[Editor:  pipeline politics!]

A betting person might reasonably wager that Justin Trudeau will not want to open another front in the pipeline wars between now and the 2019 election. And that probably makes Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, who could be facing an uphill re-election battle in less than two years, a collateral winner of this week's developments.

I simply couldn’t believe Gary Mason in Friday’s Globe and Mail In his article entitled “Sorry Vancouver: The rest of Canada needs pipelines”. I urge you to read the article so that if I misrepresent Mr. Mason you will see it for yourself.

[Editor: We know how this turned out!]

In 2015 Terry Beech won a surprising victory in Burnaby North–Seymour against strong NDP, Conservative, and Green candidates, in part because Justin Trudeau's national campaign energized his team of supporters. 

Another factor was Trudeau's emphasis on his deep North Vancouver roots—his grandfather, James Sinclair, was the MP for nearly two decades. That's why Trudeau made a big deal in TV ads by declaring that he had B.C. in his blood.

OTTAWA - Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr's assertion the police and military will deal with civil disobedience over pipeline projects was "stupid and clumsy," a British Columbia grand chief says.

Stewart Phillip, grand chief of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, says Carr's remarks Wednesday to an audience in Calgary were "stupid, stupid, stupid."

Listen to the full conversation. 

Trudeau’s Orwellian pipeline approval ignores looming threat to our grandchildren.

Justin Trudeau’s approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion was a master class in Orwellian doublethink. On the one hand he claimed wanted a low-carbon, clean future “for our kids;” on the other, he proposed to finance that future by boosting carbon production.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said the federal government holds the constitutional power to force through the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline but that doing so would follow the “misguided position of the Conservatives.”

At the thousands-strong demonstration against Kinder Morgan earlier this month in Vancouver, I lounged in a sailboat in False Creek with kayaktivists swarming around me, looking up under the Cambie Bridge at a very large homemade "NO KINDER MORGAN" banner that my friends had stitched in fishnet.