If some of Alberta's old grievances had been addressed by the "Liberal" feds, then there would be fewer old grievances to be recycled. How about taking a good look at that ?!
I could just about get behind Matt's sentiment of just get it done - but fuck me - as an Alberta, the UCP/cons have fucked over this province so bad environmentally and won't even handle the cleanup of abandoned wells nor will even enforce their own laws and hold bad actors to account. If I'm BC, how the fuck do I treat AB/Smith as a good faith actor to cleanup/pay for the enevitable leak etc....
That's the problem -example all these oil companies in AB are supposed to be responsible for these messes and carry insurance - but if someone bails/goes bankrupt you end up w 50,000+ abandoned wells in AB costing 30-70Billion to clean up that us the tax payers are now stuck with. And a large part of that liability is because AB has been terrible at enforcing their own regulations AND insuring that operators have the proper insurance and contribute to cleanup funds. Danni sure likes to talk pro-business and removing regulation and getting out of the way - but she never makes the case for doing the development responsibly - she flat out refuses to acknowledge that the environmental risk will be born entirely by BC.
I live in Edmonton, i legitmately think we need another pipeline somewhere - but fuck she is just so terrible at making the case w/o any respect for real concerns - and if I was Premier EBY, I'd be demanding that AB gov backstop any environmental damage because god know the AB gov won't hold accountable any firms operating in this province
Off topic... Abondonment issues have nothing to do with transportation.
Most of abandoned well liabilities are from pre-1980's, and have nothing to do with any recent AB government policity
Smith is playing this perfectly. Why not make BC and the Feds demonstrate their positions on a pipeline now?
I'm with Smith on the notion of no pipeline, no country. The opinions of the BC government and First Nations are irrelevant. At its base, country must provide unrestricted movement of goods, services, people and capital within its borders. If the federal government isn't willing to risk all of its political capital on table stakes, it hasost its authority to govern.
As someone who works in the AB resource industry and deals with the AER, I can assure you their oversight and environmental requirements are extremely robust. There are billions of dollars spent on all manner of environmental consultants, oversight and remediation every year on an ongoing basis. It is one of the most robust environmental regulatory environments in the world
To second what Doug has said - most of these abandoned wells are from 40 years ago, when the regulatory environment and retirements were not what they are today.
This podcast was hardly an argument for Confederation. A covert alliance between Dr. Carney and Ms. Smith? A marriage made in hell, but well deserved.
Quebec's hydroelectricity is run by a Crown Corporation. This revenue is not included in the calculation of equalization payments to the same extent as Alberta's O&G. Regardless, Paul St-Pierre-Plamondon has already stated he plans to wean Quebec off these transfers (this will be fun), moving towards economic and political independence. The next Quebec referendum on separation, which I fully support, will be Confederation's undoing. Prepare for a rough landing.
Ms. Smith's consultation is a farce, as outlined by Ms. Gerson, but is also a sleight of hand. When the UCP win the next provincial election (in 2026?) she will proceed with the Alberta Pension Plan, an Alberta Provincial Police force, start collect taxes, and open Alberta immigration offices in foreign states. Like Quebec.
A guest columnist for the G&M had the temerity to state the obvious, our futures lies along longitudes. Infuriated federalists flooded the comment section. The truth hurts.
Yes. You fix equalization by sitting down and answering some fundamental questions.
Do Albertans and the ROC understand that equalization is not a payment Alberta makes?
Nope
Can you fix equalization by generating less wealth?
I guess to answer that question, look at what Quebec has historically done - not developed their natural resources and use equalization to pay for much.
Is Alberta right not to trust Ottawa?
Yes. I would say the trust will be hard to obtain and maintain if Ottawa doesn't stand up to jurisdictions with liberal strongholds (they won't) Alberta might feel differently.
Is Smith a separatist?
Nope. I think all I have heard from Smith is that she does not personally support separation. That sounds relatively straightforward to me.
