I recently published the following Chapter in my new book:
OPEN LETTER #2 TO RACHEL NOTLEY, ALBERTA NDP LEADER - Shame on you deceitful Rachel
Update 22May2023
[excerpts]
My observation Rachel is that the Left lies about everything – that is your only real skill – you believe that the end justifies the means.
See https://NDPLies.ca/ for a list of the latest NDP blatant falsehoods.
…
Now Rachel you want to bring this European energy disaster to Alberta,
saying you “plan to mandate a Net-Zero electricity grid by 2035”. Rachel, I cannot stress strongly enough to you - your plan will bring disaster to Alberta far beyond anything you can imagine. It is a plan for Albertans to freeze and starve in the dark - is that your intent?
Canada, mostly Alberta, is the 4th largest oil producer in the world. The energy industry is the backbone of the Canadian economy. Fossil fuels still provide ~85% of global primary energy, which keeps us alive. Nuclear and hydro provide most of the remaining 15%. Green energy is insignificant, a few percent, despite tens of trillions of squandered subsidies.
NDP voters are incredibly ignorant - they believe that if they destroy Alberta’s economy, they will still receive their salaries, pensions and welfare cheques.
They won’t! They will literally freeze and starve in the dark. It IS that simple!
Licia Corbella has written an excellent assessment of Rachel’s woke, dystopian plans for Alberta. As a world-class expert in energy, I say that Rachel’s NetZero energy plans are technically ignorant and will cause enormous harm to every Albertan.
Corbella: IF NOTLEY WINS ELECTION, ENEMIES OF ALBERTA'S MAIN INDUSTRY WILL BE RUNNING THE GOVERNMENT
Author of the article: Licia Corbella Published May 25, 2023
Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley speaks with media about the new Calgary arena deal outside the McDougall Centre in Calgary on Wednesday, April 26, 2023. Gavin Young/Postmedia
Imagine, if you can, an Ontario premier or member of the provincial parliament badmouthing that province’s auto sector and fighting to stop the creation of a new auto plant in the province — because automobiles (even electric ones) and manufacturing creates greenhouse gasses.
It’s unthinkable, right? Any politician who mused on such economic sacrilege would likely be kicked out of the party — and rightly so, since the auto sector is responsible for the livelihoods of more than 133,000 people and another 400,000 indirect jobs creating products people in Ontario, the rest of Canada and the world want and need.
Regardless of the political stripe of the party running the Ontario government, they all solidly back the auto sector and the manufacturing sector at large, even though those sectors contribute a significant amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Try to imagine a Quebec politician advocating to shutter Bombardier — the maker of planes, trains, Seadoos and Skidoos — because the manufacturing process and use of their products pollutes the planet. C’est impossible.
But that’s not what happens in Alberta. The Alberta NDP is a party chock-a-block full of anti-oil and gas protestors, not to mention pro-communists and people who, frankly, say and do things that show not only that they want to shut down the main engine of Alberta’s economy — its oil and gas industries — but that they don’t like, or are embarrassed by, those who work in the sector that provides a necessary product the entire world is thirsty for and that pumps billions into our economy — providing our publicly funded teachers, doctors and nurses with the highest salaries in the country.
Because Notley can’t run on her disastrous record as Alberta’s premier between 2015 to 2019 and win the May 29th election, the Alberta NDP has spent most of its considerable election advertising budget attacking United Conservative Party Leader Danielle Smith for questions she posed and comments she made generating discussion as a popular radio talk show host and podcaster. In reality, the UCP could make some doozy commercials about NDP former cabinet ministers and current candidates, but haven’t for some unexplained reason.
Notley herself described Alberta as the “embarrassing cousin that no one wants to talk about” in the first months of her premiership.
More recently, Global News reporter Saif Kaisar did a story on Kevin Van Tighem, the NDP candidate for Livingstone-Macleod who was quoted as saying Alberta has “a reputation as a place of entitled, grubby, resource exploiters. Sort of that redneck thing, the pick-up truck, the ball cap. That’s part of who we are.”
Van Tighem likens the oilsands to slavery and pipelines to an addiction. “That’s how slavery works; it makes bosses rich by stealing the energies of their slaves,” he wrote in his 2021 book on Alberta’s energy sector called: Wild Roses Are Worth It.
“New pipelines, should they come, will simply perpetuate our hopeless addiction to a doomed and destructive energy source . . . Oil sucks. And we’re the suckers,” he wrote.
