My reference here last week to the throne speech containing a declaration of war on the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and on the petroleum industry of Canada (with a partial reprieve for eastern Canadian offshore oil) might have seemed an exaggeration. But it was a reasonable interpretation of what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on the subject in 2017: “You can’t make a choice between what’s good for the environment and what’s good for the economy. We can’t shut down the oilsands tomorrow. We need to phase them out.” He said the following day that he had “misspoke,” but did not retract or even alter that position; he only stated that he should have worded it more carefully, presumably to disguise its meaning. In the intervening period of nearly four years, his government has pursued the systematic destruction of the western petroleum industry, which the throne speech reaffirmed, although instead of specifically enunciating that goal, the federal government is pursuing it through four parallel channels of public policy.
It has been an efficient and skilfully executed assault, and it has largely been conducted behind a facade of the familiar truckling to the broad concept of Indigenous rights, in a way that steadily approaches the implicit concession that the regime established by all those who came to this country after the Indigenous people is afflicted by compromised rights and legitimacy. The Trudeaus have come full circle: 50 years ago, Pierre Trudeau expressed his intention to consolidate what was called Indian Affairs into the welfare system, and his son is dealing “nation to nation” with all of the hundreds of tribes and bands of Indigenous peoples within this country. It may temporarily be an effective tactic for disguising the government’s environmental ambitions, but it is empowering a Frankenstein monster of Native litigious aggression that will rampage through the country until the sovereignty of Canada is justly reasserted. We are approaching what Cardinal Richelieu called, in reference to the Huguenots, “a state within the state.”--
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