Is Alberta politics as @#$% show? Is Alberta governance a @#$ show?
Yes. But then again, so is every province and the federal government too.
Is that fixable?
Insert laughter emoji.
Since we had a government once that liked to apologize for everything, perhaps Ottawa might begin mending fences by apologizing for the National Energy Program. Will that ever happen?
Also - The Line Podcast: Carney sets a pipeline trap ... but is Smith in on it?
Re. possible pipeline deal with Carney, Smith is like a 13-year old girl in puppy love, soon to be bitterly disappointed.
Smith should be keenly aware that she is dealing with an experienced long-time white collar borderline shyster, who is proceeding to hot-wire and rejig Canadian economy so that as an innocuous byproduct of that, his investments will benefit fatly, from our taxes and money borrowed which we the serfs will have to pay off with interest.
Seen:
Repealing B.C. tanker ban a ‘hypothetical question’ for now, federal energy minister says. “It’s a hypothetical question right now, because there is no project before us,” .
Now is not that a surprise !
Dannie, what you gonna do if perchance next year Markie Conman Carnie wins a supermajority, as he is scheming to ?? And who is gonna keep a jaundiced jaded keen eye on that Elections Canada crew ? Last fed election they performed the shittiest that I heard of for feds. Markie did OK out of that though .........
Enjoyable potshots being taken at the professional theoretical academicians, so much at ease parasitizing on public purse.
A good podcast to my ears and mind, sniping in all directions very fairly.
Re a potential pipeline to the north coast. Northern Gateway was halted by the Supreme Court when the Harper government failed to adequately consult with First Nations. The joint review panel found that the project would have cumulative impacts that could not be mitigated. The same First Nations that opposed Northern Gateway in B.C. (famously excepting the Wet’suwet’en) subsequently embraced natural gas through the same corridor and the same coast because gas has a much lower risk to the environment. Ever heard of an Exxon Valdez type event from LNG? The mountainous terrain of B.C. is an awful place to build any pipeline and an oil pipeline is just plain riskier than gas. Those are substantive issues that need to be addressed in a real project proposal, or are we just to supposed to accept that any project, anywhere, is automatically in the public interest because it makes money? A proposal needs to show it has a real potential to address the environmental risks, not just ignore them or bulldoze over them. Not a single word has been spoken about how a new proposal would address the real substance that led to the demise of Northern Gateway. For perspective, the same B.C. government(s) of both political stripes that opposed oil pipelines approved the biggest major projects ever constructed in Canada (Site C, LNG Canada) and has more coming (Cedar LNG, Ksi Lisims, Red Chris, Highland Valley…) so this is a jurisdiction that actually knows how to get projects approved….
this is exactly how I feel. it just feels like Smith thinks any negatives are imaginary but i remember very well the news coverage of Exxon and how much of a mess that was. I was born in BC in 76 and have lived in AB 20yrs now and do think we need one more pipeline (if anything just to shut Smith up) but this UCP gov just has zero sense of how to address or take into account why BC might be concerned - UCP just keep saying "but money/we get our product to market" over and over instead of addressing the very real environmental risks - esp when they can't keep their own house clean
When Ryerson, (which is a few blocks from my home in downtown Toronto) went all-in on the progressive positioning for its law school, my immediate reaction was that at some point their students and faculty were going to expect them to do something so progressive that other law schools wouldn't do it. Schools like Osgoode (part of York) just down the road, which employs such faculty as Heidi Matthews, who is (um) very critical of Israel. Very critical indeed. Notoriously so.
If you're starting a law school in a province with lots of very, very progressive law schools, a couple of which are within walking distance, and your chief point of differentiation is that you are the most progressive — the natural home for students and faculty who think the other ultra progressive law schools are insufficiently progressive — you'd better have thought through how you will make good on that positioning. Apparently, they had not thought it through.
