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[https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-chillin-with-jason-kenneys-miraculous-letter
Chillin' with Jason Kenney's miraculous letter
Rex Murphy
September 13, 2019 4:33 PM EDT
Government communication is mostly a contradiction in terms. Leaders have abandoned anything like straight declarations of their opinions or their policies. They hose their replies to questions with torrents of ambiguity. When not deliberately ambiguous and slippery in reply, they adopt an even more callous manner when faced with questions they cannot furnish with glib reply.
The other recourse for political speech is to set underlings and aides, honed to literary numbness in the best communication studies, to work crafting documents of such monumental dullness and euphemism, pocked with acronyms and gobbledygook, that they are unintelligible to the human mind, an insult to the English language, and otherwise verbally depraved.
Most leaders, and most ministers, avail themselves of these cowardly arts. As we have multiplied the means of communication we have vastly diminished the purpose of communicating; to say what is meant, to be direct in reply, to respect inquiry by meaningful response.
However - and alert readers will have scented this three paragraphs back - a light flickers; out of this Stygian pit of dead English and greasy equivocation comes a singular government communication - a letter from a leader - that says what it means, says it with clarity and force, and even - this may be unlawful in political communications - has some fun in doing so.
I refer to Jason Kenney’s recent reply to a certain confused and apparently under-worked nuisance at Amnesty International Canada. Said nuisance raised the fraught charge that the Alberta government, in setting up a fund to research the voluminous alarms, thunderbolts, lies and slanders that have for three decades now been hurled upon the workers and industry of Canada’s oilsands by huffy NGOs, various self-declared environmentalists and busybodies of the global warming establishment, is violating “human rights.” (The Post has already published Mr. Kenney’s letter and linked to that of A.I.)
Among the many moments of blind amusement in Amnesty International’s cri de’coeur, my favourite is this treasure. It keens that Mr. Kenney’s move will “… cast an incredible chill amongst environmental groups and others in the province …” Well, I should certainly hope so.
First, because that is what it is expressly intended to do, i.e., halt the flood of reckless and unsubstantiated alarmism and obstruction that has hobbled or halted every major initiative in the Alberta oilsands since the dinosaurs did a harakiri or were buried under comet spray.
Second - and this is an “I hope we’re on the same page here” remark - isn’t the production of an “incredible chill” the very goal and ambition of all fervid Save-The-Planeters?
Isn’t an “incredible chill” the sweet and holy dream of the Global Warming Church of Absolutely Everything is Coming to an End in 12 Years Unless We Do Something About the Oilsands Now? And here’s Jason Kenney spending real money to cool down some of the most overheated elements in society, and now … they object! Some people just can’t take Yes for an answer.
I say well done Mr. Kenney - your statesmanship here is even more effective than a carbon tax.
Now to the letter. It’s fun to read. The poor Amnesty stooges who talk of human rights in Alberta - excluding the possible human right to the dignity of a real job - are generously, and accurately knocked by comparison with their putatively more laboured peers dealing with such Edens of human rights as Saudi Arabia, poor, socialist, tottering, toilet-paper-short Venezuela, Iran of the holiday camp jails, and ever welcoming (ask Greenpeace) Russia.
A.I. in those countries may actually have a purpose. But back in smiling, apologetic Canada the best they can attend to are “triggered” social justice warriors of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the David Suzuki Foundation.
Headlines please: “Interns at the World Wildlife Fund are feeling a chill in Alberta hell. Summon the security council. Text the Hague Court. Amnesty worried that for climate activists who want to set up house on a tree branch, or chain themselves to a bulldozer to protest oilsands, Alberta is North Korea with pickups and chinooks.”
As Mr. Conrad, or was it Marlon Brando, so prophetically put it: “The horror! The horror!”
Minor diversion: Where is Canada’s Amnesty during the very real human rights crisis in Toronto? The deep-fried chicken terror. Witnesses horror-struck. One traumatized spectator unveiled the full savagery of the thing when he noted, in a Toronto Star column (italics his): “People are not just going to Chick-fil-A to eat fried chicken. They’re eating fried chicken spitefully.” Terror via mastication. If Amnesty Canada is really looking for a cause, head to Bloor and Yonge in Toronto.
I have not space to cite Mr. Kenney’s billet-doux further. It is, as said, available. And I suggest you tear yourself away from all the wonderful panels and Twitter-bots on the mesmerizing ¾ leaders debate, prime the coffee pot, and enjoy a chuckle and a well-delivered (metaphorical, of course) smack to the side of the head.
A communication from a government that says what it means and means what it says. It is a miracle in our time.
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