Let’s face it, changing your mind is just re-targeting to a more ‘hittable target,’ or focusing on the ‘focusable.’

Recently, two people come to mind who have changed their minds and are re-focusing — Alberta’s Premier, Rachel Notely, and me — insofar as my opinion of her goes.

Out of sheer frustration, reinforced by unshielded anger, Premier Notely has embarked on a crusade through the ice floes of the politics of this country, berating the right, left, and any other direction that may get in her way, which is not as self-centered and egotistical as her audiences but is a sincere attempt to wake up this country on the value of pipelines before the economic lifeline is de-plugged.

I feel that many, or maybe most outside of Alberta (including their nearest neighbour to the west), have looked at Alberta as just “lucky” to have the world’s third largest oil reserve, so they should ‘suck it up’ when times get bad. May I suggest to the “have not” provinces, or its fiefdoms in Ontario and Quebec, that they will become the “never have” provinces if Alberta can’t move oil across this country to tidewater — and soon.

Lest they forget, Alberta sends $21.8 billion per year more to Ottawa in transfer payments to the rest of us than it receives.

That Alberta would entrust these revenues for Ottawa’s disbursement to the ever-hungry provincial nestling sparrows at Ottawa’s discretion is delusional, because Ottawa is dysfunctional, and I have proof:

• How can we trust a government that can’t even explain what the National Energy Board (NEB) does or who they are?
• How do I become a member? Would I receive an indexed pension? Certainly, it seems our very own and elected by, ‘we the people’ Natural Resources Minister, Jim Carr, cannot, or will not, answer this question.

When asked why the Federal Government, Jim’s employer, wouldn’t participate in the TransMountain pipeline expansion hearings now stalled at the edge of the City of Burnaby’s ego moat, his response was, and I‘m not making this up: “Ottawa is not participating in the hearings because it is unusual for the Government of Canada to intervene in a quasi-independent independent arm’s length agency.”

Carr continued, and this is even more priceless: “Arguments would be made by other interveners, particularly the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan.”

Over to you Rachel! Nothing to do with us, but keep up those transfer payments because Quebec and Ontario are counting on you.

So, if the NEB is just “quasi,” are Rachel and I, as well as the rest of the country, just “crazi?” Does quasi mean “sorta but not really?” If so, why does the NEB have the ear of the Ottawans? I thought this was an arm’s length relationship.
But wait, the TransMountain crosses the Alberta/B.C. border, therefore it falls under federal jurisdiction.

No, no silly, because Jim Carr says the feds don’t want to “intervene.”

Lack of intervention sounds more like lack of interest to me. Something Rachel Notely is not lacking in.

So take note Canada and, oh, yes, Ottawa.