Canada’s week of oil pipeline talk and how we can all help to rid our country of Scott Moe

There has been a bit of a situation here in Canada over the past week involving provincial governments, the federal government, oil pipelines and a boatload of mischief about what is and isn’t the right way to do things.

First, the federal government and the province of Alberta made a memorandum of understanding that intends to help clear the way to build an oil pipeline to the west coast of Canada despite not talking to the province of BC through which the pipeline will travel, nor the First Nations along the route. They did this the week after COP 30. They are proposing to build a port to ship oil by tanker through one of the most dangerous bodies of water in the world in contravention of a moratorium on tanker traffic that has been in place since 1972.

In response to this, cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault resigned. He was the architect of much of Canada’s current environmental policy.

And then good old Scott Moe, the premier of Saskatchewan weighed in saying that the west coast was Canada’s coast, not BC’s coast. He is famous for using our Constitution’s “one weird trick for suspending human rights” – the notwithstanding clause – to deny trans and queer kids their fundamental right to freedom of expression. Conservatives love using that clause to suppress the rights of others.

So I thought it would be fun to figure out how we can make the next Saskatchewan election a “Canadian election.” It turns out out that Saskatchewan has strange campaign and party finance rules. Anyone from anywhere can donate to unseat Scott Moe’s party of cruel and anti-democratic despots.

So that’s what I learned today. The people of Canada’s west coast are free to donate to the NDP in the next Saskatchewan election. That gives me more freedom that the citizens of Scott Moe’s own province some of whose fundamental rights are currently suspended.

That’ll be fun to be involved in.