"Trouble is, while Kenney’s frothy campaign bluster successfully fanned Alberta’s collective outrage, very little of it bore any resemblance to reality."

First, congratulations are in order. Just over two years ago, when Jason Kenney became leader of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party, the province’s right flank was in complete disarray. Kenney inherited a party whose 44 years of rule was matched only by a decidedly more loathsome precedent: it managed to lose to Alberta’s NDP — itself forever demonized as being too pinko, too effete and too socialist to run herd on the Wild Rose Country.

Kenney didn’t only unite a fractious right, by wrestling the offshoot Wildrose Party Party into the Conservative Party orbit. He didn’t only become leader of the ensuing merger of the two, called the United Conservative Party, by besting former Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean in a leadership contest.

Kenney took the UCP, a hybrid of button-down conservatism and yee-haw conservative populism, and steered the resulting ire squarely at Rachel Notley’s NDP. Today — despite dismal personal favourability numbers, despite an RCMP investigation into his leadership campaign, despite a streak of anti-gay, nativist, white nationalist, anti-immigration UCP types cropping up in the news — he is premier of Alberta. This is impressive as hell, to say the least.

But now comes the hangover. Armed with belligerent incredulity and a weasel-like taste for the jugular, Kenney won by convincing Albertans of their own worst fears. To wit: Notley’s NDP government, noted socialist wastrel, was impeding the province’s economy; Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, virulently anti-pipeline, was actively setting up Alberta to fail; and, finally, that the only thing standing between Alberta’s oily riches and the market was the very pipeline Trudeau demonstrably doesn’t want.

“From this point forward,” Kenney said in his inaugural speech as premier-designate, “we will tell the truth assertively.”

Trouble is, while Kenney’s frothy campaign bluster successfully fanned Alberta’s collective outrage, very little of it bore any resemblance to reality. Notley, far from being “complacent on pipelines” as Kenney accused a few weeks ago, has tried harder than most of her conservative brethren, Saint Ralph Klein included, to get one into the ground.

Proof positive of her bona fides: she defied the anti-oil types within both the national NDP and British Columbia’s NDP government next door. She earned the ire of her former ally and oil patch critic Kevin Taft. Greenpeace even labelled Notley “pro-pipeline” — something she probably should have put on a campaign sign, come to think of it.

The reason why an oil pipeline has been so elusive has nothing to do with partisan politics but an enduring political reality: it is manifestly more difficult to get pipelines into the ground today than when Ralph Klein roamed the earth.

Blame environmental controls and related concerns from many Indigenous groups. Blame the young’uns, who as a group have a decidedly less rosy view of oil and its conduits than older folk. Blame Quebecers, who have conspicuously blocked new oil pipelines carrying Alberta bitumen through their territory despite using oodles of the stuff themselves.

There are ample reasons why there are no new pipelines in the ground, despite best efforts, and none of them have a thing to do with Rachel Notley or even Justin Trudeau — who, it might be remembered, has staked much of his re-election hopes to getting Alberta oil to a coastline. He isn’t anti-pipeline; in fact, his government literally bought one to ensure its expansion.

Another conceit peddled by Jason Kenney over the last two years: that the dampening demand for Alberta-born bitumen, and the resulting deep discount at which it is sold, is strictly an infrastructure problem. This has allowed him to fashion a very passable boogeyman out of various anti-pipeline organizations, which served him well throughout the election campaign.

There more than a kernel of truth to Kenney’s assertions. Alberta’s oil sands production increased by nearly 50 per cent since 2014; its ability to transport all this bounty by rail and pipeline has remained virtually unchanged.

Yet there is an inconvenient a truth behind Alberta’s deeply discounted oil: exploding U.S. oil production. Virtually all of Canada’s crude — 99 per cent — goes to the U.S. Yet America has become increasingly adept at slaking its own demand. A fracking boom has prompted an increase of nearly 90 per cent in the U.S. between 2007 and 2018.

U.S.-fracked oil is cheaper to produce and requires less refining than the stuff north of the border. By virtue of spouting from American soil, it is by nature a Trump-approved nationalist bulwark against all things foreign-owned. It’s another fact of life, one utterly divorced from Kenney’s scorched earth politics: the U.S., Alberta’s biggest client, has increasingly become a competitor.

A few days ago, Kenney blamed all of Alberta’s woes on the allegedly socialist overindulgences of Rachel Notley. But reality, pain that it is, will quickly reveal the obvious: Kenney, having demonized Notley for the last two years, has only inherited her problems.

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