As the Justin Trudeau Liberals continue to crusade their eco-radicalism, Albertans are met with perhaps the biggest slap in the face yet.
Just last week, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson announced the federal government’s intentions to roll out “Just Transition” legislation over the coming weeks. The plan is to replace high-paying jobs in the energy sector with “green jobs” such as solar panel installation techs.
Stemming from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, it’s being touted by Trudeau and his team as a “sustainable” and “forward-thinking” plan where “any losses will be compensated.” While the early buzzwords are unsurprisingly vague, it is clear this plan is certainly not “just” and is most definitely another attack on the West.
These buzzwords and catch-phrases coming down the pipe are almost as ominous as their sources: the eco-radical Liberals who prove time and again that they have an agenda to demonize our best-in-the-world Canadian energy, our Alberta energy, and everyone who benefits from it.
No wonder Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is biting back. And hard. Not since Trudeau senior’s National Energy Program (NEP) in 1980 have we seen such an outright attack on Alberta. But this time it’s far worse. While the NEP created a rift between Alberta and Ottawa that some feel is forever beyond repair, at least it was trying to build up our oilsands in order to take our wealth.
Fast forward four decades, Just Transition is a plan to entirely shut down our oilsands, and every single Albertan must be aware of how dangerous this legislation really is.
Smith is holding nothing back and all of us at Alberta Proud applaud her for having the tenacity to stand up to Trudeau’s latest arrogance, which would end the Alberta Advantage once and for all.
That’s the whole point of her hotly contested Alberta Sovereignty Act – which gives us the legal framework to fight back against federal chess moves that interfere with our provincial constitutional rights. And if the feds trouncing on our provincial jurisdiction over our own resources isn’t interference, I don’t know what is.
Rightly so, Smith is standing her ground – Alberta has long been in the race toward low emissions through oil well remediation, hydrogen development and carbon capture or ‘carbon tech,’ where we have already been blazing the trail for a decade.
But fossil ideas require fossil solutions. The eco-radicals resort to “banning, blocking and barricading” and that is exactly what the early insights into Just Transition have revealed: a blatant desire of the Trudeau elites to keep our best-in-the-world Alberta energy in the ground.
Don’t forget this approach has been the signature style for Environment Minister “Uneven” Steven Guilbeault, the former head of eco-radical group Equiterre, who illegally scaled then-premier Ralph Klein’s house to install solar panels as part of a bizarre anti-oil stunt.
While Alberta Environment Minister Sonya Savage is calling on Trudeau to drop the name “Just Transition,” we say, keep it! Don’t let Trudeau hide behind semantics from what this plan really is: a plan to destroy our oilsands and stick it to Alberta. It’s another attack on the West, like trying to stick surgeon general-style warning labels on our Alberta beef, or decimating our farming industry with planned fertilizer reductions that will starve out the nation.
And so 2023 begins with shots fired on Alberta.
Lindsay Wilson is the President of Alberta Proud.
