Dear Ottawa, listen here. I’m tired. Bone tired of Ottawa treating Alberta’s oil and gas like some communal cookie jar they can rummage through whenever the mood strikes or the Americans start throwing tariffs around. Hands off! That’s the whole sermon. Keep your federal fingers, your clever little export tax schemes, your “national interest” lectures, and your sudden urge to play tough guy with our barrels well away from the patch.We didn’t stumble into this resource. Generations of Albertans built the damn thing. We took the boom-and-bust punches, the price crashes that emptied towns, the environmental lectures from people who heat their homes with the same molecules they pretend to despise. And now, with a trade dispute looming and counter-tariffs scheduled for September, some bright lights in the east, along with some local failed politicians, are suddenly wondering if we should weaponize the one thing that actually keeps the lights on in this country. Spare me.Danielle Smith’s right on this one, even if it makes the usual suspects clutch their pearls. Slapping an export tax on Alberta crude or threatening to throttle volumes heading south isn’t leverage. It’s a self-inflicted wound dressed up as patriotism. The US takes the bulk of what we produce. Cut that off or tax it into oblivion and you’re not hurting Washington first. You’re putting 140,000 Alberta jobs on the chopping block and daring the Americans to retaliate on the pipelines that already snake through their territory or the gas that keeps Ontario warm. That’s not strategy. That’s political sloth.And don’t start with the “it’s Canada’s resource” line. Constitutionally, the resource belongs to the province. That battle was hard-fought and won by Western provinces nearly a century ago, and we aren’t giving it up now. Ottawa’s job was supposed to be facilitating getting our resources to tidewater, so we weren’t hostage to one customer. Instead, we got years of regulatory delay, a tanker ban that treats bitumen like radioactive waste, and an emissions cap that only recently got parked. Now they’re talking about a new West Coast line but remain noncommittal, of course. As if that erases the previous decade of obstruction. Fine. Build the pipe. Capture the carbon. Just don’t turn around and decide our production is a bargaining chip in a tariff war you helped escalate..The hypocrisy is impressive. When prices are high, Alberta is the selfish petro-state that should share more. When prices are low, it becomes Alberta's oil, and nary an equalization dollar comes our way in hard times. Or the Americans get cranky, suddenly we’re supposed to turn off the taps for the greater good. Greater good for whom? The same federation that has happily doled out Eastern equalization cheques funded in no small part by the royalties and taxes this industry generates? We’ve been the cash cow that also gets lectured about its diet. Forgive us if we’re not eager to volunteer for another round of sacrifice.A trade war is messy. Small manufacturers, farmers, and furniture makers in Alberta are already feeling the squeeze. That’s real. Escalating it by playing games with energy flows would be dumber still. The Americans need our oil. Roughly half of their imports come from Canada, and they know it. They’ve left energy off the tariff list so far for a reason. Advertising that we’re willing to choke our own industry to make a point is how you turn a negotiation into a brawl that nobody in this province wins. Much less the rest of the country, which has been consuming the fruits of Alberta’s labour for generations.So, here’s the unvarnished version. Let Alberta develop the resource and sell it at the best price the market will bear. Let us build the infrastructure, so we’re not permanently tied to one buyer, and then leave it the hell alone. No last-minute federal vetoes. No sudden “national security” restrictions. No using Alberta’s payroll as a pressure tactic because some other province wants to look tough. If Ottawa wants to fight a trade war, it can do it with the tools that don’t require us to set our own house on fire first. We’ve spent enough years watching distant politicians treat this province like a problem to be managed rather than a partner that actually produces something the world still wants. The referendum talk didn’t come out of nowhere. Keep treating the oil sands like a political football, and people here will eventually decide they’d rather set the rules themselves. Until then, the message is simple, and getting grumpy: Canada, keep your hands off Alberta’s oil and gas.
