Notley's Refusal to Participate

CBC has reported that Premier Notley of Alberta has backed out of the western premier's meeting this week. She says she is doing so because she needs to monitor Kinder Morgan's end of May deadline. Notley also " said it would be surreal and exceptionally tone deaf for anyone to think we could politely discuss pharmacare and cannabis when one of the players is hard at work trying to choke the economic lifeblood of the province and the country"(CBC).

I appreciate that emotions amongst the premiers may be running a bit high. I can understand why it might feel easier to run away as opposed to trying to work with someone on other issues when you are really pissed off at them. But suck it up children.  You are not the first manager of a large corporation (because that is what premiers are) who is in a serious conflict with a colleague and occasional competitor. Most of us who have been in similar situations have had to attend that meeting and have had to find a way to, at least in the short term, to work together. If I had been able to miss meeting just because I didn't like what a colleague or the government was going to say to me, I could have worked a three day work week. If your job is to advocate on behalf of a group of people (and surely that is part of the premier's job) of course someone is going to disagree with you. Hell, the Prime Minister has historically had to attend meetings of the premiers where at any one time at least half of the provincial premiers are royally pissed off at him.

There are serious issues that the western premiers need to discuss. Some of them may not be resolvable but surely on such issues as pharmacare, the decriminalization of marijuana or universal daycare there is some common ground. If the "leaders" of our provincial governments cannot figure out a way to at the very least be civil to each other that, if nothing else, demonstrates the public's inability to elect mature leaders.  I expect that the leaders within my country should have the capacity to see the big picture, to know how to work with a range of people, some of whom they do not agree with. I expect them to be able to recognize that their colleagues, no matter how misguided or ill-informed they are, do have the best interest of their constituents at heart. Throwing verbal sticks and stones at them, from a distance, strikes me as more than somewhat childish.

While I have some admiration for Notley in terms of some of her environmental decisions (e.g. carbon tax) and at least some sympathy for her limited range of options around oil production when oil is her province's only real income generator, it is hard to respect someone who won't attend a meeting because someone disagrees with her.