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It’s too soon to say the war between Alberta and British Columbia is over.

But the provinces have ceased hostilities. For now.

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On Thursday afternoon, B.C. Premier John Horgan sidelined his threat to limit Alberta’s ability to ship oilsands bitumen by pipeline to the West Coast.

Minutes later, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley lifted her government’s retaliatory boycott against B.C. wine.

Neither admitted to backing down. But in their eyeball-to-eyeball standoff, both have apparently blinked.

Well, Notley has certainly blinked. She is ordering the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission to resume the importation of B.C. wine into Alberta.

But Horgan is not actually lifting his threat against Alberta bitumen. He is sending it off to the courts for a decision.

His blink looks a bit like a squinty-eyed dodge.

This should worry Notley.

‘Every tool in the toolbox’

In the 2017 B.C. election campaign, Horgan pledged to use “every tool in the toolbox” to stop the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline. And the three-MLA Green Party, that holds the balance of power in the B.C. legislature, has declared the pipeline project will never go ahead.