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‘So far I’m not seeing anything to suggest there’s been a true change of heart,’ says Premier Danielle Smith, of Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government
Danielle Smith, Alberta’s premier, says it is Go Time for Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister.
Carney is rolling out his plans Tuesday. Smith will be watching.
“Enough with the foot-dragging. Enough with trying to maintain the same failed policies of the last 10 years. Let’s get going,” says Smith.
“Look. I was told to give this guy a chance. I’m giving him a chance. Now I’m telling him: Don’t blow it.”
You can hear the urgency in Smith’s voice.
Carney goes on about fast-tracking projects but then doesn’t commit to getting rid of the Liberal policies sending investment in the opposite direction.
Carney, wake up.
Scrap the Liberal No More Pipelines Law, the Liberal cap on oil and gas emissions, the Liberal net-zero electricity regulations and the tanker ban off the west coast.
That’s just some of the items on Smith’s list but the premier says Carney has been non-committal. He also has not talked up a pipeline to Prince Rupert, B.C., with oil bound for Asia.
“So far I’m not seeing anything to suggest there’s been a true change of heart,” says Smith.
Yes, it is either the old Liberal playbook or Carney will choose to do what it takes to make Canada an energy superpower — and that means deep-sixing bad policies.
“They’ve got to pick a side. It can’t be speaking out of both sides of your mouth for much longer. I guess we’ll see which side wins,” says the Alberta premier, of the Carney Liberal government.
“They don’t have too much time. They’ve got about a three- to six-month window to show they’re steering the ship in a different direction.”
Smith says she will have a pretty good read on things by Calgary Stampede time in July.
By then she will know whether what Carney has been saying is “just a bunch of hot air.”
Smith will be travelling around the province, talking to Albertans. She has a negotiating team in place to sit down with the Carney government.
If worse comes to worse and the Carney government tries to stand in Alberta’s way in developing its resources, the province will come up with a plan to work around Liberal Ottawa.
“I’ve got a mandate to develop our economy and to exercise our constitutional rights and I’m going to do that, one way or the other.”
Meanwhile, in downtown Calgary on Friday morning, breakfast is being served.
Special of the day. Thin gruel.
It is a packed house of business movers and shakers and political operators listening to a guy who looked and talked like a clone of Carney.
Tim Hodgson is Carney’s point man on energy.
The man says a lot of words but doesn’t talk about a lot of concrete action.
The oil and gas crowd seems to like him because they want to believe things will change.
The press, the newshounds in the room, are not allowed to ask questions though some of them are salivating at the chance to get Hodgson to say something you could put in a headline.
This Hodgson guy talks a good game but it was mostly empty calories.
We will fast-track projects in the national interest. This is not the time for half-measures.
We are not here to waste time. We are looking for quick wins.
Hodgson will be a voice for Alberta. Three cheers for oil and gas and hardhats and rigs.
“We’re not going to solve problems by pontificating,” says Hodgson, as he is pontificating.
When it is over, some oil exec individuals, the folks who have never spoken to this scribbler, tell anyone who will hear how Carney’s man said all the right things.
That comment is said in the same tone of voice you’d hear if they’d said: “He likes us. He really likes us.”
All I can think of is how much different the speech would have been if Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives had won.
They campaigned on punting the anti-oil and gas Liberal policies but, alas, many Ontario boomers had their elbows up and their brains shut down.
Rebecca Schulz, environment minister in the Smith government, echoes the premier.
Carney has to giddy-up and make things right.
Schulz found “not a lot of substance” in what Carney’s man has to say.
Alberta has heard the happy-talk words in the past and been strung along by Liberal politicians from Ottawa.
Premier Smith, as she said in a recent column of mine, wants Carney and his crew to stop talking in riddles.
“It a matter of show me, don’t tell me,” she says.
“Words are one thing but I don’t think that’s going to cut it with Albertans.”
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