ALBERTA WINNING TRADE WAR
John Horgan’s weak response to Rachel Notley’s ban on B.C. wine imports will just encourage her to step up the duel of NDP premiers
British Columbia may have started the fight, but it looks like Alberta will be the province to turn it into an all-out war.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has already banned B.C. wine imports and scuttled any talk of electricity deals between the two provinces.
But it looks like she’s only warming up, after British Columbia threatened to limit B.C.-bound shipments of bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands.
“We have no choice but to stand up and defend Alberta’s interests,” Notley said Wednesday, adding she’s planning “further actions” in the fight with B.C.
So what was B.C. Premier John Horgan’s response to these attacks, provocations and threats?
He said he will ignore the “distractions” from Alberta, and he will not return fire.
“I don’t believe it’s in anyone’s interests to have duelling premiers,” Horgan said.
“What Alberta does is entirely up to them. We’re going to focus on the issues that matter to British Columbians and hope that cooler heads on the other side of the Rockies prevail.”
Hope for the best? It was a weak response from a B.C. premier and government that decided to kick the hornet’s nest by going after Alberta’s primary industry.
It also followed an earlier suggestion by B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham that B.C. might retaliate by targeting Alberta’s beef exports.
So where’s the beef, premier? Horgan had to admit the threat was just a bunch of bull.
“It’s not the government’s intention to respond in any way to the provocation,” Horgan said, while calling Notley’s actions “over the top.”
On my fight scorecard, I give the round to Notley. If she can punch Horgan in the nose like this, and all he does in response is “hope” she’ll back down, she will just be emboldened
to keep punching.
The B.C. government doesn’t seem to understand that Notley is fighting for her political life in Alberta. There’s an election next year, and she’s trailing in the polls behind Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservatives.
She also has the Alberta media braying at her to stand up and defend the province’s oil industry and the fragile economic recovery
happening there.
In other words, the B.C. government handed her this opportunity on a silver platter and she’s making the most of it. She is getting great reviews for her toughness in Alberta.
Horgan seems bewildered by it all. “I see no ground for the premier to stand on,” he complained.
But Notley seems quite comfortable and confident where she’s standing. She will not back down.
Unfortunately for the B.C. wine industry and other innocent parties that get swept up in this dispute, there’s no easy escape route for Horgan, either.
Horgan’s New Democrats are in a governing alliance with the B.C. Green party, fiercely opposed to the Kinder Morgan pipeline that would pump Alberta’s bitumen to our coast.
Even more tricky for Horgan is the powerful environmental wing of the B.C. NDP, which threatens to rebel against him if he wavers in his opposition to the pipeline.
Horgan already angered environmentalists by vowing to complete construction of the Site C dam and by pursuing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant during a recent trade mission to Asia.
By fighting the Kinder Morgan pipeline, he’s hoping to appease environmental interests that threaten a civil war against him.
So how will it be resolved? Notley wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to get involved.
“It’s time for Ottawa to step up and assert its authority to build infrastructure that is in the larger national interest,” Notley said.
The official-opposition Conservatives in Ottawa are demanding Trudeau invoke constitutional powers to get the pipeline back on track.
“Trudeau needs to do his job,” said Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, from Calgary.
Trudeau, though, is in a political pickle of his own. He won a lot of close B.C. ridings in the last election and he could be worried about an anti-pipeline backlash here if he moves too aggressively.
With Trudeau wavering, and Horgan just hoping for the best, watch for Notley to keep raising hell.
As the battle of wills between the B.C. and Alberta governments over pipelines and rosés heats up, towns near the B.C.-Alberta border are keeping a wary, if amused, eye on the escalating spat.
Gerry Taft, mayor of Invermere, said most of the reaction he’s heard from residents about the ongoing tit-for-tat between B.C. Premier John Horgan and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley are tongue-incheek, with hashtags like #marchonfernie and #bcresistance popping up on his Twitter feed and joking talk about Alberta’s bid to reclaim territory in southeastern B.C. by “making Alberta rectangle again.”
“People are exaggerating what politicians have said and are running with it,” said Taft. “My gut feeling is that most regular people are not taking it seriously.”
Many B.C. border towns, including Invermere, Radium Hot Springs, and Golden, have strong commercial or tourism ties with Alberta.
Geographically closer to Calgary than Vancouver, the region operates on a different time zone from the rest of B.C. — Mountain time is referred to as “Alberta time.”
Many Albertans have vacation homes in Invermere, said Taft, and are considered part-time residents who volunteer and contribute to the community, while many Invermere residents drive to Banff or Calgary, three hours away, to shop, vacation or fly out of the airport.
With Alberta’s Family Day weekend — traditionally a busy weekend for the Kootenays and Columbia Valley — coming up, the business community is hoping for a quick resolution to the dispute between the two NDP governments.
“We are concerned about this,” said Susan Clovechok, executive director of the Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce. “Alberta is our largest market” in terms of tourism, and the region’s population explodes from 9,500 residents to 40,000 during the busy tourist season.
At least one Kootenay tourism operator has received a cancellation from Alberta clients who said they’ll go to Montana instead. A hockey team from Alberta that was scheduled to come to B.C. for a tournament has also pulled out.
Clovechok doesn’t want to see
a boycott gain momentum as any cancellations, especially during the long weekend, can negatively affect small businesses’ bottom line.
“We are not a community along the pipeline,” she said. “We have no direct influence but our communities and our families could end up paying the price.”
Golden mayor Ron Oszust said he was “quite shocked” at Notley’s move to ban B.C. wine: “It’s unfortunate that it escalated.”
But he’s confident the political war won’t translate into a direct hit to his small community, a gateway to Rockies’ towns of Banff and Jasper.
“We’re in the middle of six national parks. We have lots of people coming for downhill skiing, heli-skiing, snowmobiling, I don’t see that much of an impact here.”
On the other side of the border,
Blair Painter, mayor of Crowsnest Pass, said he’s heard people agree with the wine boycott, and possibly more.
“People are saying that’s something I can support. I’m not going to buy B.C. wine if they don’t want to take our product,” he said.
If a trade war erupts between Alberta and B.C., Painter thinks B.C. has more to lose.
The impact to his community will be minimal, said Painter. Crowsnest Pass, which is made up of five communities, does not see a lot of tourists from B.C.
But there’s plenty of Albertans who head west for recreational activities. “I heard people say they won’t be doing that anymore, and that they’ll spend the money in Alberta,” he said. “But talk is talk. We’ll see what happens.
“I’m really disappointed it would come down to where we are today,” he added.
David Hull, executive director of the Cranbrook Chamber of Commerce, said Horgan and Notley should stop their political posturing and called on the federal government to resolve the issue.
While he doesn’t see the pipeline war developing into a major economic battle between the two provinces, Hull said it paints Canada as a nation which “can’t even get our poop in a group.”
“Disputes like this don’t move the economy forward and it doesn’t bode well on the local, provincial and international stage,” said Hull. “There’s just going to be losers out of this.”