NDP minister’s northern pride doesn’t need to slight the south
Marg McCuaig-Boyd, the NDP energy minister, suggested Thursday that Calgarians are tired of hearing about northern Alberta.
She was in Slave Lake at the Northern Leaders Summit, a gathering of First Nations and Community leaders.
McCuaig-Boyd was introducing Premier Rachel Notley when she said: “I live in the Peace Country, like we all do. I think we’d all agree the northern spirit is second to none.
“As part of my role I do get to spend a lot of time in Calgary, and I’m sure when I meet with them they’re getting tired of me talking about the north.
“But I’m very proud of the innovative spirit and the tremendous potential we possess here in the north.”
A bit later McCuaig-Boyd said: “We are, in the north, pretty resourceful people and we tackle some of the challenges that our friends down south don’t have.”
Within an hour of this column being published online, a furious provincial official called to insist that McCuaig-Boyd was only joking, laughing at her own penchant for bragging about her region.
I didn’t see it as a joke after watching the Facebook video a half-dozen times.
Even if she did intend to be jocular, this is no time for casual remarks that can even inadvertently raise regional temperatures. Alberta has enough problems with other Canadian regions.
Moreover, I have never heard any Calgarian express indifference about northern pride or problems.
So much oil and gas activity is in the north that it would be insane to dismiss what’s going on up there. Business connections mean our psychic distance is much shorter than the physical one.
Northern suffering from the oil and gas collapse is massive — which is why, on Sunday, well over 3,000 people are expected at a Grande Prairie rally in support of the industry.
Organized by local leaders, it’s intended to be non-partisan. The rally will likely draw regular people worried about their jobs and futures.
“I have never in my life been to a demonstration, never attended one,” oilfield businessman Cole Murphy told me Thursday. “But here I am, organizing one.”
Calgary problems, although different, are equally dire.
On Monday, yet another downtown Calgary pro-oil demonstration may also draw thousands. Tuesday night, 1,200 people turned out to an event at the Telus Convention Centre.
There will never be political agreement on exactly how to deal with the oil crisis, but it’s essential to have rough provincial unity around the problem itself.
That was one weapon PC premier Peter Lougheed used to fight off Ottawa in the 1980s. The feds knew he had an entire province behind him.
Whoever sees Alberta through this crisis — whether it’s Notley or UCP Leader Jason Kenney — will need a similar consensus. If the Trudeau Liberals see a crack anywhere, they’ll drive in a wedge.
That’s why it’s incredibly foolish for a provincial energy minister to do it for them.
McCuaig-Boyd didn’t mention Edmonton, a city seen by many rural folks as equally snooty.
Nor did she say the rural north has problems that aren’t shared by Edmonton or central Alberta, although it’s true.
Rather, she singled out “our friends down south.”
It’s easy to play on the old southern bogey: the impression that hard-working northern folks extract the resources while Calgary gets the value.
Ken Kowalski, the former PC speaker and cabinet minister, expressed this resentment vividly in 1995.
“The last time I looked I never saw one ounce of oil, one litre of gas, one cow, one pig, one chicken, one foot of timber in Calgary,” he said.
I was delighted to point out in a column that Calgary had three oil wells, 20 gas wells, and at least 40 farms with horses, cows, chickens and pigs, all within city limits.
Back then, the PC government could afford to be that stupid. Today, the NDP government can’t.
Notley and her ministers are in the north to shore up political support. On Friday, the premier makes an infrastructure announcement in Grande Prairie.
All that’s business as usual. For a northern MLA like McCuaig-Boyd, local pride is natural.
Just don’t use this wounded city as a foil, even in jest.