Alberta's premier doesn't seem to take particularly seriously a company's responsibility to clean up after extracting and profiting from our finite natural resources.
As anyone who's paying attention knows all too well, there are so many orphan wells and other abandoned oil and gas infrastructure throughout this province that estimates to reclaim the land rack up into low estimates of tens of billions of dollars to higher projections of more than $100 billion.
Kenney once told me during an interview at local MLA Jason Nixon's office when questioned about this issue, that there was "no use in crying over spilled milk."
I wrote in a commentary separate from the article I had written then, arguing that was a dismissive and deflective stance on a serious issue.
Although perhaps the spilled milk response wasn't so surprising. In retrospect, even predictable. Kenney makes no attempt to hide where his allegiance lies. He recently donned an I Love Canada Oil & Gas shirt during the Grey Cup in a flagrantly political statement at a sporting event, a bold move that elicited scattered boos from the crowd.
But why does it have to be about supporting and praising only oil and gas, that arguably seems to be at the expense of almost anything and everything else?
Why can't we work towards supporting our oil and gas industry as well as substantially ramp up our efforts to pursue geothermal, solar, wind and other renewable developments. Perhaps also carbon capture, biofuels, and waste-to-energy — even nuclear, whose merits and potential are understated and risks greatly exaggerated.
Instead, subsidies for the green energy sector, which also creates good jobs and stimulates economic activity, are set to vanish.
Meanwhile, we can undoubtedly expect oil and gas companies will continue to receive preferential treatment as they maintain par for the course and download long-term cleanup costs on our shoulders while reaping short-term profits. In essence taking the money and running off laughing all the way to the bank, leaving us with an astronomical bill.
The Alberta — and if Kenney got his way, the Canadian — taxpayer is being thrown under the bus while companies are allowed to profit when the going is good, and just bail out on us when times turn for the worse.
There is indeed, as Kenney so eloquently and poetically put it, no use in crying over spilled milk, which with one quick wipe of a paper towel or two is taken care of.
But being left on the hook for billions upon billions of dollars of oil site reclamation costs is certainly worth getting upset about. Especially among those who claim to be concerned about future debts their children and grandkids will inherit.
Simon Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up.
