[Dion]

Corbella: The enemies of Alberta's energy industry are running the province

But what’s most ironic of all is that Berman’s views align with many of Notley’s most high profile ministers, including Notley, whose views on oil and gas only recently changed once she became premier.

Consider Shannon Phillips, Alberta’s Minister of Environment and Parks and the Minister Responsible for the Climate Change Office. Phillips was involved in No Drilling Lethbridge and helped draft the Alberta Federation of Labour’s opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have transported Alberta bitumen to tidewater at Kitimat, B.C. The cancellation of that pipeline by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — despite it being approved through a costly, multi-year process and then passed by the House of Commons under Stephen Harper — was partly informed by the fact that some Albertans, like Phillips, were opposed to the pipeline.

Phillips also co-authored a book with Greenpeace mouthpiece Mike Hudema, entitled: An Action a Day Keeps Global Capitalism Away. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up! In the 2004 book’s preface, Hudema wrote: “It would not have been possible to put this book together without her. She pushed me to write it, edited my work, and contributed to its content. I owe her a heavy debt.”

Phillips, in heavy damage control mode, says she just “moved some commas around.” Oh sure. No author says someone contributed to a book’s content if that didn’t occur.

Sadly, when it comes to Phillips, I could go on and on, but NDP ministers with even more important portfolios than hers have similar views.

Alberta’s Finance Minister, Joe Ceci, has been quoted as slamming the oilsands in a Maclean’s article from Dec. 29, 2008.

“We should be able to say to Calgarians that we’re investing in things that are contributing to a positive world,” said Ceci, then a long-time Calgary alderman. “If environmental factors on some of the companies out there are less than sustainable, then we should not be investing in those areas.”

Brian Mason, the ND’s former leader and now Minister of Transportation, was quoted in a 2013 newpaper, saying: “The oilsands has given Alberta and Canada a black eye with the rest of the world.”

Then, of course, there’s Premier Notley, so desperate to hang on to power that she has suddenly seen the light, when it come to oilsands development.

From previously speaking out against the oilsands in general, she also opposed and spoke against the building of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Northern Gateway pipeline.

But, now she wants to spend billions of Alberta tax dollars on the 60-year-old Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline that Trudeau’s federal Liberal government purchased for $4.5 billion. The twinning of the existing pipeline might have been built by the private sector had all the unrealistic, anti-oil types like Notley and her cabinet ministers been onside with the project, rather than protest Alberta oil and gas at every turn for many years.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local...g-the-province