It’s generally a rotten time in human history to be a bigot.

It has become socially unacceptable to hate on each other on the basis of skin colour, culture, gender, gender identity, I.Q. deficits, or sexual orientation.

We’re practically at the point where any day now, Fire Dash the Tri-Gender Pyrofox will bring suit against the Roman Catholic school board for forbidding him to wear his tail while attending class.

And he will win and be celebrated as a pioneer and I will attend the parade we hold for him/them and applaud loudly.

However … there is some good news on the bigotry front.

It’s still OK to hate Alberta.

Although a barrel of oil now costs the same as three heads of cauliflower and a Snickers bar — the small one, not the big one — oil isn’t going away.

The price is going to go back up. The Saudis can’t continue to give the stuff away just because they’re mad at U.S. shale. And all the oil infrastructure investment that got cancelled is going to lead to a price shock down the road.

Alberta floats on a giant puddle of oil. Problem is, we can’t get it out of the country. So we’re trying to get it to a Maritime port through a pipeline called Energy East.

The facts are pretty clear.

1. Moving oil by pipeline is the safest way to move the stuff around.

2. Canada is a resource-based economy and without a strong Alberta, we don’t have a strong country.

But, as with all forms of bigotry, it’s not about facts.

That’s a vital element surrounding the pipeline discussion across this country that is being ignored.

It’s not about rationality.

It’s about feelings.

Every election campaign fought by former Tory PM Stephen Harper saw opponents fixated on what they called “the Alberta agenda.”

You know, where we ban abortion and chain pregnant women to their stoves as God intended, leaving them only enough chain to get to the dining room table where they can serve tasty repasts in the evening and home school their children during the day about the evolution hoax while their husbands with oilpatch jobs rape Mother Earth.

That’s not the Alberta I know. Guessing it’s not the Alberta you know, either.

But it’s the Alberta stereotype.

Since we started getting battered by the downturn, the glee with which our suffering has been greeted from some quarters has been palpable.

It’s a mix of simmering envy at the economic success we enjoyed, enviro-hate and the mindless, preening sense of superiority emanating from central Canada.

In any family, nobody likes the rich uncle, right?

And should he be left penniless for some reason … well. The knives come out.

Which brings us to Denis Coderre, knife-sharpener extraordinaire, leading a coalition of Montreal-area mayors who came out against Energy East.

When Wildrose Leader Brian Jean cited facts showing the safety of pipelines, Coderre said: “You have to allow me a moment to laugh at a guy like Brian Jean when he says he relies on science. These are probably the same people who think The Flintstones are a documentary.”

That’s a recycled, religious slur originally aimed at Stockwell Day for his creationist religious beliefs.

I would suggest Coderre is not an outlier here.

I would suggest in Quebec in particular and the rest of this country, that’s how they see us.

Then after a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who presumably told him to play nice — Coderre had the stones to say this. Out loud. In public. Without shame: “At the end of the day, it’s all about respect, being responsible and having a balanced approach between economic growth and sustainable development.”

Which, if my ability to translate Quebec politician into plain English is intact, means: Time to back dump trucks full of money up to the Quebec border.

If they don’t get their hand-out … we don’t get our hand up.

I guess that’s the nice thing about these particular bigots.

We’ve always been able to buy them off.