It is unsettling to witness the lengths to which Danielle Smith and Preston Manning will to go scare their fellow Canadians into supporting the Poilievre Conservatives and the fossil fuel industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alberta\u2019s premier made headlines last month when she advised the Trump administration to ease up on its tariff and annexation threats because they were hurting Poilievre\u2019s chances of beating the Liberals. Then, lest that doesn\u2019t have the desired effect, MAGA\u2019s favourite premier hedged her bets with an extraordinary statement following a meeting with Mark Carney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe had a very frank discussion in which I made it clear that Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we\u2019ve been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years,\u201d Smith announced in a release. \u201cI provided a specific list of demands the next Prime Minister, regardless of who that is, must address within the first six months of their term to avoid an unprecedented national unity crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In case you missed the demands, here\u2019s the list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As can be seen, the list goes from the politically volatile – tankers off the northern B.C. coast, pipelines through pipeline-wary Quebec – to the eccentric – single use plastics and \u201ccensorship\u201d of energy companies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(An \u201cunprecedented\u201d unity crisis indeed – one inspired partially by unmet demands to bring back plastic straws and stop calling out oil company BS. But the rumour that Smith also wants Canada\u2019s national bird to be the black-capped chickadee covered in oil from an Alberta tailing pond is\u00a0false, an invention of the satirical Beaverton).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Any doubt that the to-do list was for Carney\u2019s benefit disappeared when Poilievre immediately acquiesced, calling Smith\u2019s demands \u201creasonable.\u201d Poilievre would be delighted to repeal C-69, end the tanker ban, eliminate the emissions cap and \u201caxe\u201d the industrial carbon tax. Those items are in his platform and on the wish list of big petroleum, although it\u2019s not clear where Poilievre stands on ramming a pipeline through Quebec or across Indigenous lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hyping the crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Smith\u2019s demands came with a six-month deadline, a feature that naturally gave rise to questions about what happens if a re-elected Liberal government says no to some, most, or all of the items on the list. How would Smith’s “unprecedented national unity crisis” unfold? Would a referendum on separation be in the cards? Smith hemmed and hawed about that, but her latest plan contemplates appointment of a \u201cWhat\u2019s Next\u201d panel to consider, among other things, possible questions to be put to a referendum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To help drive home the message that Canadians need to put national unity in their worry box along with national survival who should enter the fray but 82-year-old Preston Manning, the godfather of western alienation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the headline \u201cMark Carney poses a threat to national unity,\u201d the former leader of the Reform party wrote an op-ed in Friday\u2019s Globe and Mail<\/em> telling voters – especially those in Central and Atlantic Canada – that casting a ballot for the Liberals \u201cis a vote for Western secession – a breakup of Canada as we know it.\u201d His startling prediction that if Carney becomes the next prime minister, he \u201cwould then be identified in the history books, tragically and needlessly, as the last prime minister of a united Canada,\u201d caused a stir on the campaign trail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Carney called it \u201cdramatic and unhelpful.\u201d Poilievre, a Reform party progeny, responded to a question about Manning with an ambiguous comment about the \u201cneed to unite the country\u201d – to which could be added \u201cby voting against Carney.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But is sentiment in Alberta really as secessionist as Manning would have us believe? And does it, as he claims, extend to all of western Canada? <\/p>\n\n\n\n