I'm sure they are well-positioned to win their lawsuit, if they don't flake out and settle, which would be just like them. But the entire premise of one of their signature initiatives, the new law school, has been exposed as so much virtue signaling nonsense. Serves them right.
Each time I hear about Alberta separatists, I hear the Quebec separatists from the 90s. Spoiler alert: it doesn't get better with time. The Quebec movement has been repeating the same arguments since then, continuously digging their own hole deeper and deeper. So much energy has been spent on Ottawa vs. us and not actually trying to resolve any of our real issues. To my Albertan friends: please, don't let that happen to you.
A funny side note: the Parti Quebecois is still arguing in 2025 that Quebec is actually sending more money to Ottawa it receives in equalization; therefore, the province would be richer if it were independent.
I remember Transmountain approvals getting delayed when a BC court decided there needed to be more consideration of the impact of increased tanker traffic on the southern resident orca population. Surely just a coincidence that there'd been a highly-publicized incident of an orca mother pushing around the body of her dead calf for weeks...
This encapsulates the fundamental problem with the environmental review process: the government has done a lousy job of setting the scope and defining what are acceptable trade-offs and a tolerable level of risk. That's left a yawning opportunity for environmental activists to keep raising the bar, facilitated by overreaching courts. The problem is that many environmental activists simply reject the idea that there can *ever* be a trade-off between the environment and economic development, or that *any* amount of environmental degradation is tolerable. You're never going to arrive at a compromise with parties who reject the whole premise of the process. Until political leaders accept that their role is to define those compromises and that you'll never please everybody, we'll be stuck with the current escalating dysfunction.
Jen makes the point that Toronto Metro-U made a bad law school with sub-par students because they created a group-think environment that didn't allow for other viewpoints.
Jen's right... but their problem is NOT that they made a legal school with an explicit world-view... the problem is that they created one that refused to engage with other world-views.
Compare them with Trinity Western University which is similar in that it has an explicit world view... in their case a Christian one. At TWU it works really well. Why?
Unlike Metro-U, TWU rejects the idea of only engaging with "good-think". They lay out their world-view unapologetically, remind themselves that it's not have everyone sees things and then commit to engaging with the world and everyone else in it. Ironically, it's the secular, progressive Toronto Metro-U that embraces the stereotypical monastic retreat from world and only engaging with their own ideas", while it is the Christian TWU that explicitly calls for engagement with others in "the market places" of life and hammers it into students that theirs is *one* way of seeing the world.
In fairness, as a Christian University, TWU had one big advantage... they know they're a minority in Canada and they're used to grappling with ideas they don't like, even when they are sometimes rooted in bigotry against them. By contrast... progressives have an easier time in Canada living their lives believing that the government, authorities, elites and institutions are basically on their side... so they don't get forced by society to engage.
TWU gets at least partial safeguards against group-think imposed on it by society whereas Toronto Metro-U doesn't.
Toronto Metro-U could have had a good law school that taught the law from an overtly progressive perspective if they had done it right and explicitly decided to grapple with uncomfortable ideas. But they didn't.
Ironically, group-think University is the one permitted to train lawyers while the "engage with all ideas" TWU is the one that the law society said can't train lawyers because it has a "bad" perspective on the world.
Mrs Moretta can’t make use of the new federal pipeline because it “Trans”.
Albertans are not represented by the whining Mrs Moretta (smith). The Albertans I know are driven, entrepreneurial, problem solvers not whiny victims. She projects the worst and the least of us.
Note to Jen.
If some of Alberta's old grievances had been addressed by the "Liberal" feds, then there would be fewer old grievances to be recycled. How about taking a good look at that ?!
TMU vs TMU Law students? LET. THEM. FIGHT.
C A N A D A... N E E D S... I N D U S T R I A L... I N C O M E... Y E S T E R D A Y...
