, although Guilbeault was still considered the guarantor of the liberal climate, the Parliamentary Budget Office published a report It says Canada is on track to emit 55 to 65 megatons more carbon than the government's most lenient 2030 target, and that most of that gap, 45 megatons, existed before Carney began changing government policy.
That puts the difference between Trudeau and Carney at 10 to 15 megatons, with a projected global emissions gap of 20 times. gigatons. It would be quite typical for the Trudeau team to decide that this difference is crucial now that their guy is no longer able to give half measures, just as they were completely accustomed to engage in a “clean energy dialogue” with Joe Biden administration spokesman Amos Hochstein, who has been a strong proponent of maximizing oil and gas exports in that administration. It's as if Hochstein was playing poker against someone who kept sticking his cards to his forehead.
I was recently chatting with some friends in Ottawa who were wondering: What kind of game could Carney be?– all these meetings with Smith, all this talk about oil. Of course, this is some kind of tactical trick. Three-dimensional chess.
I believe Carney would like to sell more oil. The reasons don't have to be mysterious.
The US President is trying to reduce trade between Canada and the US. This will certainly have short-term costs in Canada, and possibly long-term costs as well. I already wrote before that Canada is going through something very similar to Brexit. After Brexit, the British realized that it was simply impossible to find distant markets that would completely replace the huge, once favorable market next door. This is something Carney should know better than anyone, I've written several times. What is his answer?
His answer is that in addition to revitalizing Canada's domestic market and making the most of distant but imperfect foreign markets, he wants to sell more of what Canada can sell. This is the chapter of his catechism, “Canada Has What the World Needs.” It's not just oil—this 60 percent larger Montreal port will ship a lot of different cargo—but it could definitely include oil.
As one Canadian Prime Minister, a man named Justin Trudeau, said, once said“No country is going to find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave it there.” And it's not even a binary question: sell or not: Canadian crude oil exports reach an all-time high in each of the last four full calendar years of Guilbeault's tenure in the federal cabinet, something he wasn't asked about on TV last night.
A specific project in the Alberta-Canada Memorandum of Understanding, or rather a specific project sort A project, a document drafted by the police in the absence of a supporter, may still collapse or be blocked. approach Carney and Hodgson's consultation may have helped hasten his demise. We'll find out. Meanwhile, Carney is taking a big step with big risks and an unpredictable outcome, something we hardly see every day in Ottawa.
Today I found myself telling someone that Canadian politics hasn't seen anything like this since Brian Mulroney and the Meech Lake constitutional amendments of 1987. It's a vague analogy, so vague that it may not even be useful, but what I mean is that this is a case of a national leader bringing his own coalition of voters into play in exchange for a victory that is unlikely to be guaranteed, rather than simply settling on the safest part of his vote and hoping for a half-point margin of one margin or another.
By the way, Meech Lake failed, practically paralyzing our politics for a decade later. This is not an argument against trying to do big things. But this is an argument against reckless brinksmanship. In a time of great uncertainty, many people and governments will try many things. Not everyone will succeed. Neither should be reduced to a binary pass/fail test of Canada's value as a country.
From “How does carbon make you feel?» Paul Wells (Substack). Reprinted with permission of the author.
