The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Dalton McGuinty, the Premier of Ontario, should not have responded ungraciously to an appeal by Premier Alison Redford of Alberta for solidarity from Ontario and Quebec, in the course of her speech on Friday to the Small Explorers and Producers Association on Friday. In particular, she wants the Premiers of the two Central Canadian provinces to help articulate the importance of the Keystone XL pipeline to the country as a whole.

“If I had my preferences,” said Mr. McGuinty – using the subjunctive mood to express what grammarians call a contrary-to-fact hypothesis – “as to whether we had a rapidly growing oil and gas sector in the West or a lower dollar, I’ll tell you where I stand: with the lower dollar.”

But Mr. McGuinty cannot enforce his preferences. Such exercises of the imagination are futile. There is of course a correlation between the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar and foreign demand for Canadian commodities, and a higher dollar means that Canadian goods – both manufactured products and natural resources – are more expensive.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

TORONTO AND CALGARY— Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s vision of a national Canadian energy strategy has bogged down in an increasingly bitter dispute with Ontario over the economic benefits of the oil sands.

Ms. Redford had suggested Ontario should be a more vocal advocate for oil-sands development, on the grounds that related businesses benefit Ontario’s economy. That met with a rebuff on Monday from Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, who said Canada’s high “petro dollar” has hobbled exporters in his province.

That prompted a sharp rebuke from Ms. Redford. She said Mr. McGuinty’s “simplistic” approach to the oil sands and the Canadian dollar is based on a “false paradigm” and suggested that the leader of the country’s one-time economic powerhouse needs to broaden his outlook.

“When we talk about oil sands, it’s not about what’s in Alberta’s best interests,” Ms. Redford told reporters Monday. “It is about what’s in Canada’s best interests.”

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The Toronto Sun is the city’s daily tabloid newspaper.

QMI Agency

Three years ago, taxpayers were forced to loan $13.7 billion to General Motors and Chrysler because no banks were crazy enough. Some of that taxpayers’ money has been repaid, but $5.5 billion will never be recovered.

Could you imagine if Alberta’s premier had campaigned against that bailout? Or even spoke out against it now? It’s not like the bailout worked, after all.

There are 2,000 fewer jobs at GM today and 800 fewer at Chrysler. As economist Mark Milke points out, the jobs that were “saved” — at least for now, until the next bailout — cost $90,000 each at Chrysler, and $474,000 each at GM. That’s not a typo. Taxpayers spent $474,000 to “save” each job at Government Motors.

What if Alberta’s premier had said: “If I had my preferences as to whether we prop up a failing, obsolete, over-unionized company in the East or lower taxes, I’ll tell you where I stand: With lower taxes.”

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper. Terence Corcoran is the editor and columnist for the Financial Post section of the National Post.

By saying no to Alberta’s oil sands, McGuinty is starting a campaign for Ottawa to bail out Ontario

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, his province in hock up to a looming $400-billion and his political future looking grim, has decided to do what demagogues often do best: take on an extraterritorial foe. If you can’t win at home, maybe you can pretend to destroy some mythical foe thousands of kilometres away. These days, what could be safer for a broke lefty premier who has squandered billions on dead-end green energy projects than to direct attention to Alberta’s oil sands and Alberta Premier Alison Redford.

What Mr. McGuinty is really after here, however, is not the humiliation of Alberta but the transfer of federal cash to Ontario. The oil sands comments are a pretext, another McGuinty McGuffin that is the front for other real motives.

For weeks now, Ms. Redford and key members of her Conservative Cabinet — Energy Minister Ted Morton and Finance Minister Ron Liepert — have been trying to enlist Ontario and other provinces in a campaign to boost the oil sands as part of a Canadian Energy Strategy.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

CALGARY— Supporters of Alberta’s oil sands say Ontario needs to do more to publicly defend the resource, including standing up for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, since its economy is the country’s second-largest beneficiary from the production of the gooey bitumen.

According to Alberta Premier Alison Redford, in Chicago for a few days talking up her province’s oil and gas industry, Quebec also needs to do its part to tell Alberta’s story. This is particularly important, she said, on the issue of the $7-billion pipeline that would link Canada to Texas, a project delayed by the White House.

And the rookie Premier, set to soon visit New York and Washington as well, isn’t alone. Pundits and industry are also calling on the have-not provinces to come to oil-rich Alberta’s aid.

“We in Alberta have a resource that matters to the rest of the country,” Ms. Redford recently told members of the Small Explorers and Producers Association of Canada in Calgary, “It’s not enough for Alberta to be talking about the importance of Keystone in the United States.

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