Trudeau comes to Calgary yet again. Let’s try to be nice

Trailing clouds of doubt he comes. But he sure keeps coming.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives in Calgary on Friday for the traditional Stampede appearance, as well as a road project announcement at the airport.

This will be his fifth visit in 2018 to Calgary and other parts of Alberta, including Edmonton and Fort McMurray.

Since becoming PM in 2015, Trudeau has visited Alberta 18 times, with 11 stops in Calgary.

Trudeau is accused locally of many things — choking the oil industry to death, egregiously favouring Central Canada — but can’t be charged with ignoring this province.

His dad was like that, too — with a personality difference.

Justin appears to seek genuine goodwill along with the abundant selfies. Pierre had a way of showing up when he knew it would annoy Alberta conservatives most.

He appeared Sept. 1, 1980, for celebrations of Alberta’s 75th anniversary, much against the wishes of then-PC premier Peter Lougheed.

Lougheed mustered a brittle smile as Pierre Trudeau celebrated the province on an outdoor platform at the legislature.

Six weeks later, Trudeau’s government introduced the despised National Energy Program.

That spectacular double finger put an end to smiles. The NEP planted suspicion of the Trudeau family that time has not erased.

But the “wimp” label that Justin’s enemies love to paste on him isn’t justified.

He defends the Trans Mountain pipeline in both Alberta and B.C., facing protests from all sides of this emotion-packed issue.

And he has, after all, committed $4.5 billion in federal funds to keep this project alive.

That makes it trickier for Albertans to attack subsidies to Bombardier, or federal help for Ontario companies hit hard by U.S. tariffs.

The PM’s problem in Alberta is rampant policy confusion and the suspicion it causes.

His government introduced Bill C-69, a regulatory system so complex that many in the petroleum industry think no more major projects can ever be built.

Just as bad, in my view, is Bill C-48, the north coast tanker ban that doesn’t ban tankers at all, but rather blocks shipment of the bitumen and condensates they’d carry, mostly from Alberta.

Then there’s the cancellation of the Northern Gateway pipeline and the casual acceptance of new project-killing emission rules for Energy East.

The Liberals, it often seems, see Alberta as an oil barrel with a steel band around the middle. And they keep tightening it.

Trudeau himself has appeared to put on the squeeze.

“We can’t shut down the oilsands tomorrow,” he told an Ontario audience in January 2017.

“We need to phase them out. We need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels but it’s going to take time, and in the meantime we have to manage that transition.”

Trudeau later backed away, explaining and re-explaining. But the comments were toxic in Alberta.

With all this in mind, I was worried about the feds’ new report from the Generation Energy Council, an expert panel that wrote an energy strategy for the country.

Would it see any future at all for the oilsands?

Well, it does. The report sets a goal: “By 2030, reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for oil sands extraction to levels lower than competing crudes in global markets.”

On that basis, federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr says “yes, absolutely” there will be an extended life span for production, beyond 2030.

Carr stressed in an interview that the report isn’t official policy, but he agrees with the oilsands goal. “I have enormous faith in the skill of Alberta entrepreneurs,” he says.

It’s already working. Several oilsands producers have dropped emissions to levels near or at those of foreign producers, says Dr. Dan Wicklum, CEO of Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA).

“This goal is entirely reasonable and we can reach it,” Wicklum says.

COSIA acts as a hub for 11 competitive oilsands operators that share patented technologies without charging a royalty. There may not be anything else like that on the planet. The common goal is to reduce emissions as quickly as possible.

None of this is likely to dispel Alberta doubts about Trudeau. But we’re friendly to visitors during Stampede. This is as nice as I know how to get.