Alberta premier Jason Kenney has a good response to Justin Trudeau's recently announced Don't-Call-It-a-Coalition coalition government. After predicting that the New Democratic Party will “push Trudeau to attack oil and gas even harder and faster,” Kenney offered some reassuring words to Albertans, saying "Alberta’s got its economic mojo back and, whatever they do down east, we are on the economic rebound." He continued,
“If they get cocky about this and they attack our largest industry even harder they’ll hurt from it, too. You can’t pay for socialism without a growing economy and you don’t have a Canadian economy without oil and gas,” says Kenney. “If they want to pay for socialism, they’ve got to find the money somewhere and that somewhere is Alberta, that somewhere is the oil and gas industry. “If they kill the goose that lays the golden egg in Canada’s economy, they can’t pay for all their socialist schemes. “They need Alberta more than we need them.”
He's not wrong. The resource sector makes up a significant percentage of GDP, up to 10 percent by some measures. The agreement between the Liberals and the NDP includes some serious and expensive deliverables, such as a taxpayer-funded dental care plan that is projected to cost more than $4.3 billion in its first year alone. Their anti-oil and gas rhetoric notwithstanding, Trudeau and Singh are going to have to accept at some point that they can only take so many bites from the hand that feeds them before it strikes back.
Article tags: Alberta, Canada, Energy, Jagmeet Singh, Jason Kenney, Justin Trudeau, Liberal-NDP coalition, Oil and Gas
I will twist this into what I consider to be an outstanding argument.
Look, if you're an environmentalist, do you really want to be on the side of living in cold huts and eating bark? Modern life requires LOTS of energy, including vehicles and air conditioning. Furthermore, the parts of the world that don't have these things soon wants them. Solar ain't gonna cut it, (though I'm sure the pivot to nuclear is about to happen, with our green grifting friends on the ground floor, just like EVs).
Fossil fuels and free market economies provide the wealth and prosperity that will drive the innovation that will end reliance on fossil fuels. Few people 100 years ago could imagine what today looks like, and similarly few people today know what lies ahead--better batteries, efficient solar panels, room temperature super conductors, cold fusion, weird sci fi stuff?
Don't kill the goose that will lay the green egg. Green regulation and central planning will bring economic pressures unimagined by the average leftist, don't discount how much this will impact technological progress. In a world with food shortages, the green agenda takes a back seat REAL fast.
Don't get me wrong, global warming is complete cult BS. But a smart person in the green cult would raise their hand just before drinking the kool aid and raise my point.
In the 70's bumper stickers saying "Let those Eastern bastards freeze in the dark" were popular in Alberta, let's hope they make a comeback.