Moe-Trudeau Squabbling Reaches New Low

Even by the diminished standards of federalprovincial relations we’ve come to expect in the past few years, this was bad. Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Scott Moe are to blame. That probably isn’t a popular sentiment.

People prefer to blame one side or the otherlargely based on their own political preferences and in this latest bit of drama in which Moe made it publicly known he was outraged over not getting an invite from Trudeau’s office to join him on a tour of Saskatoon’s Vital Metals Inc. last week, it was clearly the Prime Minister who instigated this latest round in what is a very bad relationship.

It was Trudeau’s event; his visit to Saskatoon. As such, it was up to him to issue the invites. Moreover, some of us are old-fashion enough to think that that the senior level of government bears the most responsibility for setting the tone and rising about the petty fray.

After all, a big part of the job is to rise above it all and get along with premiers in all parts of country you are elected to represent. Moreover, immediately extending an invite to Moe to attend would have been the smarter political move when you think about it.

Besides avoiding all the drama, it would have sent a message that Moe was on board with at least part of the green agenda. It’s something that Moe surely couldn’t deny because he is onboard.

No one has been talking more about rare earth minerals and mining lithium needed for batteries than Moe, who in December, went to Washington to promote that very thing.

Asked by reporters why Moe wasn’t extended an invitation, Trudeau offered the condescending and largely dishonest answer that he doubts the “Government of Saskatchewan sees the opportunities that companies, and indeed workers, see in cleaner jobs.”

One might criticize Moe and his Saskatchewan government for not doing enough about the high per capita rate of greenhouse gas emitted by this province, but it’s ludicrous to criticize Moe for not supporting any jobs in this province considered long-term and sustainable.

Really, it was a rather telling comment revealing to whom Trudeau was speaking - to the political audience that is his own base. This stupidity and ensuing criticism was what likely forced the Prime Minister’s Office the next day to issue an apology for neglecting to send an invitation to Moe to the event, but lest one thinks the problem here simply begins and ends with Trudeau, consider Moe’s approach in which seemed very much about relishing another fight with Trudeau.

No, Moe was not hurt that he didn’t get an invitation to spend time with Trudeau. But that might have been his only forthright admission in this whole silly affair that started when Moe, himself, issued tweets, Facebook posts, formal statements feigning his disappointment over not being invite before anyone even knew he wasn’t invited.

If he was truly disappointed in all this and was sincere about wanting to improve this relationship, Moe could have simply privately written or phoned the Prime Minister’s office expressing that this wasn’t helpful, but it was far more politically advantageous for Moe to make a huge public fuss about this; especially given that, this time, he was largely in the right.

Since becoming Saskatchewan Party leader and Premier five years ago in which he warned Trudeau to “just watch me” take Ottawa on the carbon tax, it has been nothing but fighting with Ottawa.

Sometimes, the fighting has been more legitimate - what one would expect in federal-provincial relations, but it’s been fighting usually instigated — and often for no good reason other than partisan purposes.

Fighting over something both sides agree on is surely fighting for no good reason. This is a low.