NOTLEY TRIES TO FASHION A SILK PURSE WHILE KENNEY LOSES TWO SOW’S EARS

Politically speaking, she’s making a silk purse from a sow’s ear. At least that’s the plan. Premier Rachel Notley is trying to use the trade war with British Columbia as a way to improve her flagging popularity in Alberta.

That’s understandable. Popular politicians tend to last longer than unpopular politicians. And the shrewder ones do their best to spin silver linings from the darkest of clouds.

On Friday, for example, Notley toured the Tenaris Prudential steel plant in Calgary. The company makes tubes for energy pipelines, like the kind Kinder Morgan will use to triple the capacity of its Trans Mountain pipeline to the West Coast.

If only, of course, the B.C. government would stop trying to stall construction of the project by threatening to enact regulations that would dictate what the company can and cannot ship through the pipeline.

By announcing her government’s boycott of B.C. wines earlier this week, Notley demonstrated she was onside with many Albertans frustrated and angry with the B.C government.

By very publicly urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to “step up” to his responsibilities to get the already approved pipeline built, she was channelling the ghosts of premiers past who enhanced their careers by slapping around the federal government from time to time.

By visiting the steel plant Friday, Notley was spinning a narrative that her fight with B.C. was all about defending jobs for Albertans.

After her visit, she held a scrum with reporters to announce she has formed a task force with some nationally known and stillinfluential Liberals — including former deputy prime minister Anne McLellan and former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna. Their job is to come up with “additional measures” Alberta can take to end B.C.’s economic blockade.

“In response to British Columbia’s unconstitutional attack on our energy industry and the Canadian economy, Alberta is preparing retaliatory measures,” said Notley. “The new task force is made up of leaders with deep connections throughout the country and expertise on these matters. It will help ensure Alberta’s response gets Ottawa’s and B.C.’s attention.”

It’s worth noting Notley is now using a word as loaded as “retaliatory,” something she wouldn’t have touched with a 10-foot opinion poll just a few weeks ago.

But now she feels she is speaking for a majority of Albertans fed up with the chronic delays in the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion — and who support her combative approach.

United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney still wants her to retaliate further with the “nuclear option” of turning off the oil taps to British Columbians so they can suffer sky-high gasoline prices.

But even Kenney had to give Notley a grudging thumbs up after she stuck a cork in wine imports from B.C.

Kenney, for his part, has been busy fighting on other fronts this week. He got into a bit of a social media tussle with former UCP MLA Derek Fildebrandt who again demonstrated an ability to be both bully and victim.

Fildebrandt said it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t told party officials in a meeting last November he was facing a charge of illegal hunting. He said he had been shocked into silence when Kenney told Fildebrandt he could not run for the UCP nomination in his redrawn home riding because MLA Leela Aheer would be running there instead. Fildebrandt called Kenney’s actions undemocratic.

Kenney retaliated this week by pointing out Fildebrandt’s main residence is actually in Calgary, not Strathmore-Brooks, and the party was right to tell him to find another riding. But it’s all a moot point now that the party has closed its doors to the one-time conservative star.

Kenney also had his hands full dealing with the sudden resignation from politics of MLA Don MacIntyre who, we can now report, was charged last week with sexual assault and sexual interference.

On the surface, losing two MLAs was a blow to the UCP. But there is a silver lining for Kenney.

Fildebrandt, who had proved himself the Mount St. Helens of bozo eruptions, is gone. So too MacIntyre, who had his own bozo flare-ups by pretty much denying that man-made climate change was man made.

Kenney might not be making a silk purse, but his party is now free of two sow’s ears.