Hostage-takers rarely endear themselves to their targets. During its reign as a danger to Confederation, Quebec won many concessions by regularly brandishing the threat of separation, but succeeded also in isolating itself while earning the enmity and resentment of much of the country.
Fortunately, those ugly years are fading with the decline of the Parti Québécois and its aging adherents. In its place we have British Columbia’s new hardline Green-NDP alliance with its intense focus on its narrow agenda, and dismissive approach to the interests of its neighbours and fellow Canadians.
The recent B.C. election left the Greens and New Democrats able to cobble together a wobbly alliance with a single-seat advantage over the Liberal government. NDP leader John Horgan and Green leader Andrew Weaver — the latter boasting just three of the 87 seats in the legislature — quickly reached a deal predicated on a radical reworking of the economy, with particular emphasis on opposition to energy projects of national importance.
It sets them up as not only a thorn in the side of the federal government, which has already approved the Kinder Morgan pipeline, but also a threat to the country’s energy industry as a whole.
Alberta, with its crucial oil economy, is landlocked and struggling to gain access to ports that would enable it to reduce its reliance on the U.S., where President Donald Trump’s anti-free-trade rhetoric has sparked concern across a global economy in which easy access to foreign markets has become the backbone to prosperity.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-ndp-green-coalitions-insularity-echoes-parti-quebecois-narrow-and-parochial-mindset