Will Jason Kenney Lose His Pipeline War With Justin Trudeau?

Ever since he became the Premier-elect of Alberta, Jason Kenney has wasted no time giving his enemies the finger, and preparing to declare war on them.

From "foreign funded" environmental groups, the government and people of British Columbia and First Nations, to union groups, student activists, the liberal media etc etc.

And of course Justin Trudeau and his demonic carbon tax, who Kenney says must build him a pipeline, NOW!!! or ELSE !!#@




So this must have come as a nasty shock.

The federal government is putting off plans to pass judgment on the reconsidered Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposal for nearly a month in order to finish its consultations with Indigenous groups, says Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi.

Kenney must have been hoping the announcement could have been just a few days after he is sworn in on April 30, so he could pretend that Trudeau had been so intimidated by his aggressive words, that he surrendered the golden pipeline immediately.

But will Trudeau do that? Will he give Alberta a pipeline when Kenney is blowing up the deal he had with Rachel Notley? 

The UCP leader has said he will scrap Notley's 100-megatonne cap on oil sands emissions, let coal power plants operate past 2030, and rollback much of Notley's carbon emission pricing plan.

Or will he just say no.

Trudeau now has the opportunity to walk his talk. He can say no to Kenney. 

No strict environmental plan, no pipeline. That was the bargain Trudeau sold to Canadians.

The move would cause an uproar in Alberta of course, and Jason Kenney would probably go ballistic...



But Trudeau doesn't owe him any favours, he has more seats to gain in B.C. than he has seats to lose in Alberta.

And in a slugging match with that pathetic closet queen he would almost certainly come out the winner.

The Scheer-Ford-Kenney axis now means that Trudeau has a clear political target in mind. Kenney is a gift to Trudeau in Quebec where there’s a consensus that they’re willing to live with carbon taxes and want nothing to do with a new pipeline with Alberta oil. Scheer will have a lot of trouble campaigning in Quebec as an Energy East backer and Alberta cheerleader.

Most of all, the election of Jason Kenney will remind millions of Canadians why they voted for Trudeau in the first place in 2015. To get rid of Harper and the likes of Jason Kenney.

For you can be sure that many Canadians still remember that nightmare even if it did have a happy ending...



And will do anything to make sure it doesn't happen again.

To make matters worse for Kenney and his Con confederacy of climate change deniers, they are on the wrong side of that burning issue. 



Despite the furious rhetoric coming out of Queen’s Park, the federal Conservatives and now Edmonton against the Liberals’ so-called “carbon tax,” Canadians actually want to see action on climate change. They see it as a real problem that demands real action; they can see it not only in academic studies predicting disaster down the road but in the evidence of their own eyes — the rising present-day costs of dramatically changing climate conditions.

And for Trudeau, Kenney and Ford couldn't be more inviting targets.

At the same time, there would be worse ways for Trudeau to campaign than as a foil to the likes of Doug Ford and Jason Kenney. He won’t convince their faithful supporters to switch sides, but the spectre of Ford and Kenney pulling Andrew Scheer’s strings in the background may well be enough to convince even moderately progressive voters to stick with the Liberals, despite the baggage they’ve accumulated in the past two months with the SNC-Lavalin affair.

While Scheer, aka Weak Andy, couldn't be made to look more pathetic.



You know, in most contests the more enemies you have the more precarious your situation.



But when it comes to scummy Con enemies, the more the merrier.

And that's why the decent Justin Trudeau is going to be re-elected prime minister...