The rail blockades were but the freshest link in a long-forged chain intended to strangle Canada’s oil and gas industry
What is the lifespan of a political promise? Somewhere between that of a mayfly and the length of a fog-free interval in Placentia Bay (the latter purely an imaginary construct. P.B. is never fog-free).
A political promise is extremely fragile and highly unstable, however buttressed by invocations of the highest integrity and truth in the moment it is being made. Within the flit of that mayfly’s evanescent wings, it is discarded and gone, as the politician’s whim directs him.
We normally don’t receive these promises with “a grain of salt.” We call in the winter salt truck and dump the whole load on whatever pledge or promise a mayor, premier or PM has offered as a given day’s electoral bait. We laugh at political promises — “political promise” is one of those joke oxymorons like “giant shrimp” or a “green economy.”
The biggest joke of a political promise is one that extends, and extends far beyond, the life of the government making it. Do we invest any credence whatsoever in a promise whose fulfillment is a certain decade beyond the tenure of the office holder? Or, say, 70 years down the road?
In only one area do we, and that is involving the wonderfully grand, vague and hazy pledges about our gaseous atmospheric emissions, themselves predicated on the industrial-strength scare tactics and panic-button politics of climate-change fanatics and the missionaries of always impending climate Armageddon.
For the rest of this column: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-with-buffetts-exit-those-behind-the-real-energy-blockade-can-claim-success