Some people in the oil industry just don't get it

We know the oil and gas industry in Alberta is suffering right now. We know that Alberta's energy-related businesses and their thousands of employees will need the goodwill and co-operation of government to turn things around.

So how would you go about achieving that? By placing a cutout photo of premier Rachel Notley as a fairway target at an oilmen's golf tournament and inviting people to take shots at her? Probably not a great starting point.

I mean, doing that is not illegal, right? We have freedom of speech here; we're not living in a totally communist regime here, are we? No, just a civil society, where the thread of civility is wearing thin.

And so Ernest Bothi, president of the the Brooks Big Country Oilmen's Association, honestly believes he has no reason to feel sorry for symbolically inviting violence against the Alberta premier.

He told reporters he would apologize to the premier as a person for this stupid and tasteless stunt, but not as a premier. One wonders if he actually tried to do that personally.

Bothi spent a lot of time with reporters defending his decision to place the target on the fairway at the golf tournament, but no time at all reflecting on the consequences.

“A lot of good people have invested their entire life into this industry and for what?” he said. “So that a government can strip it away from us?”

I haven't heard that the government was planning to nationalize the energy industry in Alberta, have you? I hadn't heard that the NDP was responsible for the overproduction and glut of oil on the international market leading to the price crash, had you?

Rather, I see the government doing everything it can to see that major pipeline projects are approved, to allow more Alberta bitumen and gas reach more markets. Part of that effort is to try to scrub the label of “dirty oil” off the Alberta brand, so that more buyers will accept it.

Is that the part that Bothi objects to? If so, he should be more clear.

“I just read online that her carbon tax is going to cost billions,” he said. Now there's a good reason to dehumanize our elected officials.

Let's try to help Bothi out here. The carbon tax has a variety of integrated goals, one of which is to get at least one of the proposed major pipelines built, so that people like Bothi can get back to their million-dollar profits. In this regard, I would think the government is the oilman's friend right now.

The best bet for a lot of highly-skilled former oilworkers to get a job again within our province is for the carbon tax to seed research and development in new technologies, beyond mining and processing ever-growing daily bitumen production levels.

When even the Saudis are actively retreating from the oil business, you'd have to think that, finally, Alberta might have to diversify its economy as well.

If people like Ernest Bothi want to be a part of that, they'd better start treating the government as a partner, not an enemy.

The world is what the world is. We've had too much airing of grievances in our politics today, and not enough educated people coming together to look for for solutions.

Oilmen are supposed to be pragmatists, realists, adapters. So act like them, not like junior-high dropouts.

The future ain't what it used to be, if you want to quote Yogi Berra. Whether you prepare for it or not, the future will come. In the eyes of many, that future includes oil and gas, but less of it in the mix of energy that will be sold on world markets. A global market, by the way, worth trillions of dollars.

Does crying that the dinosaurs are dying make them live longer?

When you depersonalize our leadership, make them symbolic targets, some jerk is going to conclude it's OK to make them real targets. How far is it from launching a golf ball at the face of the Alberta premier, to the shooting death of British MP Jo Cox, as a political statement?

Premier Notley has gotten too many death threats in the past year to allow making her face a golf course target into something funny. Or into something acceptable as free speech at an industry golf tournament.

News reports have it that although the target was out there in the open fairway, none of the participants was able to hit the mark. Maybe that's symbolic, too.