I could just about get behind Matt's sentiment of just get it done - but fuck me - as an Alberta, the UCP/cons have fucked over this province so bad environmentally and won't even handle the cleanup of abandoned wells nor will even enforce their own laws and hold bad actors to account. If I'm BC, how the fuck do I treat AB/Smith as a good faith actor to cleanup/pay for the enevitable leak etc....
The carrier is liable for any environmental damage and must carry insurance. Why would the AB Gov have any liability other than wishful karma?
That's the problem -example all these oil companies in AB are supposed to be responsible for these messes and carry insurance - but if someone bails/goes bankrupt you end up w 50,000+ abandoned wells in AB costing 30-70Billion to clean up that us the tax payers are now stuck with. And a large part of that liability is because AB has been terrible at enforcing their own regulations AND insuring that operators have the proper insurance and contribute to cleanup funds. Danni sure likes to talk pro-business and removing regulation and getting out of the way - but she never makes the case for doing the development responsibly - she flat out refuses to acknowledge that the environmental risk will be born entirely by BC.
I live in Edmonton, i legitmately think we need another pipeline somewhere - but fuck she is just so terrible at making the case w/o any respect for real concerns - and if I was Premier EBY, I'd be demanding that AB gov backstop any environmental damage because god know the AB gov won't hold accountable any firms operating in this province
Off topic... Abondonment issues have nothing to do with transportation.
Most of abandoned well liabilities are from pre-1980's, and have nothing to do with any recent AB government policity
Smith is playing this perfectly. Why not make BC and the Feds demonstrate their positions on a pipeline now?
I'm with Smith on the notion of no pipeline, no country. The opinions of the BC government and First Nations are irrelevant. At its base, country must provide unrestricted movement of goods, services, people and capital within its borders. If the federal government isn't willing to risk all of its political capital on table stakes, it hasost its authority to govern.
As someone who works in the AB resource industry and deals with the AER, I can assure you their oversight and environmental requirements are extremely robust. There are billions of dollars spent on all manner of environmental consultants, oversight and remediation every year on an ongoing basis. It is one of the most robust environmental regulatory environments in the world
To second what Doug has said - most of these abandoned wells are from 40 years ago, when the regulatory environment and retirements were not what they are today.
This podcast was hardly an argument for Confederation. A covert alliance between Dr. Carney and Ms. Smith? A marriage made in hell, but well deserved.
Quebec's hydroelectricity is run by a Crown Corporation. This revenue is not included in the calculation of equalization payments to the same extent as Alberta's O&G. Regardless, Paul St-Pierre-Plamondon has already stated he plans to wean Quebec off these transfers (this will be fun), moving towards economic and political independence. The next Quebec referendum on separation, which I fully support, will be Confederation's undoing. Prepare for a rough landing.
Ms. Smith's consultation is a farce, as outlined by Ms. Gerson, but is also a sleight of hand. When the UCP win the next provincial election (in 2026?) she will proceed with the Alberta Pension Plan, an Alberta Provincial Police force, start collect taxes, and open Alberta immigration offices in foreign states. Like Quebec.
A guest columnist for the G&M had the temerity to state the obvious, our futures lies along longitudes. Infuriated federalists flooded the comment section. The truth hurts.
>Do you want to know how to fix equalization?>>
Yes. You fix equalization by sitting down and answering some fundamental questions.
Do Albertans and the ROC understand that equalization is not a payment Alberta makes?
Nope
Can you fix equalization by generating less wealth?
I guess to answer that question, look at what Quebec has historically done - not developed their natural resources and use equalization to pay for much.
Is Alberta right not to trust Ottawa?
Yes. I would say the trust will be hard to obtain and maintain if Ottawa doesn't stand up to jurisdictions with liberal strongholds (they won't) Alberta might feel differently.
Is Smith a separatist?
Nope. I think all I have heard from Smith is that she does not personally support separation. That sounds relatively straightforward to me.
Is Alberta politics as @#$% show? Is Alberta governance a @#$ show?
Yes. But then again, so is every province and the federal government too.
