It could be worse: we could be Alberta

Except for a year spent in North Africa, I’ve lived my whole life along the line from Brantford to Toronto, with Hamilton as the midpoint. It’s much the same in my family tree, with roots in quaint pastorals like Lambton County, Fullarton Township, Highland Creek and Glengarry County. I suppose this makes me a died-inthe-wool Southern Ontarian, right back to my great-great-grandparents.

This Southern Ontarian-ness doesn’t always sit well with me here in generation X. The highways, the industrial parks, the strip malls, the urban sprawl, the gridlock, the smog … there are a lot of things about this part of the province that I’m not proud of. They’re like the embarrassing relatives I wish wouldn’t come to the reunion.

More than anything, though, I’m embarrassed by Doug Ford. I’m embarrassed that an estimated 36 per cent of Ontarians would vote for this man — this ignorant boor who associates with misogynists, racists and homophobes; who greasily congratulates the premier on her smile during an election debate; who gives tax cuts to the rich; and who thinks promising beer-for-a-buck is a valid component of an election platform here, where almost a million children live in poverty. I’m embarrassed that Trump’s been in office across the border for 17 months, and instead of being horrified, a third of us want a close version of him running our province.

But I’ve started thinking that it could be worse. We could be Alberta.

Recently, an Albertan emailed to tell me that my column about the Trans Mountain pipeline was the only article she could find that supported British Columbia’s opposition to the pipeline. Hers is a province, she wrote, that gets angry about David Suzuki being awarded an honorary degree at the University of Alberta because he’s dared to criticize the oil industry. Hers is a province, she wrote, where elementary schoolchildren are given pamphlets about all the wonderful things that the oil industry creates — things like teddy bears and beach balls. She told me that on some days, she feels like she’s drowning, living in a province that continues to support Big Oil with rhetoric and bullying, and not a hint of shame.

The reality is that Alberta gets most of its power from burning fossil fuels, so it emits 47 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (CO2e) per year just from electricity and heat generation. Fully half of its electricity comes from burning coal. Its mining and oil and gas industry emissions from extraction and industry byproducts sit at 110 million tonnes of CO2e per year. And then there are the cows: Alberta raises 41 per cent of the cattle and calves in Canada — the livestock that happens to produce more CO2e than any other.

Ontario, despite having more than three times the population of Alberta, is responsible for 23 per cent of Canada’s CO2e, while Alberta is responsible for 38 per cent (more than any other province). Without putting too fine a point on it: despite the research, despite the warnings, despite the forest fires, Alberta has steadfastly dragged us further and further into a dangerous future. And yet it demands to be supported as it keeps right on dragging.

Ontario has closed its coal-fired plants. Alberta still has seven of them. The Wynne government said no to the proposed GTA West highway despite Ontario’s entrenched auto culture, because it would only have put more cars on the road. When my husband and I took advantage of provincial grants for solar panels and geothermal heating, we put money into local companies from Kitchener and Caledonia (respectively) that installed Ontario-made renewable technologies. This is one of the ways a government can build a sustainable economy, rather than shut its eyes to science and progress.

Is this enough? No. Wynne’s government proposed two initiatives that would have led to more improvement, but they went nowhere: if passed, Bill 151 would have made producers of waste pay for the recycling of their waste, which would no doubt have decreased how much waste they produce. The government’s “Wastefree Ontario” plan would have forced industrial, institutional and commercial sectors to compost their organic waste (just think of the millions of garbage bags full of coffee grounds alone that would be diverted from landfills). It’s kind of souldestroying, to think about these fumbles.

But at the same time, after I got that email from Alberta, I felt better about my province.

The Trudeau government is spending $4.5 billion of Canadian taxpayers’ money to give Alberta a pipeline so that Alberta will agree to lower its outsized emissions, all the while saying this incongruity is good for Canada. This isn’t just rhetoric, this is dogged insincerity of tragic proportions. And Alberta stamps its feet and calls B.C. reckless and irresponsible.

Here’s what I’d like to know: how the hell did Alberta get a free pass? And when the hell is it going to grow up?