Bruce Dowbiggin
The Just Transition: Alberta Bound & Gagged
Imagine being told that, despite your happiness in your current home, you need to move into a new type of house, full of untried, unsustainable technology. That’s the Just Transition. Or the Justin Transfer. Or Searching For Gas Guffman.
Whatever you call it, the federal government’s plan to hollow out Alberta’s energy industry by paying for roughnecks to transition to social-media influencers is a hand grenade lobbed into the run-up to two key elections.
The Just Transition feeds perfectly into the rationale for Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s sovereignty legislation, the suspicion that, unless Trudeau is restrained, he will turn the province’s economy— energy production represents 27.3 per cent of Alberta’s economy— into a novelty shop at the Calgary Stampede midway.
It is also presents Smith with a legitimate wedge issue to hammer NDP leader— and former premier— Rachel Notley as they head to a spring showdown. With her federal NDP cousins in connubial bliss in Ottawa with Trudeau, Notley must now abandon a habit of limp defence of fossil fuels to be seen as resisting the feds at the gate. Or risk being viewed as weak on the home front as May’s provincial election arrives.
Smith, too, might be vulnerable if her resistance to Justin’s easy federal money for citizens be seen as principled to a fault. Sure, the money started its life in the Oil Patch before being re-routed by the federal equalization purse. But to wobbly undecideds in Calgary and Edmonton saying no to helping a transition from fossil fuels to “TBA technologies” could be interpreted as churlish.
For Trudeau, who this past week snubbed Scott Moe, the premier of another fossil-fuel province, the Just Transfer represents a no-lose gamble for a politician who needs every advantage he can wrangle. He’s going to go 0-fer Alberta/ Saskatchewan/ eastern BC when he gets around to dropping the writ, likely this fall.
So, he sees no downside to using Alberta as a whipping post for his devotedly Woke base in the Central Canada. Making Alberta the evil anchor that’s holding back the sailing of the good ship Green Economy will find willing ears in the urban progressive sinks of the 613, 416 and 613. (At worst he loses the election, falls into the loving embrace of the WEF crowd and he surfs off to Tofino.)
Yes, the Just Transition was a stink bomb to drop— especially when delivered by three federal ministers with zero connection to the West. In most respects you couldn’t have made it more disrespectful to the industry that has kept the lights on in Canada’s economy this century.
So you can understand that Notley is less-than-impressed with the unwanted plan that scuppers her soft-power agenda in Alberta. This is her last, best chance to regain the premier’s seat. If she can’t ride these favourable winds—polling shows her leading Smith by a comfortable majority— she’ll be considered like Ontario’s Andrea Howarth, an NDP politician past her best-before date.
You could tell just how vexing the dilemma was by the fact that Notley took 15 days to respond to Trudeau’s provocation. She had to find the right line— in the right time— to make room for herself between the PM and the premier. Room the Alberta voters— particularly the women’s vote in Calgary— are comfortable voting for.
While saying unconditionally that Ottawa must scrap the Just Transfer and the 42 per cent cut in emissions from 2019 levels by 2030, Notley tried to blame Smith’s Sovereignty Act for stirring up the population. “We are in what I would describe as a crisis right now, in that we have a federal government about to move forward on legislation that has wide-ranging consequences, particularly to the people of Alberta,” Notley said.
“And we are in that crisis position because of the incompetence and chaos and conflict that is constantly being generated by the UCP government… The federal government by no means gets away with no blame, but neither does the provincial government.”
Notley added that making the plan public just three months before the provincial election ramps up is unacceptable. On that she and Smith are in agreement. Where the PM has never met a tax he didn’t like to increase, Albertans would like to discuss just how and why they are going to be tapped. For instance, their oil industry— struggling to compete with its American neighbours— would like to see incentives used to increase carbon sequestration, among other things. Prefacing the industry’s transition from fossil fuels to unsustainable wind and solar is not the way to respond to those pressing issues.
Reg Manhas, a Canadian now working in Texas, told The National Post that Trudeau’s government-led plans are leaving Canada far behind. “Yes, there are corporate imperatives to reduce carbon, to get to net zero, globally, but where the action is and the deals are being struck is the U.S.”
