Please Advise! What’s with the Eby-Smith Pipeline Insults?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith wants the federal government to fast track a pipeline from the oilsands to British Columbia’s north coast. But no companies have actually proposed a pipeline. And the current tanker ban on the coast means the oil would have nowhere to go.

Still Smith says approval of the hypothetical pipeline will be “a test of whether Canada works as a country.”

What’s happening, Dr. Steve?

Signed,

Frank B.

Dear Frank,

Dr. Steve was recently trying to remember the details of The Wizard of Oz. But it turns out Dorothy’s last name wasn’t, as he had guessed, Smith.

All the same, the Alberta premier’s quest sounds familiar. An imaginative fantasy about a long, winding ribbon cutting a path through the woods to a magical destination? Come on everybody, follow, follow, follow the yellow brick pipeline.

Smith is proposing a pipeline to some currently unspecified point on the B.C. coast, likely Kitimat or Prince Rupert.

At the moment however, she is understandably annoyed. After all, Dorothy didn’t have to build the yellow brick road. The Wizard had already taken care of that infrastructure project before she arrived. But that was back in the days when wizards were wizards and flying monkeys offered complimentary drinks, free in-flight pretzels and up to 20 kilograms of checked bananas.

These days Premier Dorothy has to threaten the Wizard with Munchkin separatism. “Nice magical realm you got here,” she has basically said to Ottawa. “Shame if somebody were to hold a referendum on it.”

And there are plenty of Alberta Munchkins ready to rally to her banner. They all seem to drive huge pickup trucks, too. Munchkins are always overcompensating.

B.C. Premier David Eby has reacted to Smith’s pitch-black pitch by pointing out that no one is even on board to build this enchanted petro-pathway.

“Right now the premier of B.C. is not a threat to the pipeline project of the premier of Alberta,” Eby said recently, “because there is no pipeline project.”

Pulling back the curtain — how rude. Who is Eby in this story? Tall, slender, relatively green, full of wicked objections, and as about as West as you can get — there’s no doubt what role he plays. Eby is just a pointy hat away from the perfect Alberta Halloween costume. One splash of crude from Smith and he’s an oily puddle.

The Smith-as-Dorothy comparison only goes so far, though. Dorothy, while a confident, bold young adventurer, also knew how to make friends. At no point in the book or film does she threaten to turn the Tin Man into a tomato can or the Cowardly Lion into a rug.

Smith, on the other hand, ripped into Eby as “un-Canadian... parochial... unconstitutional.” Dorothy would not be writing, “Surrender Eby” across the sky. Nor did she catch sight of the Emerald City and muse, “You know, Wiz, what this place needs is a few oil tankers.”

Smith does have one friend. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe supports Smith’s pipeline plan, saying there is no B.C. coast: “It’s Canada’s coast.” Who is Moe in the Oz saga? Saskatchewan, with its vast fields of wheat, seems like the natural home of the Scarecrow. And what was the Scarecrow lacking, again? Dr. Steve can’t recall. Somebody look it up. At any rate, Premier Scarecrow might want to ask his friend Danielle about that whole Canadian unity argument. Apparently it’s conditional.

In Eby’s angry response to Smith’s criticisms, he said “This is not the Danielle Smith show.” Will that prove to be true? Or will she be walking those ruby slippers all over Eby’s political carcass?

“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy said. To which B.C. coastal communities reply, “Amen.”