Poe's Law in real life: Why it might be hard to tell when the Alberta government is serious about policy
CBC
Poe's Law is a 21st-century adage that describes the conundrum of trying to use parody on the internet: unless you hammer your audience over the head with the fact that you're joking, invariably someone will take you seriously.
Poe's Law does not typically apply, however, to high-ranking government ministers appearing on televised interviews.
Nevertheless, Albertans had a hard time figuring out what Finance Minister Nate Horner meant when he appeared on a pair of national political shows on Friday and repeatedly outlined his plans for an eyebrow-raising policy to retrofit Alberta homes with an out-of-date heating technology.
Horner's comments came in response to an accusation from federal Employment Minister Randy Boissonault that Alberta was being irresponsible in its proposal to pull out of the Canada Pension Plan and that Horner wasn't taking his job as finance minister seriously.
Horner turned that comment back on the Liberal MP, attacking his government's three-year pause on the federal carbon tax on home heating oil — a fuel still commonly used to heat homes in Atlantic Canada but almost unheard of in Alberta anymore.
"I heard him say to take my job seriously, and take policy seriously," Horner said on CTV's Power Play.
"So, considering he just said that, an idea just came to me: I'm going to work diligently and quickly to come up with a subsidy for Albertans to convert from natural gas to home heating oil. If that's the last carve-out on the federal carbon tax, I want to make sure that Alberta citizens can enjoy it."
The proposal is impractical, to say the least, in terms of cost, logistics and climate goals.
So impractical that it must be a joke, right?
Right?
If Horner was joking, his second televised appearance on Friday only muddied the waters.
"Something just came to me, and I'll share it with you, too," he told host David Cochrane on CBC's Power & Politics.
"I think Alberta should pursue a subsidy where we will help if Albertans want to convert from natural gas to home heating oil. Maybe we'll help with one-time costs to pursue that."
A bit later in the same interview, Horner went further.
