Jason Kenney takes a Trumpian view of politics

If you want an example of how Donald Trump has changed the business of politics, you need look no further than Alberta's new premier, Jason Kenney. I don't so much mean the flavour of the politics - although Kenney is very much in Trump's populist, nativist, oil-loving, anti-environmental vein - but I mean more the way in which politics is approached.
For example, Mr. Kenney is strongly opposed to the Federal Liberals' proposed Bill C-69, which seeks to shore up the environmental assessment process in the country, and another federal bill which would limit oil tankers along BC's environmentally-sensitive north-west coast. Kenney, like many Albertans, sees both bills as existential threats to the already moribund oil industry in the province and, not wanting to look at alternative industries where the province could excel, he takes the true conservative approach to looking back to past glories (even though the world has moved on), to trying to turn back the clock, to resisting the moving on of the world.
But it is more the way in which he opposes progress that rankles. He may or may not be aware of it, but his immediate response is straight out of the Trump playbook. He responds with bluster, with sturm-und-drang, and with threats. Specifically, he threatens to sue the federal government over the bill (threats to sue are a favourite ploy and a typical modus operandi of Mr. Trump). Moreover, Kenney threatens, in an only slightly veiled way, that Alberta could secede from the country, although that would involve waving goodbye to billions if dollars in health and social transfers from central government (Alberta should have billions saved up from the "good years" of high oil prices, but apparently it doesn't). He also responds with a very Trumpian victim-complex whining about "unfairness", about everything from environmental laws to pipelines to provincial equalization payments,  which is guaranteed to raise the hackles of everyone else, but which seems to play well with his political base.
This kind of histrionic approach seems just so un-Canadian somehow, but it is the same kind of right-wing populist track that Trump has been slogging down for a few years now. It has only brought Trump very limited success - many of Trump's initiatives have been countered by court cases or by Congress - but it has yielded some success. That "success", though, comes at a heavy price, and it is reducing the country to a gibbering basket-case of divisiveness and acrimony. Mr. Kenney (and Doug Ford, who is treading a similarly divisive slash-and-burn path in Ontario) sees it as a way to get what he wants, regardless of the devastation it wreaks along the way.
And, who knows, he may be right. But, God, how annoying it is for the the rest of the country. I get it, he sees himself as standing up for his province in an unfair, dog-eat-dog world. But I will be so glad when this particular phase of populism is over (and, yes, it will pass, as all phases in the roller-coaster that is politics do), and we can return to a more measured and progressive way of looking at things.