The crowd knows no compromise

The environmental protesters who are determined to throttle Alberta’s oil industry are so invested in the narrow, regressive world of their own doom-laden vision of the future, and the fanatic, narcissistic righteousness that is the hallmark of that vision, that they see themselves as having a licence to to do just about anything, no matter how morally reprehensible, in the pursuit of their cause.

Civilized debate, respect for one’s opponents, listening to differing opinions and good manners: these are the practices and mores of every other social and political exchange, and are necessary for reasoned debate to take place in a democratic society. Yet the anti-pipeline zealots seems to think that these standards don’t apply to them.

Witness that gruesome, arrogant invasion of the National Energy Board (NEB) hearing into the Energy East pipeline in Montreal this week. Three — just three — typically overzealous pipeline justice warriors flamed into the hearing room on Monday, screaming, “It has to stay in the ground.” One of them charged the panel members sitting at the front of the room, forcing the RCMP to subdue and shackle the bellicose buffoon. It was, of course, a stunt — precisely the kind of stunt that passes for protest these days, whenever the save-the-planet gang smells a camera in the distance, a headline in the making or an opportunity derail any legitimate airing of a contentious public issue.

They were only three protesters. But these three hooligans are a perfect example of the holier-than-thou mentality that pervades the modern environmental movement. Storm a meeting, scream slogans, insult the industry, play the victim, taunt the police, harass, intimidate and act like a thug — you may call it protesting if you wish, but bullying and boorishness are far closer to the mark.

And just what are they trying to stop? Great swaths of Fort McMurray, Alta., are still in ashes. Hundreds of homes have been levelled, families have been displaced, businesses are in ruin, the city is still in shock. Alberta is bleeding, its economy in tatters, its confidence shaken. The country as a whole has been wounded by the collapse of the oil industry. From Newfoundland to British Columbia, the drop in the price of oil has affected the lives of the hundreds and thousands of people who are no longer working. Projects have stalled or stopped. Government revenues are in decline. It is the bleakest moment in modern Alberta history.

One would assume that, under these circumstances, every socially conscience individual in the country would be concerned about all the people in desperate straits; all the newly unemployed and homeless yearning for an opportunity for a better life. Yeah, sure. So long as there is a Greenpeace, a Sierra Club, a Green party or, for that matter, while Denis Coderre is mayor of Montreal, fresh from the Great Flush of eight billion gallons of raw sewage into that city’s historic and polluted harbour, there will be no flag of hope raised for any project — and particularly any pipeline running from Alberta’s landlocked oil deposits — that might aid that province in its darkest time. Instead, a troika of agitators is allowed to put a halt to the national energy regulator’s hearings, merely by showing up and playing the bullies for a few moments.

Where is the real “exalted warrior,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in all this? Well, today he is in China, which must be a welcome intermission from his travails on the hot sands of Tofino, under a constant drizzle of selfies and photo-bombs, in weeks past. A protester is detained during the National Energy Board’s Energy East pipeline hearing Monday.