I have bought but not yet read William Marsden’s book “Stupid to the Last Drop” about the Alberta oil sands. I don’t expect to get to it until after Christmas but I may have to fast track my plans.
This CanWest news piece suggesting Guy Boutilier, when he was Alberta’s Minister of the Environment, may be enough to convince me to get into the book sooner. Apparently Mr. Boutiller tried in 2005 to influence the Quebec government to change its support for the Kyoto Accord in exchange for “billions of Alberta industry” dollars to help finance the Montreal Stock Exchange.
This is an interesting allegation given that Mr. Boutilier admits to writing the note and circumstances of the event. He berates Mr. Marsden for “sensationalizing something that is totally imaginative.” What was so imaginative about this ploy? Trying to buy Quebec loyalty and failing to do so is hardly imaginative.
Many past federal Liberal governments were masters at it and Chrétien was perhaps the biggest failure at it. Just look at Adscam for proof of that statement. Even the current Con government under Mr. Harper is playing the lets buy Quebec's loyalty card. He is into the “Quebec Nation” notion and has done some pretty serious federal spending in Quebec with the strategic advice of former Prime Minister Mulroney. Remember it was Mr. Mulroney who managed to get an impressive string of majority governments out of his application of this “imaginative” lets buy the Quebec loyalty tactic.
This is hardly an imaginative approach to nation building or cooperative federalism. It is nothing even close to the effective tag teaming Lougheed and Lévesque used to employ against Ottawa from time to time. Those events were marked by Alberta and Quebec sharing a mutual respect for the division of powers in the Canadian Constitution at a time when Ottawa was buying influence from all other provinces.
Hard to judge from what we know for sure about this event as to what Mr. Boutilier was really up to in offering billions of Alberta industry money to Quebec. On what basis Mr. Boutilier thinks he can offer billions of private industry money to Quebec in the first place is confusing enough. What was he thinking?
This CanWest news piece suggesting Guy Boutilier, when he was Alberta’s Minister of the Environment, may be enough to convince me to get into the book sooner. Apparently Mr. Boutiller tried in 2005 to influence the Quebec government to change its support for the Kyoto Accord in exchange for “billions of Alberta industry” dollars to help finance the Montreal Stock Exchange.
This is an interesting allegation given that Mr. Boutilier admits to writing the note and circumstances of the event. He berates Mr. Marsden for “sensationalizing something that is totally imaginative.” What was so imaginative about this ploy? Trying to buy Quebec loyalty and failing to do so is hardly imaginative.
Many past federal Liberal governments were masters at it and Chrétien was perhaps the biggest failure at it. Just look at Adscam for proof of that statement. Even the current Con government under Mr. Harper is playing the lets buy Quebec's loyalty card. He is into the “Quebec Nation” notion and has done some pretty serious federal spending in Quebec with the strategic advice of former Prime Minister Mulroney. Remember it was Mr. Mulroney who managed to get an impressive string of majority governments out of his application of this “imaginative” lets buy the Quebec loyalty tactic.
This is hardly an imaginative approach to nation building or cooperative federalism. It is nothing even close to the effective tag teaming Lougheed and Lévesque used to employ against Ottawa from time to time. Those events were marked by Alberta and Quebec sharing a mutual respect for the division of powers in the Canadian Constitution at a time when Ottawa was buying influence from all other provinces.
Hard to judge from what we know for sure about this event as to what Mr. Boutilier was really up to in offering billions of Alberta industry money to Quebec. On what basis Mr. Boutilier thinks he can offer billions of private industry money to Quebec in the first place is confusing enough. What was he thinking?
Claiming it was about being "imaginative" is not likely to pass any sniff test as to what his motivations really were.
This comment relates to an earlier post (might be in the archives).
ReplyDeleteI was a little shocked to see that Hancock's disclosure included anonymous donors. Moreover, these donors were under the larger amounts (over $10,000).
Personally, I just cannot see how this constitutes disclosure of any sort. After all, would it not be the "anonymous" donors that Albertans should be worried about? I am not saying there is or was anything improper with respect to Hancock's contributors - quite the opposite, he is a man of integrity. But how can he argue for full disclosure when his list does not fully disclose?
eric...I am sure your "shock" was feigned. Go back to the list you will see that there is a very small total amount of money was anonymous and from very few donors and I believe one was over $10K.
ReplyDeleteI agree no donor ought to be anonymous in a leadership campaign. But I was neither the candidate nor the finance chair. The Party needs to change those rules for next time.
The reasons most political donors wish to remain anonymous is threefold.
1 They don't want to be bothered by other candidates for donations;
2 They are "officially" supporting other candidates and are hedging their bets and don't want their "first" choice to know they are doing that;
3 They are in businesses that do government contract work and they fear retribution if they picked the wrong horse.
The "donors" who write cheques to winning candidates after the victory and pre-date them are the only ones I have ever seen trying to exert "influence."
They don't want to be anonymous -at least not to a candidate, but they are rarely successful at influencing any winning politician under those circumstances.
Just started reading your blog not too long ago Ken, it's a really interesting read.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you rank Boutilier as a minister?