Article content continued

Let me go out to the very last twig on a very long limb here and make the wild assertion that female workers, and all workers for that matter, have it far, far better in fossil-fuelled Alberta than they do in Qatar, which, I might add, produces even more fossil fuels than we do. Indeed, as Human Rights Watch tells us, Qatari “workers can become undocumented when employers report them as having absconded, or when they fail to pay to renew workers’ annual ID cards. A lack of proper documentation leaves workers at risk of arrest and detention or deportation. It also leaves them at risk of further labour exploitation. Authorities rarely, if ever, bring criminal prosecutions against employers for violating Qatar’s labour or anti-trafficking laws.”

According to these people, all oil that is not Alberta oil occupies a social justice ‘safe space.’

Is a country that places migrants in such brutal, lawless servitude not to be called out for it? Did Stephen Lewis hurl even a feeble jeremiad at the scandalous practices of his son’s recent employer while excoriating the oilsands? Of course not. And here is the principle involved: all oil that is not Alberta oil occupies a social justice “safe space.” All association with fossil fuels that are not from Fort McMurray, Alta., gets a pass from the practised rage of professional anti-oil activists. And it is through that understanding that Avi and Stephen Lewis leave Qatar unmolested and its emir unperturbed, while Alberta is scourged, and Premier Rachel Notley is made to weep. The oil that floats Al Jazeera and some of the most repressive migrant working conditions on Earth is as the fleece of the lamb, spotless and without social justice sin.

And that is why there were no lexical thunderbolts against the emir of Qatar in either the Leap Manifesto or the speeches at the Edmonton convention. Instead, what fulgurations there were, shed their purple glow over Alberta’s first NDP premier. Indeed, if I may borrow the convenient language of social activism to make the point most forcefully, what we had in Edmonton last weekend was two white, old-stock, privileged, celebrity males global-warming-splaining oil-cursed Alberta to its pioneer NDP, female premier.

National Post