They don’t get us. Maybe they don’t want to get us. Maybe they get us and don’t give a damn. Maybe they don’t think about us at all.
If you want to see the gaping chasm between us and them, you need go no further than a Thursday lunch in Calgary, on a day when Encana announces they’re pulling up stakes and moving their HQ to the States.
There he is. Jean Chretien, the former Liberal prime minister. He can be folksy. He can be funny. But he is also tone-deaf.
We’re the golden goose of a colony for the rest of Canada, royally screwed and nowhere near close to getting a fair deal.
We are hurting. Chretien sure as hell didn’t make it any better. On this day if there was a crowd of regular folks in the place instead of suits we’d have seen quite the bun fight break out.
Still, you can feel tension in this well-mannered ballroom.
Chretien doesn’t answer a question on Western outrage. He says he’s lived with “so-called western alienation” all his life.
Many times the Liberal had little support in our part of the country, long before what Chretien says is “the so-called crisis on energy.”
In fact, it’s kind of normal. That’s it.
Hang on to your seats. Chretien is just warming up in the bullpen. He meanders and the dots don’t always connect.
The former Liberal PM says people exaggerate. At $100 oil all is well, at $50 oil “it was not your fault but it’s certainly not the fault of Trudeau either.”
Then Chretien says those two words. He says oil is a problem because of the “tar sands.”
Chretien says he’s very proud of the “tar sands” but the problem of oil and pipelines has nothing to do with Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau wants the pipeline to the west coast. We’re still waiting.
Then there’s the pipeline east, the Energy East project cratered as obstacles piled up.
That’s where Chretien starts wandering into the danger zone.
“They complain there’s no pipeline going to Quebec. It is the company who withdrew the application because they said it was not economical to have a pipeline.”
“Am I wrong?” asks Chretien.
Yes. Yes. Yes. The response at this scribbler’s table.
“If you don’t have an application don’t ask Trudeau to reply to hypothetical questions when it’s difficult like that.”
Chretien plays his game.
It’s not for Trudeau to give permission when they weren’t asking for permission.
Chretien says he speaks the truth.
“So the people should look at the facts.”
Inside the room. Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.
Enter Stephen Harper, another former PM, playing on his home field.
Harper wants Trudeau gone. Laughs. Applause. Tension broken.
“I’ve seen this movie before. Bad governments backed by bad media and bad interest groups turning on the energy sector. It eventually hurts the country and people wake up.”
So the beef served by the hotel is not the only red meat on the menu. There’s some of the political variety.
Harper takes aim at those trying to wean us off oil for “an alternative we don’t have” and “killing a bunch of jobs to replace them with jobs that don’t exist.”
“I look forward to the day where we have a national government that doesn’t listen to people who think like that,” says the former PM.
Applause.
But this is Trudeauland and we still live in it.
Chretien says we could be with Trudeau for longer than we think. The NDP, the Greens and the Bloc Quebecois aren’t interested in going back into the ring any time soon.
Harper is more worried about Trudeau than the Quebec premier. Trudeau’s gut instinct is to veer left and he’s already made future pipeline approvals almost impossible.
Yes, Harper says anger out here is real. He’s seen some shocking poll numbers.
He is even willing to talk about Greta Thunberg’s climate protests and her demands to do the impossible, pegging it as a “pseudo-moral crusade” with nothing resembling a solution.
By now, Chretien is an afterthought.
“Just shouting does not resolve problems,” he says.
He goes back to the Energy East failure saying they had poor public relations and nothing was written in French.
He mentions the “tar sands” again and is corrected.
“The oilsands. Whatever it is. I’m not always politically correct.”
Where do we go now?
Harper’s advice.
“I don’t think any voice at the table is heard unless there’s a very loud voice coming from outside the room. Be loud. Be difficult. Put pressure on.”
Applause.
