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“We are by no means happy yet,” says Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips, referring to Ottawa’s Bill C-69.

That is good to know. Happiness would suggest attendance at too many cabinet marijuana debates.

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Bill C-69 may be the most menacing, invasive federal legislation Alberta has faced in decades.

Vast, vague and muddy, this bill proposes to weigh every imaginable factor in assessing pipeline projects.

Points that must be considered include “health, social and economic effects, including with respect to the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors.”

We’re a long way from the Leduc gusher, folks.

Bill C-69 promises snappy timelines for project assessment and approval, then gives a federal minister authority to change them at will.

It’s loaded with such contradictions, all tending toward vastly increased federal power and new challenges to established provincial jurisdiction.