Jason Kenny has coined a new phrase and is milking it for all its worth. The enemy, Kenny declares, is "the green left." The reason for his bombast, Michael Harris writes, is that Kenny has been out toried by Rachel Notley:
Almost as soon as she rocked the nation by winning a majority government, Rachel Notley underwent a political sea change.
She quickly morphed into someone the president of Suncor could take to the prom.
In fact, she was as tar sands-friendly as Stephen Harper, and much more successful than he was in pressing the dubious cause of this resource.
It was Notley, not the late Jim Prentice or Harper, who actually got pipeline approvals.
Conservatives always need a bogeyman. But it can't be Notley. So, like Stephen Harper before him, Kenny has declared war on the environmental movement:
Kenney’s recent speech to 3,000 party members was full of the fire and brimstone, bravado and bullshit that this politician and his former party have come to stand for on the environment file.
At the crack of doom, the Jason Kenneys of the world will be shilling for more tar sands development, while tarring and feathering anyone who says otherwise. But one thing they won’t be talking about is how to replace lost revenue from ditching the carbon tax.
And he's doing this as the tar sands become economically unsustainable:
Kenney is working up a rhetorical sweat beating a dead horse. Governments, including Ottawa, keep saying profits from the energy industry are what builds Canada’s schools and hospitals.
Earth scientist David Hughes tells a different story as reported in The Tyee.
Canada’s fossil fuels are being dumped at low prices, leaving “minimal and declining” revenues for government. Royalties from hydrocarbon production have “plummeted” 63 per cent since 2000. That drop has been matched by a 50 per cent decline in corporate taxes collected by government on drilling and refining activity.
That's why banks like "BNP Paribas and ING, as well as Sweden’s largest pension fund, AP7. . . have pulled the plug on further tar sands financing. And pressure is mounting on American banks JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo to do the same."
Notley and Justin Trudeau are facing the same future. But Kenny is a different breed. His nose, Harris writes, is "in his navel."
Image: The Huffington Post
