Hypocrisy on display by both sides at opening of pulse plant
About the only thing politicians seem to love more than crapping all over celebrities from a distance is hobnobbing with them in person.
Admittedly, celebrity worship is not confined to right-wing politicians like Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who made a starry-eyed appearance this week at the opening of a Vanscoy-area pulse plant with one of its investors, Hollywood director James Cameron.
We once had a film industry in Saskatchewan — albeit, a highly subsidized one — that, under the past NDP administration, enjoyed a government-built sound stage and a lucrative Saskatchewan Film Employment Tax Credit. It afforded NDP politicians the opportunity to accompany Hollywood starlets to rock concerts, to open up their homes for use as movie sets and, of course, to enjoy the production of a movie canonizing Tommy Douglas.
Wall’s government wound down the SFETC in 2012 because it had no interest in seeing taxpayers extorted by these movie-types
... or at least, not until Corner Gas threatened to shoot its movie in Manitoba. Saskatchewan taxpayers, quite literally, wound up subsidizing the project on a persunset-shot basis.
Wall and company have also found it outrageous that Hollywood types have the audacity to express their sometimes holierthan-thou, self-indulgent personal views on core Saskatchewan industries like oil and farming and ranching.
To be sure, there’s no shortage of hypocrisy from jet-setting musicians, actors and directors who leave massive carbon footprints as they preach sacrifice to the rest of us. Whether it be singer Neil Young or actor Leonardo DiCaprio preaching that oilsands are causing the ruination of the planet (and evidently causing Alberta chinooks) or 1980s actress Daryl Hannah opposing the Keystone XL pipeline or a no-name American character actor preaching against supposedly hormone-laced Canadian beef in A&W ads, perhaps Wall actually has had legitimate reason to be upset.
“I fear we’re in danger of losing more battles if we’re not vigilant,” Wall last year told a crowd of Calgary oil executives — many of whom have donated generously to the Sask. Party coffers and his own salary. “We’re at a disadvantage in some ways. The other side has the glamour of Daryl Hannah, and we’ve got Rex Murphy.”
However, celebrity isn’t all that bad if they are opening businesses here.
The thing is, though, DiCaprio became famous for a little 1997 Cameron-directed movie called Titanic. And Cameron — who directed a little 2009 film called Avatar that was an allegory to all forms of environmental issues on its way to becoming the highestgrossing movie ever — happens to be rather good friends with Hannah, who joined Cameron for 2010 Earth Day celebrations.
So it was no small irony to see Wall and Cameron cutting a ribbon at North America’s largest organic pulse processor — one fitting Cameron’s vision of sustainable living where organic, plant-based proteins replace our thousands of acres of cattle grazing.
Further adding to the irony was Cameron’s claim that he chose Saskatchewan because of its “business-forward mentality” and because in the U.S., agriculture is being taken over by corporate farms.
“There’s a chance here in Saskatchewan to really continue to do it right and not make conglomerates gobble up the farmers,” said Cameron, obviously oblivious to the Wall government’s past practice of allowing individuals to sell land to pension plans as they accumulated vast corporate land holdings.
Were the Camerons aware of Wall’s past statements on Hollywood celebrities protesting pipelines and oilsands? And if Wall subscribes to his own principle, why would he even attend this celebrity announcement?
Well, maybe all that shouldn’t matter. Maybe the teaching moment here is for both Wall and environmental warriors (celebrity or otherwise) to get past their own hypocrisy and understand that we still can all coexist in this world for mutual economic and environmental benefit.
After all, if an oilsands-promoting politician and a Hollywood environmental warrior can get together to open a Saskatchewan pea processing plant, who knows what else we can accomplish?