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It’s said if you live long enough, then nothing should ever come as a surprise.

So I’ll assume I’ve a few more years kicking around this Earth of ours because, for the life of me, having this province’s economic future squarely in the hands of a Liberal prime minister and an NDP premier isn’t something I ever saw coming.

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But you dance with the one who brought you here on the Prairies, so we’ll have to make do with the somewhat unlikely duo of Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley to spearhead Alberta’s hopes of ever seeing our crude oil flow through a brand-spanking new pipeline on its merry way to foreign markets.

The unlikely trio of Trudeau, Notley and Alberta Oil is going to get pummelled and punished in the months to come

Obviously, the fix was in before Ottawa announced it would back two pipeline proposals, while shelving a third. The gushing praise Trudeau showered upon a beaming Notley — suggesting if the bad, old Tories were in power in Alberta, then the whole thing would have died a death — was a few adjectives too much. The province gets on board with a carbon tax that ratchets up to 50 bucks a tonne by 2022 and it gets the pipeline nod, is how it worked out.