Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Trudeau Was Given Sophie's Choice. He Didn't Hesitate to Pick.


I never watched the movie, "Sophie's Choice." I found the premise just too creepy. A mother forced to choose which of her two children's lives will be spared and which child will be consigned to extermination. 

That, according to the Dauphin, was his predicament when it came to the Kinder-Morgan pipeline. Rachel Notley gave him a choice - Alberta or British Columbia. It was Kinder-Morgan or his laughable 'national climate change plan.'

Rachel had Justin's balls and he wasn't getting them back until she got her pipeline. What's a young dandy supposed to do 'cept cave in, crater? And so, British Columbia, whose voters had trusted Trudeau's ever so sincere election promises, was for the axe.

Am I making this up? Hell no. Justin admits it all in an interview he just gave to our National Observer.

Trudeau larded the interview with his by now standard and feeble bullshit. Canada's green future depends on flogging as much bitumen as possible to buyers in Asia. And, by ramping up production of the lowest-grade, highest carbon, toxic contaminant-laced pitch (think Le Brea Tar Pits), we are going to slash our carbon emissions. This is the same government that isn't even on target to meet Stephen Harper's pathetic emissions cuts. And does Justin really imagine Alberta's next premier, Jason Kenny, is going to keep Notley's promises?

"The process that Stephen Harper set up was flawed, which is why, through a transitional process, we added to the Kinder Morgan evaluation process the kinds of consultations — the kinds of science, that we are now demanding for all projects as of now, with the new system," he said. "... So we actually managed to apply a better process to get to the Kinder Morgan decision."

There it is, the "science" again. Where is it? His own environment ministry says it hasn't been done. The Royal Society of Canada has a lengthy list of essential research that hasn't been undertaken. Alberta's renowned ecologist, professor David Shindler, backs premier Horgan's demand that someone research this disaster-in-waiting before it's too late.

Where's your science, Justin? Did the dog eat it? The fundamental research and the time that's needed to produce the analysis needs time, a lot more time than you've had to garner it. Shindler makes it obvious that Trudeau's "science" can exist only in his mind.

Trudeau said the Trans Mountain expansion "was always a trade off" for Notley's unprecedented climate action. That certainty and support, he added, put Canada on a pathway to achieve its Paris climate change targets and is part of the economic and environmental package that makes the pipeline so important.

To Justin Trudeau it was a trade off. He traded off British Columbia and its coastal waters for a promise that Rachel Notley may not ever be able to keep and Justin Kenny sure as hell won't. To British Columbians, however, it was more than a trade off. It was as craven a sell out as this country has seen in decades.

2 comments:

Toby said...

What puzzles me about this, Mound, is that there are 18 LPC MPs in BC and 3 in Alberta. Trudeau is throwing away his majority government.

The Mound of Sound said...


He's gambling that it'll all settle down by the time 2019 rolls around. Let's face it, his chances of re-election went up biggly with the ascendancy of Scheer and Singh to opposition leadership.

I still wonder what he will do if his Kinder-Morgan chicanery helps spark real unrest in B.C.? He could do serious damage to the Liberal brand west of the Rockies for a generation, maybe more.

We saw when McKenna went to Alberta early in 2016 and came away bleeting about "national unity" and go slow that they had played the national unity card and the Trudeau government buckled. They've been Alberta's little bitch ever since.