Good Obvious And Bad Obvious...As The Ron Goes National.

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Mr. Mason of the Globe waded into the inter-provincial carbon tax thingy recently.

And some of the stuff he wrote, while obvious, was actually worth the pixel ink it was printed on.

Stuff like this:

...If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Environment Minister ever hope to meet the exceedingly ambitious climate targets they have set for this country, they have to get serious now. And it starts with getting tough with those holdout (provincial) jurisdictions that feel they can let this matter drag out for a few years. That can't happen...


But then, as you might have expected (and/or predicted), Mr. Mason's column went off the rails in the kicker:

...That is why the new leader of the Saskatchewan Party, the one who has the unenviable job of following in the footsteps of arguably the most popular premier in the province's history, is going to have trouble backing up Mr. Wall's tough talk. Ottawa insists it has the legal authority to impose a carbon tax on the provinces and territories that don't create their own and I can't see why that would not be the case.

Which brings us back to Mr. Kenney.

At some point, he is going to have to come clean about exactly how he intends to get rid of a tax that the federal government is making the rest of the country pay. What is the legal foundation of the argument he plans to mount in court, assuming it ends up there? And refusing to spell it out on the grounds he doesn't want to tip his hand doesn't count as an answer.

Mr. Kenney could well be the next premier of Alberta. The job comes with awesome responsibilities, not the least of which is being straight-up with the people...


It's that last bit that really gets me.

In fact, I see it as nothing more than wishful argle-bargle in the real world politicians actually inhabit these days.

Why?

Because Mr. Kenney doesn't care about honesty, logic or even plausible public policy.

After all, when you're playing to a debased base that believes their being born on third base is an hard earned 'advantage'* as Mr. Kenney is, caring about any of those things is actually a demonstrable disadvantage.

Particularly if no one in the proMedia makes him really pay for that willful lack of care**

OK?



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*Except, of course, if oil prices fall in which case Rachel Notley will be blamed for picking up the base and chucking it over the left field wall
**This is something Mr. Mason knows (or at least should) well, given that he was one of the chief bemoaners of the fact that nothing even remotely monetarily conflicty would stick to Christy Clark...And then a stringer for the NYTimes named Dan Levin stepped in and nailed Ms. Clark's government to the wall by reworking the copy of Mr. Mason et al. to demonstrate, definitively, that a whole lot of somethings were rotten in the state of Clarkland.
This week's Tip-Of-The-Podcast-Toque tip.... This is one I missed when it first came out a couple of months back, but is now worth a listen more than ever...It's Ezra Klein in a free-wheeling, yet still well-moderated, interview with EJ Dionne, Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein who take no prisoners, media members included, as they speak at length on how "Both Sides Don't Do It" in the US, at least with respect to things that actually matter...The triumverate is a plain-spoken group of honest brokers...It reminds me of the old days of Gzowski with Lewis, Kierans and Camp on Morningside...It doesn't hurt that Klein himself suggests that Orstein, Mann and Dionne have come together like some kind of 'Canadian Indie-Band Super Group'...You can listen to them...Here.

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