Alberta Is Not Brokeback Mountain

And that is something Dion doesn't realize.......

Grit and bear it

Liberal boss's fiscal plan for Alberta won't work

By NEIL WAUGH
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion was in town splitting hairs, attaching labels and trying to explain where he’s coming from. It didn’t work.

Especially when he blurted “I’m a Liberal, not a socialist.

“The government will not decide everything,” he insisted. That’s if central Canadians foolishly decide to vote the Liberals back into power.

A Stephane Dion coronation will not happen anytime soon in Alberta. No fear of that. Especially after some of the excellent ideas the Quebecer shared with the students at Faculte St. Jean yesterday.

“We need to be a bit like Norway,” Dion scolded. Then he tore a strip off young guys heading for the oilsands.

“All these workers living too fast for the easy money in the north,” the prime minister-wannabe blasted as Liberal-appointed senators Tommy Banks and Grant Mitchell looked on. “It’s not good for the economy.”

I don’t know what your idea of “easy money” is. But it sure isn’t living in camp and freezing your butt at 40 below building oilsands plants. But Tommy and Grant sure know what a soft touch looks like.

Then Dion went on to explain his plan to link “the daily life of citizens and the big challenge of the planet.”

He talked about “new regulations for the industry” – which means Alberta hydrocarbon- based industrial heartland. “It will be fair, it will be demanding, but we will be responsible,” he insisted. “It will not be a way to pull the money out of Alberta.”

Then he outlined his plan to make oilsands developers toe the line, imposing what sounds like massive taxes by basing the fed’s capital cost allowance on how much process water they use and how much carbon dioxide goes up the stacks.

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