Is that fixable?
Insert laughter emoji.
Since we had a government once that liked to apologize for everything, perhaps Ottawa might begin mending fences by apologizing for the National Energy Program. Will that ever happen?
Nope.
The political class has failed everywhere in the west. They are without principle, pandering to their base (in every sense).
Also - The Line Podcast: Carney sets a pipeline trap ... but is Smith in on it?
Re. possible pipeline deal with Carney, Smith is like a 13-year old girl in puppy love, soon to be bitterly disappointed.
Smith should be keenly aware that she is dealing with an experienced long-time white collar borderline shyster, who is proceeding to hot-wire and rejig Canadian economy so that as an innocuous byproduct of that, his investments will benefit fatly, from our taxes and money borrowed which we the serfs will have to pay off with interest.
Seen:
Repealing B.C. tanker ban a ‘hypothetical question’ for now, federal energy minister says. “It’s a hypothetical question right now, because there is no project before us,” .
Now is not that a surprise !
Dannie, what you gonna do if perchance next year Markie Conman Carnie wins a supermajority, as he is scheming to ?? And who is gonna keep a jaundiced jaded keen eye on that Elections Canada crew ? Last fed election they performed the shittiest that I heard of for feds. Markie did OK out of that though .........
Enjoyable potshots being taken at the professional theoretical academicians, so much at ease parasitizing on public purse.
A good podcast to my ears and mind, sniping in all directions very fairly.
Re a potential pipeline to the north coast. Northern Gateway was halted by the Supreme Court when the Harper government failed to adequately consult with First Nations. The joint review panel found that the project would have cumulative impacts that could not be mitigated. The same First Nations that opposed Northern Gateway in B.C. (famously excepting the Wet’suwet’en) subsequently embraced natural gas through the same corridor and the same coast because gas has a much lower risk to the environment. Ever heard of an Exxon Valdez type event from LNG? The mountainous terrain of B.C. is an awful place to build any pipeline and an oil pipeline is just plain riskier than gas. Those are substantive issues that need to be addressed in a real project proposal, or are we just to supposed to accept that any project, anywhere, is automatically in the public interest because it makes money? A proposal needs to show it has a real potential to address the environmental risks, not just ignore them or bulldoze over them. Not a single word has been spoken about how a new proposal would address the real substance that led to the demise of Northern Gateway. For perspective, the same B.C. government(s) of both political stripes that opposed oil pipelines approved the biggest major projects ever constructed in Canada (Site C, LNG Canada) and has more coming (Cedar LNG, Ksi Lisims, Red Chris, Highland Valley…) so this is a jurisdiction that actually knows how to get projects approved….
this is exactly how I feel. it just feels like Smith thinks any negatives are imaginary but i remember very well the news coverage of Exxon and how much of a mess that was. I was born in BC in 76 and have lived in AB 20yrs now and do think we need one more pipeline (if anything just to shut Smith up) but this UCP gov just has zero sense of how to address or take into account why BC might be concerned - UCP just keep saying "but money/we get our product to market" over and over instead of addressing the very real environmental risks - esp when they can't keep their own house clean
The essence of Canadian federalism is each of our senior governments blame the other level rather than accept responsibility for their jurisdiction.
When Ryerson, (which is a few blocks from my home in downtown Toronto) went all-in on the progressive positioning for its law school, my immediate reaction was that at some point their students and faculty were going to expect them to do something so progressive that other law schools wouldn't do it. Schools like Osgoode (part of York) just down the road, which employs such faculty as Heidi Matthews, who is (um) very critical of Israel. Very critical indeed. Notoriously so.
If you're starting a law school in a province with lots of very, very progressive law schools, a couple of which are within walking distance, and your chief point of differentiation is that you are the most progressive — the natural home for students and faculty who think the other ultra progressive law schools are insufficiently progressive — you'd better have thought through how you will make good on that positioning. Apparently, they had not thought it through.
