David McGuinty sure isn’t helping the Liberal Party in Alberta. The Ontario MP (and brother to Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty) lost his cool yesterday and accused some Conservative MPs of being “shills” for the energy sector in Alberta. In a Commons committee meeting, he basically told all the Tory MPs from Wild Rose Country to get the oil companies’ dicks out of their mouths.

Via Sun News:

“They are national legislators with a national responsibility, but they come across as very, very small-p provincial individuals who are jealously guarding one industrial sector, picking the fossil fuel business and the oilsands business specifically, as one that they’re going to fight to the death for,” said David McGuinty.

McGuinty’s frustrations boiled over after a Tuesday meeting of the Commons natural resources committee looking into energy sector innovation, dismissing the Tories as “shills” for the energy sector who lack national vision.

“They really should go back to Alberta and run either for municipal council in a city that’s deeply affected by the oilsands business or go run for the Alberta legislature,” he said.

Oh snap! If you love oil so much, why don’t you marry it?

On one hand, he’s right about the Conservatives’ zeal for oilsands development. It’s excessive, and maybe you shouldn’t sacrifice every other policy on the slick altar of Big Oil. On the other hand, the last thing anyone from Alberta wants to hear is some namby-pamby Ontario Grit telling them what to do with their natural resources.

On the other other hand (we’re up to three hands now) McGuinty seems to suggest that you shouldn’t defend your own constituency’s interests in Parliament and only think of “the national good” or something. And that’s just stupid. McGuinty is the MP for Ottawa South, not the MP for All of Canada.

The biggest tragedy, of course, is that “go back to Alberta” is all anyone will remember of this incident. Expect every Liberal from now until the 2015 election to have this used as a smear against them. In time, it will lose all context and meaning, just as “not a leader” and “just visiting” became shorthand for “Harper strong! Other guy weak!”

Thanks a lot, David McGuinty. Thanks for preemptively reducing the 2015 election campaign to a single slogan.

UPDATE: That was fast. Only a day after he made his remarks, David McGuinty has resigned as his party’s natural resources critic. Looks like Ontario and Quebec are the only provinces a guy can disparage anymore without getting sacked.