Election over, it’s time for politicians to get to work

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on October 24, 2019.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@collingallant

Alberta’s press published editorials in 1989 arguing that year’s Stanley Cup, won by the Calgary Flames, should instead be awarded to the Montreal Canadiens in the interests of national unity.

Applying new irony to that masterstroke of cynicism 30 years later, today Albertans are wondering where’s our Stanley Cup.

There’s high tensions, dire predictions and a lot of anger in the province which overwhelmingly voted Conservative on a night that returned a Liberal minority government to parliament.

Albertans have good reason to be concerned about the implications of that results. The bare analysis shows that in an election which Conservatives squarely posed as an all-or-nothing affair, they’ve woke up with nothing.

All sides here, however, would do well to back away from well-defined election stances. The promised epic election battle on Monday scored a Richter scale reading closer to that of a deflating balloon,

A good tonic for this is to tone down the rhetoric, or at least label it as such.

Obviously, the prime minister has much work ahead of him to ensure Western Canadians have a vital say in national affairs and enjoy the same benefit of national leadership as other parts of the country.

Westerners would be equally well-served if they and their premiers could find a diplomatic route to make a valid case for the prairie provinces without further alienating the rest of the country.

On that avenue, the phalanx of conservative premiers who’d lined up against Justin Trudeau since last year began splitting off on Tuesday.

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister shot down questions about the potential for nation-breaking animosity during a press conference on Tuesday.

Hours earlier New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs announced his province would begin developing a local carbon price program to tailor more benefits toward his province.

The federal Conservatives and their provincial counterparts in Alberta and Saskatchewan, had posed the issue as a no-way, no-how proposition.

And while the CPC just edged the Liberals in the nationwide popular vote, a total of 217 of the MPs, (roughly two-thirds) elected represent parties that support a carbon price.

The federal Conservatives have to mull over that math, but premiers also have to figure out how to walk back from deeply entrenched positions.

For his part, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney released a list of demands on Tuesday, asking, essentially, that the Liberal leader adopt a number of federal Conservative campaign planks.

Kenney did, however, during a post statement press conference, begin sprinkling an inkling that he’s the one willing to talk.

He specifically noted a cap on total oilsands emissions in order to exempt some new projects from strict environmental review. He promoting the yet-to-be described carbon charge on heavy emitters as a suitable stand-in for a general price on carbon that’s due in this province on Jan. 1.

But Kenney’s message is still, clearly, that Trudeau will still have to deal with him, not the other way round, which is not entirely the case.

How the prime minister will react is not known, though a first press conference in Ottawa included most of the right things to say regarding addressing the national conversation.

Trudeau again backed the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, saying it will be built. Most Albertans don’t believe he’s sincere, though the pipeline was a huge liability for the Liberals among environmental voters.

And the western premiers are firing off press releases demanding that he does so.

There are win-wins here for both sides if you take the political posturing out of the equation.

Politicians have a way of moulding losses into wins.

It’s time for them, all of them, to get to work.

(Collin Gallant is a News reporter. You can contact him by email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com)