Martin Brian

Don Braid interviewed Mulroney recently and reminded me why I loved and why I hated him at the same time. First, he pointed out how bad it is that we do not pay our way in Defence (1.2% of GNP) and Foreign Aid (.2%) and even said that on our delinquent NATO dues "Trump is right". His witty anecdote from Manley:"When the check comes at the dinner table, we go to the bathroom!" His government was the last to reach the NATO target and was on its way to .7% on aid.

Then he talked about his "grand vision" for the Environment, obviously revelling in being reminded that May called him the "greenest PM". I do recall the Acid Rain Treaty and his unfortunately being the first PM to get us mired in the global warming cult. But it disturbed me that he believes that a party can no longer hope to win without a micromanaging Climate Change policy. Somehow the middle class is more interested in ensuring a "pristine" environment and having to pay more taxes (on top of taxes like the GST that Brian brought in) than

in ensuring they and their children have jobs and better pay. This from a man who hasn't been "middle class" in 50 years and who got his big break from a strip mining company.

Incredibly, while slagging the Conservative Party for not doing the bidding of the Climate Change religion, neither he nor Braid seemed interested in asking where the grand chumps of Confederation, Alberta, who has these 50 years paid the bills for all of us, including the great Central Canadian holier than thou middle classes, fit into this "grand vision". Surely, if Alberta falls we all do. What economic success that we have enjoyed in the last 20 years has been delivered by Alberta. If we adopt a continuing assault on our energy industry (except of course, in MBM's favourite "distinct society" of the double standard, Quebec) we will all lose.

This needs to be confronted honestly. A Grand Bargain for upping our defence spending to 2% in return for increasing aid to .7 would be a good answer to the legitimate issue Mulroney first addressed. Similarly, we need not a grand vision but a grand bargain for the Environment. This would involve truly revenue neutral consumption taxation of pollution including carbon emissions but also the cleanup of real pollution like our dirty rivers and shitty harbours and our hellhole reservations. But we must combine that with a new legislative regime that will give energy projects the same certainty that projects in other sectors expect and get. If we don't, foreign investment here (which is heavily attached to those projects) will dry up.

The irony is that, if we do not make money, especially in the oil patch, it will be harder for us to be "pristine" and, if we do not watch out, we will lose Alberta. After the studied ignorance and neglect of Mulroney's government toward Western concerns, we got the Reform Party. Doubling down on this studied refusal to acknowledge those concerns and treat them will not only possibly alienate and eventually lose those provinces affected this time, but leave us all the poorer.