Confidential Correspondence

To: Hon. Alison Redford, Premier of Alberta

From: Hon. Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario

Dear Alison,

First, let me say sorry. Not for anything I’ve said or done.

I merely wanted to apologize in advance — just in case this letter is leaked to the Toronto Star. I can only hope you read it here, first, under my signature and seal, because that newspaper seems to have a pipeline to my confidential in-basket.

Speaking of pipelines — and your difficulty getting one built in the U.S. to export the bitter fruit of Alberta’s bitumen — you have my sympathies. Come heck or high water, your oilsands are our oilsands, because we’re all in this together in the land of milk and honey.

But your latest demand — that I as Ontario’s premier prostrate myself before oilsands-rich Alberta by saluting and saying sorry for speaking my mind — is, um, un-Canadian. True, it’s traditional to stoke anti-Ontario resentment ahead of an Alberta election, casting me as one of those ungrateful “Eastern bastards” who deserves to freeze in the dark (sorry about using the b-word, but it’s in quotes). The business press and the tabloids are lapping it up.

But times have changed. I can’t fathom your demand that we publicly declare fealty to Alberta’s cause in the U.S. You can dress it up as our pan-Canadian duty, but it was seen here as transparently and pointlessly political, not patriotic.

Trust me, Americans barely notice Canadian prime ministers and ambassadors. They are oblivious to premiers. And they couldn’t care less about an imaginary “united front” among the provinces, as if we had a God-given right to pollute Nebraska’s sensitive ecology.

In case you hadn’t noticed, your Alberta tarsands — sorry, oilsands — are our collective Canadian bogeyman, akin to Newfoundland’s baby white seals. We are all bearing a cross for you, even if your right-wing media can’t wait to crucify me.

Goading us won’t get you anywhere. The battle for public opinion can’t be fought in Central Canada, nor will you win with bluster in the U.S. or Europe. Cleaning up your act — by reducing wasteful water inputs and excessive carbon outputs — would convert more hearts and minds abroad.

On the home front, it hurts when Alberta’s exports drive up our double-edged petrodollar and price our exports out of the market. But when I said precisely that the other day — rebutting your claims that the oilsands have enriched Ontario — I discovered that the truth hurts even more. My polite (if impolitic) answer, at the end of a scrum, merely pointed out that our manufacturing heartland has paid a heavy price in lost jobs. Heard of Caterpillar?

Even so, I offered a friendly climbdown a couple of days later, admitting that I need to “self-edit” myself a bit when talking to the press (My wife, Terri, always reminds me at the dinner table). I gather, from your reaction on Calgary talk radio, that wasn’t enough for you.

They call me Premier Dad here, because I lapse into the role of eldest brother in a family of 10. Also when dealing with the other 10 provinces. But instead of lecturing or hectoring you, I’ll make this reciprocal plea:

When your bitumen belches carbon into the atmosphere, remember that Ontario is rapidly closing all its coal-burning power plants to reduce our pan-Canadian footprint for greenhouse gases. I don’t hear you thanking us for that.

Alberta owns the resources under its soil. But if this were a truly functional federation, instead of soaking up so much revenue today you’d create a sovereign wealth fund (as other oil-rich countries have) to minimize currency distortions. I don’t hear you talking that up.

We still can’t get Ottawa to bolster our green and clean energy strategy, while it grants generous tax concessions to Alberta’s dirty oilsands. And I’m still waiting for you to back us on that one.

As Premier Dad, I’ve always tried to find a balance between truthful and tactful when raising my own kids. Yes, it was uncharacteristically brazen of me to rain on your parade rather than join your crusade. But it was a bit rich of you to not spare a thought for our losses.

When you feel our pain, we’ll celebrate your gain.

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Yours in Canadian unity,

Dalton McGuinty

Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, twitter.com/reggcohn.

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