He sees Smith’s controversial sovereignty act as a cry for equality within Canada, something he doesn’t face now he’s in Texas. “The sovereignty issue in Alberta has always been bubbling under the surface, and has to do with perceptions of fairness within Confederation… Texas prides itself on individualism, on being an independent and strong state within the country, but there isn’t the same sense of unfairness…”
Both Notley and Smith agree that, once again, Ottawa is being capricious with Alberta. Its might end up be there only thing they agree upon for a long while.
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Nine years after September 2, 2015 the image is still searing. A little Syrian boy in shorts and a t-shirt washed up on a Turkish beach after his father’s boat capsized during a panicked escape from the civil war in their country. If you had a shred of humanity you probably resolved to do something about it. You vowed to help these desperate people.
So you unwittingly elected radicals and social engineers to the highest offices in the nations, trusting that their honeyed words about Aylan Kurdi’s sacrifice would not go to waste. What you didn’t know is your tears for a tiny lad would be re-purposed by radicals into an immigrant culture washing over Western culture. Is it correlation or causation? At this point it doesn’t matter.
There are many factors at play, but you could do worse than look at that dead boy as Patient One in the fever gripping the elites of Canada, the U.S. and the EU. While you can argue about previous conditions in Syria and the Middle East, the photo is Day One in the obliteration of Western traditional society.
It certainly contributed to the downfall of PM Stephen Harper, who was holding his own in the 2015 federal election until the Syrian war spit out that desperate family, the family that was taken down by the waves. Looking to be taken seriously in his battle for PM, Justin Trudeau used the Syrian crisis to flail Harper’s cold-hearted approach to the refugees.
For a PM whose warmth was never a strong point, Trudeau’s exploitation of the drowned little boy hit with the Liberal’s burgeoning base of white suburban women (and men who want to sleep with them). As we wrote in September of 2015: “If the campaign has had a moment where blood pressure crested, even briefly, it was in the visceral reaction to the drowned Syrian boy. The heartbreaking photo provoked an authentically Canadian dismay and a completely disproportionate response to the gravity of his desperate personal quest.
Even flinty Post columnist Christie Blatchford was advocating open borders to assuage first-world guilt over the Syrian mess.” Before you could say Joe Biden/ Kamala Harris, the doors to Europe and North America were indiscriminately opened to penniless refugees, to the worst criminals the third world produces, to the most extreme Marxist revolutionaries, to climate-change fanatics. The pillars of western thought, built over two thousand years, are disintegrating as those immigrants (legal or otherwise) clog the streets with the politics and religions they supposedly left behind.
When a newly-elected Donald Trump sought in 2017 to limit immigration from nations with radical politics he was met with a banshee wail from MSNBC, CNN, the Washington Post and New York Times. Still smarting from Trump’s election they branded him a racist, a stain that follows him till today.
Making it doubly exasperating was the fact that these interlopers were not what the public had voted for. A succession of progressive politicians such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh repurposed a geopolitical tragedy, diluting the traditional population with immigrants who neither care for nor respect their adopted homes. (Hands up anyone who’s heard these demonstrators with a good word about Canada or the U.S.)
The impact of this seemingly virtuous immigration touches every corner of Western societies. Having open borders is misconstrued as being open minded. It was argued again in the U.S. vice presidential debate on Oct. 1 with Democrat Tim Walz and his CBS News allies bizarrely insisting that the newcomers haven’t made housing more expensive. GOP nominee J.D. Vance countered that the surge of buyers was a supply/ demand driver for home-price inflation. The fact this was even debatable underscores how deep the rot has become.
From housing to education to healthcare, the ballooning of Canada’s population from 35 million to 40 million ignores the reality that makes citizens feel like strangers in their own land. While the moribund Liberal/ NDP axis and their paid media still embrace the flood of illegal aliens, polls show that most Canadians agree with the CPC’s stand that the saturation point was surpassed a long time ago.
The impact was similar in Europe where the attempts to staunch the flow of refugees looking for a toehold in the generous EU turned into a raging flood. Anyone asking to slow down the process was accused of wanting more Aylan Kurdis. Landing on all manner of craft in southern Europe the refugees made their way north to the embrace of health benefits and income guarantees. By the end of the decade all the major cities in the EU were penetrated by ghettos of aliens seeking to recreate their previous Damascus home in Stockholm or Paris or Brussels.
