Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has allowed B..C wine to flow freely into Alberta again. Very magnanimous of her, considering this trade barrier was an illegal act in violation of at least two inter-provincial trade agreements. The action of a bully, nothing more.
Even worse, both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Notley have indicated that Canada’s entire carbon emission mitigation strategy is contingent on the Kinder Morgan pipeline going through. There will be no carbon tax, no budget for west coast spill protection and no way to meet Canada’s Paris Agreement commitment they say, without the pipeline.
Incredibly, this means both the federal and Alberta governments are holding B.C. and the entire planet hostage. They claim it is a matter of jobs, but only 50 permanent jobs will be created. Meanwhile, they put the 320,000 jobs in the coastal dependent B.C. economy squarely in the sacrifice zone.
We see here the work of ruthless conservative forces marshalling the economic argument against social and political change, as it has done since time immemorial.
In the past, these same forces used economic arguments against human rights to oppose the abolition of slavery. They are now doing the same to B.C.’s indigenous people’s rights, and indeed to the rest of humanity, faced as we all are, with massive anthropogenic climate change.
B.C. citizens stand with Premier Horgan in his action to undertake the science of dilbit spill recovery, something the flawed National Energy Board process never completed. Since Kinder Morgan has recorded 1,848 spills, including the infamous Kalamazoo river in Michigan which has cost billions to clean up, it is imperative this work is done.
Please phone your MLA or MP to express your support for Premier Horgan. The future of us all is at stake.
Roland Alcock
Sooke