B.C.-Alberta feud could drive me to drink

Push back against Trudeau and Notley’s flawed reasoning with a little wine

I don’t drink, but I’m going to start buying wine from B.C. Everyone’s getting B.C. wine for their birthday, anniversary, and Christmas presents. Maybe we’ll even hold a grownup Easter Egg Hunt but with wine bottles hidden around the backyard instead of eggs.

Here’s why: the Kinder-Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, despite claims that he’s a champion of the environment, approved this new, expanded pipeline to take Alberta oil across B.C., so B.C.’s trying to block construction by introducing oil-spill regulations to restrict how much bitumen a company could ship across its province. In retaliation, Alberta is going to ban all imports of B.C. wine. The logic is irrefutable. Oh, those snooty B.C. wine growers! They’ve had it coming, with all their “we’re better than oil workers” snobbery!

With respect, now is not the time to go on and on about B.C.’s disorderly attempts to do an end-run around federal decisions by implementing provincial regulations. Now is not the time to rap B.C. on the knuckles and stand behind Alberta’s brave attempts to resurrect its economy. Now is not the time to nod approvingly (and yet reluctantly) as Trudeau explains that pipelines are what’s best for the Canadian economy overall, and for the environment overall (yes, he actually argues this; so does Alberta’s premier, Rachel Notley).

Now is the time to buy cases and cases of B.C. wine. Now is the time to support this rogue province, because B.C. is right.

The thing about oil spills is that they aren’t an “if,” they’re a “when.” We know from plenty of evidence all over the world, and in our own country, that they happen with shocking regularity. Here’s how many oil spills there have been in just the past year: February 2017: Bay of Bengal, India April 2017: Alaskan Arctic September 2017: Salamis Island, Greece

October 2017: Gulf of Mexico November 2017: South Dakota January 2018: East China Sea

I wish I could say that this was an unusually bad year, but it’s average. If we move forward in this list just by a month, there’s another spill in North Carolina in February 2018. If we move slightly backward, September 2016 was particularly awful, with one spill in Louisiana, and another in New York, which implicated not only the Hudson River, but also a (wait for it …) nuclear power plant. The month before that, in August 2016, there was an oil spill in the Red Sea, near Jordan. In other words: I’m not cherrypicking my months, here.

If you don’t remember hearing about these spills in the media, but you do recall hearing about how damn important oil is to the Canadian economy, then perhaps British Columbia is onto something: we are in a new world of climate change, and the old models of power — unwieldy, top-heavy, unable to see the vulnerable ground beneath its feet — just don’t work. Like the various American states that are going ahead with increasing environmental protections even though Trump is rolling them back at the federal level, B.C. is simply doing what’s right because of the evidence at hand, despite Trudeau and Notley’s pan-Canadian, oil-friendly rhetoric.

Not to mention their economy-friendly rhetoric: they argue again and again that for Alberta, the problem is the solution. I don’t mean to get all factsy and truthy, but the reason Alberta’s economy is in rough shape is because it’s been overly invested in oil and gas. What it needs to do is diversify its economy so that it’s not so vulnerable to dips in the oil and gas sector’s stock values and the movement away from oil to renewables and electric power. If the rest of the country supported Alberta while it laid the groundwork for diversification, that would truly be a federal action in the best interests of all Canadians, so that our children and their children can keep, you know, breathing and growing food and drinking clean water and stuff.

But then again, this would require long-term thinking, which eludes most politicians, since they’re so concerned with holding power in the next election, and most voters, since they’re so concerned with paying their bills. I don’t mean this flippantly; it’s only human to be concerned with our own circumstances and looking after the loved ones we see in front of us. I have bills and kids — I get it. However, if our leaders aren’t able to look beyond this and consider how they are also responsible for future generations — for nurturing our country beyond the life expectancies of today’s voters — then we shouldn’t have politicians at the helm: we should replace them with historians and scientists, who can see the bigger picture. Interestingly, one could argue that it’s a scientist who’s influencing BC’s government now: the Green party’s Andrew Weaver, who holds the balance of power in B.C.’s minority government.

Anyway, I’m off to the LCBO.