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Huzzah for Alberta, which has elected Jason Kenney and soon will resume its status as an energy superpower. To restore Albertan glory, Kenney plans to take on unions and cut regulation, lower business taxes to laughable levels, battle environmental groups, all the while intimidating other provinces and Ottawa into compliance with his goals. Good luck with all that, Mr. K!

Kenney promised big things in becoming the next premier of Alberta. Voters endorsed his ambitious agenda with a United Conservative majority in the legislature, which gives the new premier the power to do some of the things he’s promised, but not all.

What Kenney clearly can do is pass laws and create policy in his own jurisdiction. Beyond that, his options are rhetoric and politics. Kenney won’t be the first premier to employ threats and lawsuits as instruments of intergovernmental diplomacy.

But such tactics, while popular at home, often stir up problems elsewhere and the stage for that already is set. Kenney and his oil industry backers have fostered a popular conviction that Alberta’s vital interests don’t match well with Canada’s anymore.

They are playing with fire. Canada is a great country, not least because of Alberta’s optimism, ingenuity and its example of practical hard work. Anything that disrupts that diminishes the whole country, and as a former federal minister, Kenney should know that.

He should also know that a majority mandate in Alberta does not mean he can force British Columbia or Quebec to allow pipelines to cross their territory. He can’t browbeat First Nations into that, either.

He can make a lot of threats, which themselves tend to be destabilizing, often in ways that aren’t intended. He can also complain about Ottawa, and it’s clear he will, because that works as a political tactic in every province.

Meanwhile, Kenney is threatening, in effect, to cut off petroleum exports to B.C. in retaliation for that province’s refusal to endorse the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. Gasoline is already absurdly expensive in B.C. — at this writing about $1.90 a litre — and will go higher if Kenney finds some legal way to turn down the taps.

Right now, his cudgel is a law not yet proclaimed enabling Alberta to control gas and oil exports, an obvious weapon for future negotiations with B.C. Premier John Horgan. If he does try to manipulate exports, Kenney will almost certainly find his government in court.

Kenney’s proposed Bill 1 for the new legislature when it meets in May will repeal the NDP government’s carbon tax and subject future measures to a referendum. He’ll also sue to get rid of the federal carbon tax, which he blames for a host of Alberta’s ills.

Another early priority is a war on Alberta’s perceived enemies among anti-oil and environmental groups. But digging up dirt on activists and issuing press releases really is just more rhetoric. Kenney could end up spending millions on legal bills, only to find out that environmentalists have every right to say whatever they want.

More worrying for Canadians here in the East is Kenney’s threat to stir the national unity pot with a referendum on equalization, a constitutionally protected federal program that can’t be overturned or modified by a vote in any province. He might as well have a referendum on whether the Stampeders win the Grey Cup.

So a referendum might only be symbolic, but symbols matter. A campaign over equalization will inevitably rattle the populist cage with overheated rhetoric about greedy non-Albertans, making Kenney’s best options for change harder to achieve.

A better approach is to make the economic case for oil with other Canadians, who won’t be pushovers, no matter what Kenney thinks. His goal should be one that can be shared: an environmentally responsible oil patch working for the whole country.

Kenney would be smart to recognize that Alberta needs allies right now, not antagonists, and you don’t make friends with threats.