Alberta’s Throne Speech may have included few blockbuster announcements yesterday, but its overall tone is surely a breath of fresh air.  Partnerships, reaching out, inclusion, teamwork, helping others in Alberta, Canada and beyond … all 12 pages of the Speech resonate with a new collaborative spirit that reflects well on Premier Redford and her leadership style.

Perhaps one of the clearest expressions of the new approach comes at pages 6 and 7:

Albertans expect government to work together on their behalf and your government will not let you down. … A Canadian Energy Strategy will play a major role in this effort. Energy is critical to our prosperity, but Alberta must diversify its customer base to achieve the greatest returns. Your government will actively design initiatives to access global markets and assist Canadians and our trading partners in understanding Alberta’s energy goals. The infrastructure necessary to get our resources to new markets must cross other jurisdictions, so any expansion will involve various partners at the provincial, national and international levels. The more we work together to coordinate our efforts, the greater our success and the more prosperity for everyone involved.     

 I would love to see this -- some real efforts at cooperations, transparency, accountability.  All of those lovely buzz words.

Most recently I attended a kids' movie (Happy Feet II), which features global warming (polar ice caps melting) as a central theme in the film.  There was also a clearly strong pro-environmental message in the film.  

Rather cynically, I felt, the Alberta government had a campaign, it seemed, to counter these messages.  

They had commercials air before the film (a kids' film) spouting how clean the oil sands are, then after the film, all the kiddies were given plush toy balls with Alberta promotion embossed on them.

This is exactly the kind of slick, expensive spin campaign that is giving Albert a negative image, when they need it least of all.  

I hope for great things with Redford.  Not just Canada, but the whole world, truly, is watching now.