Rachel Notley is done with Alberta politics. Is Ottawa next?

Recall Notley's rambling, incoherent response to a question at the AB Teachers' Association meeting Oct 13, 2018:

Q) "You talked about the coal industry and how you have a plan for supporting those industry workers till 2030 when it becomes kind of obsolete I suppose. I'm just wondering is there is a plan long-range to support the oil industry as it, I mean yes it will grow in 20 years but it may start to deplete but what is the plan there?"

Notley) "With the coal plan, because we very definitively said we're phasing out coal by this day and we identified the plans and we knew what was going to change as a result of our policy we were able to identify the workers who were going to be impacted and so we put together a just transition plan, roughly $40 million dollars that's set aside. With respect to the energy industry it's a slower process, I actually believe that should [we] be successful in getting this pipeline built as well as the other two that I think the industry itself is going to be able to fund its own transition, support its workers, provide other opportunities.
We, of course, all many of us, suffered significant losses in 2015-2016 because of the price drop and the commodity drop and it wasn't just oil workers, it was the people whose jobs depended on oil workers to have, you know, money so since that time we've done a number of things to stimulate economic growth and to try to find and to try to support those workers. As you probably know since last year, last summer 2016 the Alberta economy has created 90 000 new jobs so we are making good headway there but there's no question that the other thing that's going to support workers in the oil and gas industry is the ability to support the industry as it transitions itself to a smarter way of doing business and finds new roles for the workers there. So, that's sort of my answer."

Notley neither envisions nor supports a phase-out or decline of AB oil production. She has no concrete ideas to offer on the subject. Notley's notion that the industry will manage its own decline and fund the transition to more sustainable industries is risible.

Good old Rachel. Alberta's progressive climate champion, fighting against her grandchildren's right to a healthy planet to the bitter end:

The NDP's shift to the right was a political blunder. Notley's oil-soaked "pragmatism" foundered on delusion and denial. Most pipeline boosters would not vote NDP if Notley built a billion pipelines. Pandering to fossil fuel dinosaurs just fed the right-wing frenzy. A pipeline project became the rallying flag for Albertans, whose sense of grievance against Ottawa burns eternal. Fuelling the right-wing rage machine. Pipeline supporters will vote for the real thing. Notley's pipeline hysterics only inflamed Albertans against the NDP and alienated her own supporters.
The last election was close only because the UCP chose Danielle Smith — on the sixth ballot — as its new leader. Not only did Notley’s strategy fail, it also set back Alberta's progressive movement. Not the direction the federal party needs to go.

Goaded by jibes from Danielle Smith, Notley's flip-flopping on energy/climate issues has made the AB NDP look even weaker.
Notley's new NDP climate plan:
●Oppose the federal 'just transition' plan.
●Oppose Canada's 2030 emission reduction goals.
●Invest even more in oilsands CCS projects.

Climate change disproportionately affects women and children. The global poor are the most vulnerable. Does not matter what your policies are on farm labor, GSAs, childcare, etc. If you're not progressive on climate, you're not progressive.

Thanks for the link to Kevin Taft's 2018 commentary. I'll check it out. His 2015 book 'Oil's Deep State' rings true more than ever today.

@ mary N.

Notley went so far over the top with her constant condescension toward BC that she burned every bridge that could be used in some kind of reconciliation in future. I and my colleagues were there on the receiving end in municipal government that had to deal with the NEB. Her name is mud.

I think Notley will have a difficult time gaining any traction in the federal NDP. Notley criticized Singh et al on pipelines. Her anger toward BC, most especially the BC NDP government, still wrankles, and there are old, experienced MPs and party stalwarts there whose memories go back decades. Notley and Horgan were at each other's threats over TMX, a fight that went right up to the highest court in the land. Horgan has many old friends in the federal NDP. The divisions are deep and still fresh, even though he needlessly went into coal mining management after leaving government, thumbing his nose at the NDP's environmental wing.

On oil & gas Notley's record is on the same page as the UCP and federal Conservatives. Her recent praise of renewables seems timid and almost apologetic. If I still lived in Alberta I'd likely vote NDP for their social policies and weak support for renewables (it was used as a device to leverage pipelines). But pushing oil did nothing for them but cover their evvironmental credibility with bitumen.

Being two-faced seems to be the way with too many powerful progressives and moderates in this country. The most successful forward-looking path for Notley may be to pull a Horgan and land in a high six-figure position on the board of some carbon outfit. It would be better for her credibility to land in management of a labour union, but the pay won't be as high.

If she knocked on the federal NDP's front door, Charlie Angus or the MP from Edmonton will probably eat her lunch on the porch and slam the door. If she retired and wrote a book trying to post-justify or gloss over her subservience to Big Oil while displaying her frayed social democratic credentials, Kevin Taft -- a fellow who came from the same legislature and who wrote extensively about the heavy role oil plays there -- will eat her lunch.

Either way her weakened reputation will go unnourished. Quiet retirement on an exceedingly generous politician's pension may be the best option.

It did NOT seem bold at the time. Pretty much anyone as far left as the NDP or otherwise with small "g" green beliefs but outside of Alberta opposed the pipeline from the start, the BC government opposed the pipeline from the start, many municipalities it crossed opposed the pipeline from the start, it was already widely pointed out at the time that the tar sands had to stop, it was already widely pointed out at the time that building more infrastructure for fossil fuels was perpetuating their use, NOT anything like a step towards transition. You don't transition away from something by doing more of it, and we were not idiot enough to believe otherwise just a few years ago. It was clear at the time that the stated rationale (money from the pipeline being used to aid transition) was nonsense for a host of reasons, starting with the fact that it was plain by the time the feds bought the thing that the pipeline would not make money and so there would be no money to aid anything.

I was there at the time and paying attention; I believe that trying to convince me I didn't see what I saw is what the kids call "gaslighting".

The memories are coming back. When Notley was pushing a pipe a protest was widely advertised that drew a crowd of protestors estimated to be 10,000-12,000 people on the first day (TransLink's numbers from the faregates at three rapid transit stations below Burnaby Mountain and bus rider traffic) gathered at the pipeline terminus site on a mountainside perched above large residential communities. In the weeks that followed many arrests were made to the joy of right wing hooligans in Alberta who called Indigenous grandmothers, grandkids and soccer moms and dads "ecoterrorists" in mainstream and social media, a label that also applied to Elizabeth May, MP and leader of the Green Party.

I was downtown that day and stumbled across a protest at Jack Poole Plaza, ironically located on the downtown Vancouver waterfront that would be greatly affected by a spill from a TMX tanker ship moving a few hundred metres out in the shipping lanes. At first I thought it was a branch protest from the Mountain, but it became quickly evident that it was a pro-oil counterprotest put on by industry. And it was completely laughable by comparison. ~250 people vs. ~10,000, albeit with a good PA system. The majority of these pro pipeline people were bussed in from Alberta; there were 8-10 greyhound busses parked on the front street, every single one of them with Alberta plates (I checked). I stood at the back of the small crowd and listened to a couple of minutes of right wing sloganeering ("socialist BC government...ecoterrorists...blah blah blah"), laughed then left, wondering if that's all they've got.