MICHAEL SMYTH:

CLARK’S ALBERTA-BASHING WILL HURT B.C.

Any smart salesman will tell you one of the oldest tricks in the book is to butter-up your customer because flattery will get you everywhere.

So why the heck is the Christy Clark government insulting our nextdoor neighbours in Alberta when we’re trying to sell them our hydro electricity?

Alberta’s NDP government has announced plans to shut down its polluting, coal-burning power plants and B.C. has offered to sell them our squeaky-clean hydro power to replace it.

But now, Clark’s cutthroat political instincts have taken over and she’s embarked on a bash-Alberta campaign. It started in Tuesday’s throne speech, which slammed Alberta for messing up its economy and budget.

“Alberta lost its focus,” Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon said. “They expected their resource boom never to end, failed to diversify their economy and lost control of government spending.”

Clark kept the hits coming in a post-speech news conference, blaming Alberta’s ravaged economy for Vancouver’s housing crunch.

“We have a growing economy,” Clark boasted. “One of the downsides of that is more people want to live here. Five thousand Albertans have flooded across the Rockies. They’re buying homes.”

Are you starting to connect the dots yet? Albertans elected an NDP government, you see, and now they’re fleeing the province likes rats leaving a sinking socialist ship.

I’m told Alberta government officials privately made their displeasure known to B.C. counterparts about the slights.

But Clark’s key cabinet attack dogs kept on gnashing Wednesday, with Housing Minister Rich Coleman blaming Alberta for B.C.’s rising homeless count.

“I’ve had more pressure on the homeless file than I’ve had in the last seven years,” Coleman complained. “We track it and a lot of it is coming from in-migration. People coming from other jurisdictions, particularly Alberta.”

I asked Coleman if Alberta’s NDP government is to blame.

“If they’re going to overspend, it could be,” he said. “If you’re making more promises than you should be making, depending on the revenue you have coming in, certainly that is a mistake.

“If they’re going to go to massive deficit spending, they’ve made a mistake there.”

Energy Minister Bill Bennett piled on, saying B.C. was just getting some payback on Alberta, which used to enjoy lording it over B.C.

“For a long, long time, there was some of that kind of stuff coming across the Rockies our way. I guess there’s a little bit of it going back the other way,” Bennett said.

“It’s healthy competition probably between two different political ideologies.”

Yeah, yeah, we get it : British Columbians shouldn’t make the same mistake Alberta did by voting in an NDP government next year.

But maybe Clark and company should take a break from dumping political manure on Wild Rose Country if they expect Alberta to buy our electricity.

By playing cynical, cross-border political games, Christy Clark is hurting B.C.