SAINTS PRESERVE US

666 on Your AM Radio Dial

Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney is looking doughy and sweaty these days. Some observers attribute his damp bloat to binge eating. Others argue for binge drinking. But they all do agree that the United Conservative Party (UCP) leader is not in a good place. He’s trapped in a dark space, maybe a closet or a coffin.

Some politicians, and Kenney is one, have an affinity for backroom dirty work. But has a single politician the world over ever signed on to test their mettle, hoping their latent, possibly non-existent, crisis management skills will be brought to bear? That glossy power brochure came off the same press as the travel agent’s all-inclusive, hurricane season discount getaway to a war zone. That warm, soft-focus view from an exclusive peak wasn’t advertised as a vista of catastrophes and disasters. Ain’t no ruling in a perfect world.

Alberta’s boss to date has demonstrated a yawning inability to measure up to the legacies of even his most ineffectual previous conservative predecessors, Don Getty, Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford, to name a few. Citing placeholders Dave Hancock and Jim Prentice would just be mean-spirited and grossly unfair as neither of these men held power long enough to get scoped along the barrel of a hunting rifle or turn their backs on sharpened survival knives.

Kenney’s immediate problem, notwithstanding plague and world events, internal UCP ethical breaches and, dear me, an overarching cornered rat mentality of fear and paranoia, will manifest next Tuesday, March 15, likely around 9 pm. That’s when Albertans will have a good sense of the result of the Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche byelection, a lose-lose proposition for the premier. This is juicy stuff.

The New Democratic Party (NDP) stunned Alberta and the rest of Canada when it won the 2015 provincial election erasing 44 consecutive years of Progressive Conservative government. Kenney, a remarkably slick operator, managed to unite the shell-shocked right. The dregs of the devastated Tories and its bastard offspring, the populist fringe Wildrose Party, constitute his UCP. To consolidate his power, Kenney had to dispatch Wildrose leader Brian Jean. Kenney did so with a ruthlessness not seen on any stage since the Scottish play was first mounted at the Globe. Both men had served under Stephen Harper as federal cabinet ministers.

Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche is oil patch, tar sands country. An NDP victory in the upcoming byelection would be a staggering repudiation of UCP governance. However, the UCP candidate is viewed as the overwhelming favourite, one Brian Jean who has risen from the dead more like Dracula than Lazarus. The Jean genie, now fully recovered from his stab wounds, lives again for just two reasons: he wants Kenney’s job and he wants Kenney’s head.

Come April, the UCP membership will conduct a leadership review in Red Deer, a city considered smack-dab central Alberta. Party memberships are consequently selling like flapjacks at a Calgary Stampede charity fundraising breakfast. Something’s in the air. It’s impossible to speculate on who’s stacking the deck, Jason or Brian?

The stakes are high and time is tight since the sepia-toned good old days that never really existed yet faded away will never come again. Premier Kenney has decided to engage with his core constituency through the magic of AM radio. How quaint, but that’s all they know. He will be featured on a weekly Saturday morning call in show, “Your Province, Your Premier,” possibly up until the writ is dropped for the 2023 provincial election, at which time an exclusive avenue of mealy-mouthed whinge would be illegal. He is simultaneously looking over his shoulder while looking ahead, greasing the gears of two sets of ballot machinery.

Kenney’s “the bell tolls for thee, Duncan” moment with Jean remains an open file with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police which is probably why he’s advocating for an Alberta provincial police force. The latest minister of justice is under investigation by the Alberta Bar Association. The previous one thought it was a good idea to telephone Edmonton’s chief of police about a traffic ticket. The energy minister figures mining coal in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains is a good idea. The education minister thinks the K-6 curriculum is a veterinary service for junkyard dogs. Most Albertans had no inkling the province’s energy industry was brought to its knees by a shadowy cabal of rich, international eco-terrorists. It’s always all somebody else’s fault; this poor workman doesn’t blame his tools. Kenney could prove to be talk radio gold although humour is subjective.

What’s all this have to do with the price of oil? Everything. Undiversified, single resource-based economies are bastards to be beholden to. Ledgers don’t always teem with black gold skimming. When the Kenney government was elected in 2019, the price of the province’s major commodity was low. The House of Saud, a major ally of the United States, had left its oil taps running, praying America’s shale projects would become too expensive to pursue, thereby nullifying any hopes and dreams the US had of becoming energy self-sufficient. That would mean American foreign policy in the Middle East could slide into indifference. Also, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company was planning to go public. The Americans kept fracking.

The collateral damage was Alberta; Americans didn’t need the province’s cheap and impure crude. Energy companies ceased to view the tar sands north of Fort McMurray as a worthwhile investment. Premier Kenney blamed the federal government for hostile global market forces, specifically Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The evil, scheming Liberal leader obviously had some kind of secret, elitist Davos green plan designed to flip Alberta back into a Stone Age economy of hunting and gathering.

Before philosophy got all confusing and complicated over the natural rights of man, the means of production, the nature of God, and the absurdity of existence there was just one fundamental question: Is man a part of nature or is nature his subject? In current geological theory, we are all awake and alive in the Anthropocene, an epoch both fired and fried by human activity. It’s a controversial concept because the science, like creationism, isn’t backed up by multiple millenniums of evidence. It’s here, it’s now, and it’s difficult to see the forest when all the trees are aflame.

Well, don’t things somersault and see-saw? War, provided it’s waged on another continent and the aggressor is a member of OPEC+ (pretty much the Sauds and Russia) and subject to international sanctions, can be a pretty fine thing. Alberta, a busted, bitter beggar some 1000 days ago, though still Canada’s richest province, is now flush with commodity casino cash. Oil royalties, that is. Kenney’s previous go-to bugbear, the allocation of federal transfer payments, can no longer be served at the UCP whine bar. Yet all is not well in the boom town. Alberta drivers who tend to favour pickups and SUVs have noticed an alarming spike in the price of gasoline. These people vote with their engines idling. Kenney insists the gouge is strictly the leftists’ fault, the former NDP government and Trudeau in Ottawa. Carbon taxes. In this province!

The taxation of fossil fuel emissions is progressive policy; anathema to the regressive populist bent of the UCP and commercial AM radio listeners. The intent of the modest additional consumption expense is a gentle nudge toward more efficient and judicious usage. It’s easy to be cynical about any government program, but ideally the monies raised would be invested in upgraded, cleaner technology, the research required for the development of viable alternative energy sources, and the retraining of the energy industry’s existing workforce. Canadian carbon taxes are also an exercise in international public relations, a spin away from the commonly held perception that Alberta crude is “dirty.” Sort of a win-win for Kenney as opposed to next week’s byelection.

Still, Alberta is now in such a positive financial place, the land of gushing coffers, that Kenney this week announced his government will stop collecting its portion of fuel taxes at the pump because the federal tyranny in this country is just too much. Albertans deserve a break on the eve of his leadership review, darn it! Albertans are also due a gratuitous $150 electricity rebate because Alberta’s deregulated energy markets are as unpredictable as pet weasels. Folks, a single strip mine in a designated preservation area, a provincial recreational park, could solve everything.

“Good morning, Mister Premier! This is Brian from Fort Mac, longtime listener and first-time caller…”

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of snide provincial political commentary since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer. Shucks, I'm no huckster, so believe me when I tell you the book is selling fast, walking out the door, supplies are limited. Best get yours now, folks.