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Left-leaning British Columbians were thrilled back in May of 2015 when Rachel Notley's New Democrats shattered four decades of Conservative rule in Alberta.

This happened months in advance of a federal campaign and it looked like the NDP had a genuine shot at winning its first national election.

It now seems so long ago when the federal NDP caucus celebrated Notley's win with a rousing rendition of Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds".

MPs Charlie Angus, Megan Leslie, and Andrew Cash were at the front of the room, joyously belting out this anthem to Alberta.

"Hey, the message is: Stephen Harper, you're next," said Angus with a big laugh.

Video of Four Strong Winds NDP

But things didn't work out quite the way the NDP anticipated.

In October that year, Leslie and Cash lost their seats.

The following April, then leader Tom Mulcair was dumped by his party in a vote that few pundits anticipated.

And two years after the Trudeau landslide, veteran NDP MP Angus received a humiliation of his own when he was trounced by Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh in his party's leadership race.

Singh opposes the Kinder Morgan pipeline project.

When asked about this in the Alberta legislature, Notley described her national leader as "irrelevant".

Now, Notley is in the fight of her political life in Alberta against a revived United Conservative party under Jason Kenney.

And she's embraced Big Oil in her efforts not to suffer the same fate as Mulcair when Albertans go to the polls.

An election must be held by May 31, 2019.

Video of Alberta's NDP Premier Notley calls federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh "wrong & irrelevant" Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley calls NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh "irrelevant".

Horgan hasn't done anything extreme

Keep in mind that the B.C. government hasn't actually done anything tangible to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline from being built.

NDP Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman has promised to consult experts on whether it's appropriate to limit shipments of diluted bitumen across the province in light of any risk it poses.

The province is seeking a jurisdictional ruling in the B.C. Court of Appeal.

It obtained intervenor status in a First Nations legal challenge, but intervenors often don't make or break a case.

Sometimes, intervenors are there for the optics, which enriches the lawyers but doesn't make a whit of difference to the judge presiding over the dispute.

And Attorney General David Eby has filed a lawsuit against Alberta legislation giving Notley's government the power to limit oil exports to B.C.

Eby is seeking a judicial declaration that the law "is inconsistent, in whole or in part, with the Constitution of Canada and is of no force and effect".

But curiously, B.C. is not seeking any financial damages from Alberta, which is the norm when lawsuits are filed.

In the past, I've called all of this a "phony war" between the NDP governments of B.C. and Alberta.

In light of Eby's decision not to seek damages, I still stand by that statement.

B.C. attorney general David Eby is playing his part well in a theatrical performance that could well be called The Phony War.

National pharmacare takes a back seat to Big Oil

In the meantime, Notley is boycotting a western premiers conference, which will discuss a national pharmacare program, among other things.

This is something of vital interest to people suffering from cystic fibrosis and who are being denied access to a brutally expensive life-saving medication called Orkambi because it's not covered by provincial drug plans.

A national drug plan could drive down the cost of Orkambi through bulk buying and extend the lives of people with the most common underlying cause of cystic fibrosis: two copies of the F508del mutation.

If some cystic fibrosis sufferers were able to gain access to Orkambi, this would delay the accumulation of mucus in the lungs, pancreas, and other organs, which leads to repeated hospital visits and premature death.

But Notley, of course, is more interested in politics nowadays, so she's boycotting this western premiers conference and sending a surrogate instead.

This is the case even though Canada is the only country with a publicly funded health system without a national drug plan.

Nearly a quarter of Canadians have no coverage for prescription drugs, according to the Behind the Numbers website.

"Tommy Douglas, founder of Canada’s universal Medicare system, didn’t intend for public health care to include only hospitals and doctors," the website states. "This was intended to be just the beginning, with coverage of drugs and other services to follow."

The first and current leaders of the federal NDP, Tommy Douglas and Jagmeet Singh, both endorsed making prescription drugs more affordable for Canadians.

But Notley doesn't want images of her smiling and laughing alongside Horgan showing up on Alberta TV screens. That's because her entire reelection campaign is geared around demonizing Horgan's government.

Horgan is smart enough to know that he doesn't have to do anything to kill the Kinder Morgan project.

Market forces, legal challenges by Indigenous peoples, and sustained protests by British Columbians worried about climate change and their coastal economy will be sufficient to do the trick.

In the meantime, from B.C.'s vantage point, Notley doesn't appear to be very different from predecessors with names like Prentice, Stelmach, Getty, and Klein when it comes to the oil industry.

If there's any doubt, just look at the high-powered membership of a new market access task force that Notley chairs.

The Alberta premier has marshalled experts on the constitution, banking, finance, and federal and provincial affairs to join senior oil executives as a "confidential sounding-board to test Alberta government responses" in its war of words with B.C.

It's further proof that four strong winds didn't really blow through Alberta in May of 2015.

Back then, the federal NDP caucus would have been more in tune with the times had it it sung a different Ian Tyson ditty: "Some Kind of Fool".