Everyone knows that Jason Kenney, the new premiere of Alberta, is a devoted capitalist. After all he is such a lap dog to the oil industry of that province, how could he be anything else? Well he is planning a strike against the government of neighbouring province, British Columbia.
A capitalist striking? Surely this must be sacrilege. But, no, that is exactly what he is doing. He made bill 12 law which will allow his government to stop working for B.C. even though that is at a profit. He will ‘turn off the taps’ of a pipeline that provides B.C. with petroleum products.
Kenney wants as many working pipelines as possible to the B.C. coast so he can fill up oil tankers there and get his petroleum products to international markets. So he is willing to go on strike in order to force B.C. to accept more pipelines and oil tanker traffic.
If there is any doubt that Mr. Kenney’s plan is to strike, then let the record show that Bill 12 was written up by the former NDP government. The NDP is known to ally itself with unions all of which know how to strike.
The former NDP government drafted the bill for the exact same reason but never passed it in their legislature. This was a strategic move.
Kenney said that this was silly. So he passed the bill right away to look tough. And within hours, the province of B.C. had a constitutional challenge in court which will likely tie the bill up for years and by most accounts defeat it.
Not one drop of oil was stopped going to B.C. And now Alberta can’t ‘turn off the taps’ as the matter is before the courts.
Capitalist Jason Kenney is inept at striking.
The NDP knew B.C. would challenge them in court so they had planned to pass the bill at a later date of their own choosing in order to ‘turn off the taps’ for a few hours and cause chaos in B.C. for that time. That’s why they didn’t pass the bill into law. If it’s not officially law it can’t be challenged. So the NDP planned to wait until they were ready and ‘turn off the taps’ immediately after passing the bill. Kenney can’t do this anymore. He’s banking on bill 12 passing legal challenges which is unlikely.
So not only did the capitalist announce his intentions to strike, he did it incompetently and became ineffectual and likely lost.
Maybe he was a true capitalist all along and always intended to lose the strike. He had no other way because the NDP had hit on an idea that was popular in Alberta. Well played Jason Kenney, super capitalist.
