Dumping on Alberta in its own backyard
What an odd thing it is for the New Democratic Party to hold its national convention in Edmonton this weekend, since Alberta, as all Canada knows, is facing dire economic times due to the slump in its oil industry. And yet, before the convention even began, the party’s current leader, Tom Mulcair, announced quite enthusiastically that, should his party adopt a policy of “leaving fossil fuels in the ground,” he, as a CBC headline put it, “will do everything” to keep them there.
Is this really a message to be highlighted in Edmonton? Was Salt Spring Island, B. C., not available for the meet? Or the Sierra Club’s home offices? What about Al Gore’s palatial compound? Why go to Alberta with the proclaimed attitude that, if things are bad now for your major industry, let’s see if we can make them worse? Would Mulcair go to Oshawa or Windsor, Ont., to proclaim he’s open to banning automobiles? How about to Saint John, N. B., to put a hold on shipbuilding? The ironies summoned are staggering.
Alberta’s cardinal industry is in tatters: more than 100,000 jobs have been lost, its revenues have fallen off the cliff, and what little hope the industry has is being strangled by the fevered and irrational opposition to any pipeline — north, south, east or west — that might restore at least a few jobs. And here is the NDP, having been blasted to also- ran status in the recent election, heading to the one province dependent on the energy industry with a pre-packaged pledge to do all it can to suffocate what’s left of that industry.
Once upon a time — long, long ago — the NDP was seen as a working- class party, a party with a feel for the little guy, a party that almost revered workers and their jobs, and visibly ached when those at the bottom of the economic pile were knocked out of the workforce. Where is it now? Hard to tell, but it’s certainly more of an urban, yuppie, trend- driven faction than the party that once championed the “working class.” The current NDP will get more worked up over “de-gendering the bathroom” than job losses in Alberta, or anywhere else.
It is particularly held hostage to the environmental doomsayers, from whom come the drastic LEAP Manifesto, which the NDP will consider adopting at the convention. LEAP is a piece from the pen of, among others, Avi Lewis, who seems to sense no disharmony between his manifesto and the consideration that he worked for a fossil-fuelled dictatorship — the oil-sodden sheikdom of Qatar — as an Al-Jazeera journalist, for the better part of a decade. Apparently, he had no trouble drawing his sustenance from the wealth generated by one of the world’s largest oil producers, and also has no trouble turning his anti- fossil fuel guns on the democratic hamlet of Fort McMurray, Alta.
Alberta, unfortunately, has few friends these days. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not as declarative on pipelines as Mulcair is willing to be, but he dances around any question of real support for them with the finesse and agility of U.S. President Barack Obama’s sublime seven-year waltz on Keystone XL. Everyone knew the answer was “no” during all seven years of that sad ballet, but Obama loves to play the tease. When and if Trudeau gives a definitive pronouncement on pipelines, it’s more likely the after-party will be in Green Party Leader Elizabeth May’s house than, say, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s. If I were to be mischievous here, I’d say that, on pipelines, Trudeau has a hidden agenda, but, manfully if I may say so, I forgo that delight.
And having mentioned mischief, let me turn briefly back to Wall. For in so far as there is a political wall holding back, or at least obstructing, this reign of anti- oil sentiment, he is that wall. With the dew still fresh upon him from a third consecutive electoral victory, he stands as the only voice of national prominence willing, without embarrassment or hesitation, to mount a defence for the workers in the oilpatch, and likewise the only politician with the courage necessary to dissent openly to the many soggy premises and doomsday sloganeering of triumphalist, uncompromising environmentalism.
Someone should invite Brad Wall to Edmonton this weekend — to speak about jobs.
WHY WOULD THE NDP GO TO EDMONTON WITH THE PROCLAIMED ATTITUDE THAT, IF THINGS ARE BAD NOW ... LET’S SEE IF WE CAN MAKE THEM WORSE?