He was also opposed to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline. But then again, so was Notley.
So while Smith has vowed not to allow a UCP candidate to sit in caucus should she be elected in the May 29 provincial election, owing to bizarre and hurtful comments, Notley made no such similar vow, because if she kicked Van Tighem out of the party she’d have to kick out most of the rest of her candidates, too — including some of her previous cabinet ministers.
Shannon Phillips, who was Notley’s minister of Environment and Parks, was involved in No Drilling Lethbridge and helped draft the Alberta Federation of Labour’s opposition to Northern Gateway.
Phillips also co-authored a book with Greenpeace spokesman Mike Hudema, titled: An Action a Day Keeps Global Capitalism Away. It would be funny were it not so frightening. In the book’s preface, Hudema wrote: “It would not have been possible to put this book together without her. She pushed me to write it, edited my work and contributed to its content. I owe her a heavy debt.”
David Eggen, Notley’s education minister, can be seen in one YouTube video, back when he was the executive director of Friends of Medicare, opposing oilsands development.
“There’s plenty of responsible, good Albertans that do oppose new approvals for the tarsands,” he said, going on to lead a sparse crowd on the legislature steps in a chant of “No new approvals.”
In another YouTube video, Eggen called the oilsands “a catastrophe.” He was in charge of Alberta’s school curriculum.
NDP candidate Shaun Fluker is listed as legal council on a factum submitted to the Supreme Court of Canada in support of Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment Act, better known as the No More Pipelines Act, something he doesn’t like to talk about now when questioned by reporters.
It’s no surprise Notley signed his nomination papers. She barely lifted a finger against C-69 and C-48 when those devastating bills made their way through the lengthy legislative process. It wasn’t until the damaging bills to Alberta’s prosperity were before the Senate at the 11th hour, did Notley finally speak out against this legislation.
From March 22 to May 22, 2018, for instance, the House of Commons environment committee held 14 meetings in Ottawa. At that time, Chris Bloomer, president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, told the committee: “It is difficult to imagine that a new major pipeline could be built under the Impact Assessment Act, much less attract energy investment to Canada.”
The committee had 150 briefs submitted and 117 witnesses appeared. Even though Alberta had the most to lose from that bill, no one from the Alberta government testified. Not even a brief was submitted before the committee. It was a complete dereliction of duty on Notley’s part and in my view, is reason enough for her never to be given the job of premier again.
During her time as premier, Notley repeatedly appointed enemies of the oil and gas sector to lucrative provincial positions, including Tzeporah Berman to the Oil Sands Advisory Group in 2016 and Ed Whittingham — the former executive director of the Pembina Institute — who was appointed to a five-year, part-time, $76,500 per year directorship at Alberta’s Energy Regulator (AER), with an additional $750 for each day he participated in meetings with the organization.
Whittingham advocated for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and the National Energy Board to move the goal posts on the Energy East pipeline to include indirect CO2 emissions caused by the end users of Alberta’s oil and gas, instead of just the emissions caused by the pipeline itself, something that Trudeau did, leading to the cancellation of that pipeline.
Notley’s government hardly made a peep of protest over the feds changing the rules on the $15.7-billion west-to-east pipeline, while placing no extra requirements on OPEC oil, imported by tankers down the St. Lawrence River, where belugas live and breed.
Notley pretends to be a friend to the oilpatch now and during her inept premiership. How does she prove that today? She vows to raise the corporate tax rate in Alberta if elected by 38 per cent — a move that renowned economist Jack Mintz wrote in the National Post “is estimated to result in an investment loss of $1.1 billion to Alberta — and an employment loss of 33,700 jobs,” an estimate he calls “conservative.”
“With federal and provincial governments phasing out enhanced capital cost allowances, an additional loss of $2.1 billion in investment and 59,500 existing or potential jobs is estimated,” he wrote.
It’s an effective and hidden way to stifle oil and gas investment and expansion without saying that’s what she wants to do. It also, of course, harms all other corporations in Alberta and reduces government revenue.
Every economic indicator in Alberta went down under Notley’s reign except red tape and red ink.
If the Alberta NDP wins Monday’s provincial election, the enemies of Alberta’s oilpatch will literally be running the province. That will hurt every Albertan and every Canadian, whether they believe it or not.
Licia Corbella is a Calgary-based journalist and a former editorial board editor and staff columnist of the Calgary Herald.
Thanks Allan. Terrifying that folk like her are in any position of government.