The clash of cultures produced horrific results that those who’d invited the strangers into their homes were reluctant to admit. Stories of grooming white girls in Bradford, England, or attacking outsiders who wandered into Malmo, Sweden, were dismissed and, now, punished by new anti-hate legislation. Those who cared in 2015 are now finally realizing the impact of using Aylun Kurdi to satisfy their liberal guilt has been a disaster for their culture.
It is said that a week is a long time in politics. In this case a decade has been more than enough to bring Western Civilization to its knees.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
There is an old joke that Canada has two seasons. Summer. And the months when the Toronto Maple Leafs lead the nightly Canadian sports networks. Perhaps it’s not that bad, but for those who don’t live in southern Ontario it often feels that way.
The reason, some said, for this Buds obsession was that both TSN and Rogers Sportsnet were part owners of the team through Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, a business giant created in 2011 when the warring telcos took equal percentage shares in MLSE (Larry Tanenebaum took the final 25 percent, now 20 percent after selling a share to The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.)
At the time the merger of Bell (TSN) and Sportsnet (Rogers) was compared to Twitter and Facebook deciding to partner. Such was the rivalry that many predicted it wouldn’t last. But it did—if you don’t include Stanley Cups. Until this past week when it was announced that, if approved, Rogers will buy out Bell’s stake in MLSE, leaving it with 75 percent ownership. The process should close next year.
Rogers also has an option to buy out Tanenbaum next year, giving it complete control of the Leafs, Raptors, Argos (CFL), Toronto FC (MLS) and Toronto’s ScotiaBank Centre, among other baubles. (The new Toronto WNBA team is owned by Tannenbaum and several partners.)
Why the deal? Why now? Despite the huge national audience for the NHL, NBA and MLB, the component parts are said to be underperforming in a time when equity in sports franchises is soaring. Rogers’ national NHL TV contract is a significant drain on revenues. The Blue Jays’ flopping in the standings has left them a “stranded money-losing team” whose value isn’t fully reflected within Rogers. The Raptors are now also-rans.
Bell’s debt rating was downgraded to one notch above junk in August by Moody’s Investors Service. While not to the point of selling pencils there’s a thought that packaged as a group under one owner, the teams will now be more lucrative and, possibly, lead to an IPO in the future.
What does it mean for sports fans? For now, not much change. TSN is getting a 20-year agreement to get 50 percent of the regular-season Leafs and Raptors games. So it will have an NHL/ NBA presence until April. (It also has regional Montreal Canadiens rights.) TSN also has a strong NFL, tennis and golf presence. Rogers will have the existing property rights for the NHL playoffs as well as regional interests in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa. Plus its existing monopoly on the Blue Jays broadcasts.
Bell is reportedly interested in cutting its property inventory and concentrating on “5G, cloud and enterprise solutions”. TSN says it remains the prime media backer of the CFL, even though it no longer has an ownership position. Mediocre Toronto FC remain an add-on with a niche audience. As NHL national rights holder, Sportsnet (using CBC as a cutout) will still be the major outlet for postseason hockey. It’s also the exclusive home of the Blue Jays and the MLB postseason.
What does it mean in business terms? Despite the apparent cordiality of the deal, there is a fly in the ointment should digital companies such as Amazon, Prime, Apple, YouTube or Disney decide to bid on the primo national NHL broadcast rights packages. Already big leagues such as NFL, MLB and NBA have hived off packages to these outfits. Could they drive the price past Rogers’ comfort zone?
All this begs the question of what happens to the Raptors, Argos and Toronto FC which have fallen from their hip status of years prior. It’s well known that Rogers execs aren’t fond of Raptors president/ GM Masai Ujiri. Will they get the love in the C suite to bid on the top basketball contracts? Ditto Toronto FC, a pet project of Tanenbaum’s. It competes nationally with other Canadian teams. Will it have an ally in the front office?
If there is an ally it will have to be the peripatetic new CEO Keith Pelley who returns to Canada from running the European PGA Tour after stints running TSN, Rogers Sportsnet, the 2010 Winter Olympics and the Toronto Argos. Pelley knows all the broadcast and sports players firsthand from his prior gigs. He’s seen as an innovator but he also has good friends in the traditional sports leagues.
The one certainty is that cable and satellite packages will not decrease in price. Nor will ticket prices as pro sports continues to stretch the boundaries on how much people will pay for tickets (still a key revenue for NHL owners). And, for those wondering, the chances of leading newscasts with a Maple Leafs practice will be remain very strong for the future.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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