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20110505 – Evi, Alberta, Canada – Crews work to clean up at Rainbow Pipeline’s oil spill, the worst Alberta oil spill in 35 years, dumping 28, 000 barrels of oil into a wetland area at Evi, Alberta which is near Little Buffalo, Alberta, Canada.

Progress in the laying of plans for Canada’s build-your-own-envirnomental-disaster have hit a snag.  The people’s land that we want to endanger are saying no way, and no how.  Pretty rude considering that one of our more outspoken Premier’s comments ,“Let those Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.”  Oh Ralph, how we miss those straight talkn’, shoot from hip’in, shod in political clown shoes days of yesteryear (not at all actually).

Now, it seems, Alberta may need the dreaded Easters help in order to get our tar-sands products to market.  Strangely enough, they seem to be not acquiescing to our requests.   The Mayor of Montreal responds:

“Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre announced the city’s official opposition to proposed Energy East pipeline project Thursday, saying the potential risks outweigh its possible economic benefits to communities including his.  Coderre was joined by mayors from neighbouring cities including Laval and Longueuil that make up the Montreal Metropolitan Community.

“We are against it because it still represents significant environmental threats and too few economic benefits for greater Montreal,” said Coderre on behalf of the MMC.”

I imagine it would have been easier to make a case for the pipeline if much of Eastern Canada had not been forced to look elsewhere in the market for oil, because apparently the Dreaded National Energy Program (western Canada selling oil to Eastern Canada for a fair price) was to risky a venture for the Western Canadian oil capitalists.   Fast forward to the present and now we in the west are wondering why these bastards are not helping us out.

This state of affairs does not sit will for the political representative of the business sector in the Alberta Legislature.  Cue the stolid Brian Jean to microphone:

“In a statement, Brian Jean, leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Party, called Coderre’s position “disgraceful.”

“While Mr. Coderre dumps a billion litres of raw sewage directly into his waterways and benefits from billions in equalization payments, his opposition to the Energy East pipeline is nothing short of hypocritical,” Jean said.

Jean claimed the project would entail economic benefits of $9.2 billion for Quebec, citing numbers provided by TransCanada.”

Well, your claim is only made much more substantial by using the figures provided by the oil company.  We shan’t tarry to long with sources though, because this was just the opening salvo in the great West VS East energy pipeline showdown.

Coderre replies:

“”First of all, you have to allow me a moment to laugh at a guy like Brian Jean, when he says he relies on science. These are probably the same people who think the Flintstones is a documentary. But that’s another story.”

Ouch.  But our intrepid Wild Rose Leader fires back..

“I had an opportunity to serve with Mr. Coderre in federal politics for many years, and I’m used to watching him float up and down the gutter,” said Jean, who was a Conservative MP for a decade before entering provincial politics in Alberta.”

Oh Brian, politics is hard and nasty eh?  We’ll finish with Mr.Coderre:

“The community of metropolitan Montreal isn’t nothing,” he said. “It’s four million residents, it’s 82 municipalities, it’s 50 per cent of the gross domestic product, population and jobs of Quebec.

“We have committees of engineers, so we are working with credible data. We realized that when you build it, you can say it will bring this or that, and it will create so many jobs. But the economic reality is that it’s only 33 jobs and at most $2 million per year of municipal revenue.”

Two million is far cry from 9.2 billion dollars.  I’m sure the real number lies *somewhere* between those two extremes, but that isn’t the point.  It is Mr.Coderre that we are trying to win over to our side, and calling him a gutter inhabitant is not going to get the pipeline built.  This kind of grandstanding might win you the populist vote from rural Alberta (hurrah for the Sticks!), but it doesn’t play very well on the national stage.

On the upside, Brain Jean and band of merry corporatists are doing a lovely PR job, making the Energy East pipeline much less likely to happen.  Perhaps the Suzuki Foundation will give them an award or something.

[Source CBC.ca #1, #2]