Premier Danielle Smith is not mincing her words.
The premier paints a picture she finds alarming.
“In the last few months of a dying government is when they’re the most dangerous.”
The government Smith is talking about is the federal government, the government in Ottawa, the one led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The government 21 points behind Pierre Poilievre and the federal Conservatives.
It is in these dying days of sunny ways where Smith anticipates even greater ugliness if Trudeau and his crew do not see their way to re-election.
Then it will be like the folks who are getting an eviction notice and trash the place on the way out.
“If they don’t see a pathway to re-election in being reasonable and working collaboratively they’re going to pass all kinds of policy knowing it will be complicated and take some time to undo and send a chill in the investment community.”
Smith is talking about rules for the oilpatch. She is talking about Trudeau and his people bringing in a cap on oil and gas emissions.
She is talking about the United Nations climate change conference next month in Baku.
For those of you who don’t want to look it up on a map, Baku is in Azerbaijan.
That’s where Smith expects the Trudeau types to tell the world what they will do in the name of Mother Earth and Steven Guilbeault, Trudeau’s green guru, the former Greenpeace crusader, will be front and centre trying to win the World’s Greatest Virtue Signaller Award.
“The federal government is going to be preening on the world stage and trying to win favour with a certain environmental set and they’re going to try to brag about what they can do back in Canada,” says Smith.
“They go to international conferences and they try to outbid every other player at the table saying we can go stronger and harder and faster than anyone else.
“I think we’re going to see some ridiculous policies announced in the coming weeks. I look at the polls as anyone else does and they don’t have a mandate to move forward on these kind of aggressive policies.
“Nor do that have the constitutional jurisdiction.”
Smith wants to get a step ahead of Trudeau who has his own headaches on the home front as his own foot soldiers are starting to mutiny seeing the approaching political brick wall hitting them right in the kisser.
The premier rolls out a $7-million ad campaign against Trudeau’s upcoming cap on oil and gas emissions.
There’s the carbon tax, the clean electricity regulations, the No More Pipelines law, the emissions cap.
The hits just keep on coming.
This campaign will tell Canadians across the country about the dangers of the cap.
The job losses, the hit to the economy where oil and gas play a big part, every aspect of life becoming even less affordable with the average Canadian family having $419 a month less cash to spend on making ends meet, the loss of tax dollars.
You look up Trudeau oil and gas emissions cap in Smith’s book of choice words and find: ideological, irresponsible, terrible, devastating, reckless, extreme, a plan to use a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
The Smith government’s ad campaign will ask Canadians to tell Trudeau and other think-alike MPs to scrap the cap. Is that like axe the tax?
Smith says her government will fight and hope “cooler heads prevail” and “we can come to the table and come up with some kind of approach that actually is going to work for our province and not damage the country.”
It’s a safe bet Smith believes Poilievre is the leader of the Cooler Heads party.
The Trudeau Liberals, led by their not-so-jolly green giant Guilbeault, say Smith is lying, spreading misinformation and trying to suck up to UCP members before they vote on her leadership in less than three weeks.
Rebecca Schulz is Smith’s environment minister and she is more than willing to tangle with Trudeau.
Schulz finds it’s shocking how much latitude Trudeau and the Liberal MPs give to Guilbeault and, with the Liberals on the ropes, the green guru may have even more power.
She echoes the sentiments of many.
“I just hope they call an election, sooner rather than later. Tomorrow isn’t as good as what yesterday would have been.
“Back off the crazy policies or just call an election and get it over with.”