Bailing out Grits

Bailing out Grits
By Neil Waugh

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein was back on his game in Fort McMurray last week.

It was just in the nick of time, especially after Prime Minister Paul Martin gave United States President George W. Bush what amounted to a crank call over the softwood lumber dispute.

Martin's constitutionally challenged Natural Resources Minister Bill Graham was over in China sounding like he's threatening to sell Alberta oil to the Chinese to spite the Americans. How he plans on doing that, goofy Graham never explains. But the premier felt it wise to remind the Ottawa Liberals of how the country is supposed to work nonetheless.

"Our government team knows that Alberta controls its own destiny," Klein told his Fort Mac fundraiser. "We are not going to squander this opportunity." Then he brought the hammer down. "We will not let Ottawa snatch that opportunity away from us, by an unfair raid on the energy sector or the wealth it generates," Klein spat.

Sure, Ralph's looking real bad on the Tyson Foods strike, clearly the victim of bad advice and B-team cabinet ministers. But there's no doubt where his heart lies when it comes to redistributing Alberta's windfall oil and gas billions.

He told the chamber of commerce suits, the opposition socialists and eggheads just whose side he's on: the folks he calls "severely normal" Albertans.

"I make no apologies for returning a portion of Alberta's windfall revenues back to Albertans," Klein said.

He talked about how "all of Alberta benefits" when the money is in our pockets. Then he took a well-needed shot at the "special interests" who have placed themselves on an intellectual plateau above us.

"Albertans are smart enough to know what to do with their money and don't need government to tell them how to spend it," the premier blasted.

Welcome back, Ralph. It's been a while.

Considering that Alberta just bailed Canada out of a big one and saved Martin's economic butt, you'd think Ottawa would be a little more grateful.

"Canadian exports back on track," boomed the Toronto-Dominion Bank's latest economic commentary. But don't congratulate the parts of Canada that votes for Paul Martin for saving our economic bacon.

"As expected, surging energy prices proved the cornerstone of the export growth," TD economist Eric Lascelles said.

Even though natural gas exports went down in volume, prices rose an incredible 13%.

Alberta's cow patch, now that the U.S. border is open again to live cattle, also made Martin's bottom line a lot blacker.

"Canada's sickly pallor on the trade front seems to be in the rear-view mirror," Lascelles whooped.

Thanks to Albertans.

But there are dangerous folk plotting against the province's fossil fuel-based economy. Especially with the big United Nations climate change conference in late November in Montreal, where the preposterous prime minister will once again pretend to be the savior of the world.

"Top Alberta air polluters revealed," screamed the Canadian Environmental Law Association press release. (I've never heard of them either.) The outfit fingered what it called the "dirty dozen" polluters which it claimed are causing "cancer, respiratory illnesses, reproductive harm, developmental harm and hormone disruption."

But breathe easy, it turns out the Alberta horror show isn't what it seems. The dirty dozen includes: Syncrude, the Sundance, Sheerness, Battle River, Genesee, Keephills and Wabamun power plants, Suncor, the Scotford upgrader and the Waterton, Kaybob and Ram River gas plants.

They are all operating within strict emissions guidelines. Yikes, that's the industrial heartland of Alberta.

And if this sinister environmental law group had its way, they would shut us down.

But there's one Ottawa Liberal who finally seems to get it. Federal Environment Minister Stephane Dion has a confession to make.

"The fact is," Dion told a climate change meeting in Montreal recently, "the fossil fuel industry is here to stay for a long time. It's too large a part of the global economy to be realistically eliminated from the world's energy mix in our foreseeable future."

Yup, he really said it.