I'm sure they are well-positioned to win their lawsuit, if they don't flake out and settle, which would be just like them. But the entire premise of one of their signature initiatives, the new law school, has been exposed as so much virtue signaling nonsense. Serves them right.
Kindly said. I call them parasites on public purse.
A friend and graduate of UoT's law school refers to the York abomination as Wasgood.
Shakespeare said it all in Henry VI.
The Wasgood line is older than the internet.
Indeed. Shakespeare too.
2 tier bureaucracy assumes the new tier will work any better than the old existing bureaucrats.
Each time I hear about Alberta separatists, I hear the Quebec separatists from the 90s. Spoiler alert: it doesn't get better with time. The Quebec movement has been repeating the same arguments since then, continuously digging their own hole deeper and deeper. So much energy has been spent on Ottawa vs. us and not actually trying to resolve any of our real issues. To my Albertan friends: please, don't let that happen to you.
A funny side note: the Parti Quebecois is still arguing in 2025 that Quebec is actually sending more money to Ottawa it receives in equalization; therefore, the province would be richer if it were independent.
I remember Transmountain approvals getting delayed when a BC court decided there needed to be more consideration of the impact of increased tanker traffic on the southern resident orca population. Surely just a coincidence that there'd been a highly-publicized incident of an orca mother pushing around the body of her dead calf for weeks...
This encapsulates the fundamental problem with the environmental review process: the government has done a lousy job of setting the scope and defining what are acceptable trade-offs and a tolerable level of risk. That's left a yawning opportunity for environmental activists to keep raising the bar, facilitated by overreaching courts. The problem is that many environmental activists simply reject the idea that there can *ever* be a trade-off between the environment and economic development, or that *any* amount of environmental degradation is tolerable. You're never going to arrive at a compromise with parties who reject the whole premise of the process. Until political leaders accept that their role is to define those compromises and that you'll never please everybody, we'll be stuck with the current escalating dysfunction.
Jen makes the point that Toronto Metro-U made a bad law school with sub-par students because they created a group-think environment that didn't allow for other viewpoints.
Jen's right... but their problem is NOT that they made a legal school with an explicit world-view... the problem is that they created one that refused to engage with other world-views.
Compare them with Trinity Western University which is similar in that it has an explicit world view... in their case a Christian one. At TWU it works really well. Why?
Unlike Metro-U, TWU rejects the idea of only engaging with "good-think". They lay out their world-view unapologetically, remind themselves that it's not have everyone sees things and then commit to engaging with the world and everyone else in it. Ironically, it's the secular, progressive Toronto Metro-U that embraces the stereotypical monastic retreat from world and only engaging with their own ideas", while it is the Christian TWU that explicitly calls for engagement with others in "the market places" of life and hammers it into students that theirs is *one* way of seeing the world.
In fairness, as a Christian University, TWU had one big advantage... they know they're a minority in Canada and they're used to grappling with ideas they don't like, even when they are sometimes rooted in bigotry against them. By contrast... progressives have an easier time in Canada living their lives believing that the government, authorities, elites and institutions are basically on their side... so they don't get forced by society to engage.
TWU gets at least partial safeguards against group-think imposed on it by society whereas Toronto Metro-U doesn't.
Toronto Metro-U could have had a good law school that taught the law from an overtly progressive perspective if they had done it right and explicitly decided to grapple with uncomfortable ideas. But they didn't.
Ironically, group-think University is the one permitted to train lawyers while the "engage with all ideas" TWU is the one that the law society said can't train lawyers because it has a "bad" perspective on the world.
Mrs Moretta can’t make use of the new federal pipeline because it “Trans”.
Albertans are not represented by the whining Mrs Moretta (smith). The Albertans I know are driven, entrepreneurial, problem solvers not whiny victims. She projects the worst and the least of us.
I did enjoy getting our old friend Admiral Ackbar in there ;)