Guilbeault appointment to environment and climate portfolio an insult to Alberta
By Letter to the Editor on October 29, 2021.
Editor:
The appointment of Steven Guilbeault by Justin Trudeau as Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change is most assuredly a slap in the face to all Albertans.
Guilbeault, arrested at a Greenpeace demonstration against Canada’s role in climate change, is passionate and committed to his cause.
If Albertans are not as passionate and committed to their responsibly produced natural resources, then no battle can ever be won against such individuals.
Alberta premier Jason Kenney, an opportunistic carpetbagger of a federal career politician who parachuted into our province to win the UCP leadership by playing political games, has proven himself time and again a narrow-minded, dispassionate, deaf, and incompetent bumbler.
Unfortunately, his rival and NDP leader Rachel Notley is no better with her constant, obsequious kow-towing to Justin Trudeau and his “national environmental program” which is as misguided and divisive as was Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s National Energy Program.
Albertans desperately need another Peter Lougheed to lead, fight, and beat back these people again.
Mike Priaro
Calgary
-1
“”their responsibly produced natural resources,””
that was a good laugh.
This guy is just another partisan clown who doesn’t want to work with anyone but righty cronies.
Once more you are dead wrong. Let me guess you are a senior and don’t give a damn about global warming or the disasters it’s creating. I just came back from B.C. and saw what the fires did to them and it’s only going to get worse.
Why don’t you google all the articles about the oil executives wanting the Carbon Tax implemented so you won’t have to look so stupid?
Is the new environment minister not qualified for his position due to his past and potentially present opinions? Absolutely. An insult to Albertans? No. Not everything is about us. It seems you have fallen into the “us vs them” mindset. I’m surprised there wasn’t a “drill baby drill” reference in there. We have found out this year that we’re not all about resource extraction this year with the eastern slopes coal uprising.
On Kenney I don’t disagree with you at all in fact I could add a couple things but I won’t. With Notley I didn’t agree with all the things she did by far( hiring people to change light bulbs for one) but the carbon tax wasn’t one of them. It was coming and I would prefer our provincial government to administer it rather than the feds, but Kenney threw it out and how’d that work out Mike?
I would have to question the generalization how ‘all Albertans’ feel about this appointment. This Albertan thinks it is time to stop sitting on our fossil laurels, accept the necessity of an energy transition, and respond with some innovative economic diversification. Whining is not a growth industry.
I was involved with the orphan well cleanup mess prior to Klein changing the regulations to benefit his rich friends. Oil industries responsible for creating this mess were being forced to pay to clean it up which was the right thing to do, yet look what these reformers starting with Klein have done to us.
We have lost hundreds of billions in oil royalties and tax wealth, yet we still have fellow seniors dumb enough to still support it. Nothing Kenney has done has benefitted any of us. In fact he is responsible for causing a nightmare for our doctors and nurses and a lot of deaths just like Klein did. We won’t be surprised if he faces a lot of lawsuits and like with Klein . Taxpayers will be the big losers.
You are of course completely ignoring the undeniable fact that Guilbeaut and Greenpeace were right, and have been the whole time, which for Greenpeace is 50 years now.
I just read an article about how someone in Greenpeace U.K. was the one who secretly taped an Exxon executive admitting that they just use climate change “jargon” as talking points. That man has been fired, and Exxon denies, but clearly that is their specialty because there is other, voluminous proof of oil companies financing denialism of climate change for decades now, an accusation they are finally facing in Congrss. They’re being compared to the tobacco companies.
And the hackneyed phrase, “responsibly produced natural resources” no longer matters in the context of what is literally an existential crisis. And still trying to stoke division by bringing up the old reliable “national energy program” in the context of Justin Trudeau is pathetic.
You conservatives just don’t get it, and apparently just CAN’T for some reason. But the NDP do which is why more Albertans are actually with them now.
Well said.
I don’t mind that Greenpeace was right, I have a problem with their methods. I fully support their press releases,peacefull protests and environmental reporting. What I can’t support is putting people’s lives at risk. Which this MP was doing when he had to be rescued because of a stunt gone wrong.
You probably don’t approve of Greta Thunberg or her methods either, right? You guys don’t get it, clearly just do NOT really believe it.
May I suggest that such petty, persistent intransigence is what makes people who DO get it feel truly desperate, especially younger people, and rightly so.
And speaking of “putting people’s lives at risk,” what do you think climate change is going to do, and exponentially?
It’s no secret that Klein and Kenney have been responsible for a lot of deaths in Alberta. I haven’t forgotten what Klein’s father Phil said to me “Al what in the hell is the matter with that son of mine? While he gives away billions in royalties he is forcing us to try to live without a proper health care system. This could cost some people their lives”.
Phil was right that’s exactly what it did and one was almost my father after he had donated around $30,000. to the Alberta conservatives party.
So how would you do it when you have reformers who won’t listen to anyone. Even Lougheed was ignored by Klein and Stelmach when he told them to slow down the growth of our Oilsands and get control of our pollution.
For years we have listened to oilmen telling us that we have a pollution problem and oil executives agreed that something must be done which is why they wanted the Carbon Tax implemented yet these fools in Alberta won’t listen. Apparently like the Reformers they don’t give a damn about global warming or the future of our children. They won’t be around so why should they care. What a pathetic group of fools and you can bet they are mostly seniors, the young people certainly care, it’s their future we are talking about.
I think the oil executives will be happy to have him on board and will be willing to work with him. These Reformers starting with Klein and Harper refused to listen to them.
Dennis McConaghy former executive of TransCanada Pipeline blames Harper for not listening to him and for getting the Keystone XL pipeline cancelled. He thinks that if these ignorant Reformers had shown some concern for global warming Obama would have approved it. You can’t go around telling the world you don’t give a damn about global warming, when the world does care.