Bell: Albertans to Steven Guilbeault

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

The man is gone but he is not forgotten and he should not be forgotten. Ever.

We still feel the anger, the rage.

The ivory tower crowd tries to soften the blow by using the fancy-pants word “alienation.”

Whatever ill will Albertans feel towards the many sins of Liberal Ottawa, and there is a lot of ill will, Guilbeault played a leading role in cooking up the outrage while being more than happy to play the villain in this province.

To some of us, he was known by the nickname he was given in Quebec.

Jesus of Montreal is an award-winning Quebec film and Guilbeault always did cast himself as his own brand of saviour.

But it is one thing to play a saviour when you’re a headline-grabbing activist for Greenpeace on the outside of power looking in, hoping to influence the people who make the calls.

It is quite another if you ever get your hands on power.

Get a hold on power and you can do some real damage.

Yes, your pie-in-the-sky pronouncements may meet the real world and not match up with reality but it does not matter because, with power, you can bend citizens to your will.

Justin Trudeau, when he was prime minister, handed Guilbeault that power.

Guilbeault became Trudeau’s green guru. He was in the inner circle of the sunny ways government.

To many hard-working souls, especially in Alberta, he was despised, reviled, the very opposite of a saviour.

With all his sweet-sounding syllables about saving the planet he was actually destroying people’s worlds.

Working people were collateral damage.

This wasn’t a problem for the likes of Guilbeault because to those individuals who believe they are on a mission their ideas are so much more important than the plight of individuals.

How many revolutionaries have sacrificed the masses in the name of some glorious revolution?

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I met Guilbeault in the Lakeview neighbourhood of Calgary a long time ago when Guilbeault climbed onto the roof of former premier Ralph Klein’s house to install solar panels.

It was a stunt and it was all so cloak and dagger.

Newshounds were told to meet at a nearby shopping centre where we were informed of the Greenpeace plans.

Guilbeault was proud of himself that day, looking so self-righteous.

A couple of young Mormon missionaries walking down the street were so captivated by the spectacle they simply had to take some pictures and ask your scribbler what the circus was all about.

Most Calgarians were angry, Ralph’s wife Colleen was frightened, Ralph was understandably far from amused but Guilbeault got the headline he craved.

He was a man on a mission and it was mission accomplished.

His long-term mission hurt Alberta, really hurt Alberta when he went from stink-disturbing protester to prime minister Justin Trudeau’s appointed guardian of the green gospel.

Whenever an Alberta government politician mentioned Trudeau’s name and talked about Trudeau screwing over Alberta, Guilbeault’s name was not far behind.

The disgust many Albertans feel over the terrible Trudeau years, well, Guilbeault was right there, front and to the left.

He was seen as attacking the very lifeblood of Alberta.

So while those in Ottawa offered up tributes to the man upon his departure from federal politics this past week, it was good riddance here.

Guilbeault’s benefactor Justin Trudeau was gone. It was only a matter of time before Guilbeault made his exit.

With Canadians increasingly mugged by reality and the Canadian economy needing the oilpatch and its earning power now more than ever, the country could no longer even pretend to afford Guilbeault’s fantasies.

His unreal laws, his unworkable regulations, his vision of the long march to a green utopia were strangling development.

These were no longer activist stunts. These were marching orders.

Guilbeault couldn’t resist taking a shot at Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on the way out the door.

The Green Jesus of Montreal was puzzled over why anyone would “put so many eggs in the basket of a premier who has not shown to other provinces and the federal government and Canadians that she can be a reliable partner.”

Guilbeault was particularly miffed at Smith getting an agreement with Prime Minister Mark Carney hopefully leading to a pipeline and increasing oil production, not leaving it in the ground.

But, to add insult to injury, Smith did not cancel a referendum this October which could lead to vote in a few years on whether to leave Canada.

Life moves on. Guilbeault is gone.

What the writers of history make of Guilbeault will no doubt be debated.

Not in a place victimized by this man’s stupid schemes.

But at least the story has a happy ending.

In Alberta, we’ll take the win.