Not that it will come as much of a surprise to folk here in Alberta, but the United Nations has stuck its well-manicured fingers into the very future of Canada’s major energy projects.

The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — wager there are some juicy expense accounts tied to membership in that saintly crew — is urging Canada to stop work on three major resource projects, including the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, because we haven’t gained approval from affected First Nations folk.

Apparently, the committee is worried construction work is underway without “free, prior and informed consent” involving all those Indigenous groups along the various routes.

Oh boy, this is akin to being stuck on a merry-go-round with some fiendish psychopath at the master switch, grinning gleefully as he spins you endlessly in circles until the very end of time itself. (OK, or until there’s no energy industry left in Canada, which will likely arrive first.)

Let’s face it, there will never be enough consultation, sufficient agreement or, indeed, adequate approval for some group or another.

In our very bones, we know this to be true, as surely as we know the sun indeed rises in the east.

Because at its core this is simply a sly game of pass-the-protest-parcel, aimed at relentlessly keeping the grievance gravy train rolling until everyone involved in these mega-projects simply gives up and walks away, wondering, perhaps, if becoming a Trappist monk might have been a better career choice.

Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage — the best of a somewhat lack-lustre lot gathered around Premier Jason Kenney’s current cabinet table — rightly responded in calling the United Nations an unelected and unaccountable body: therefore, one with no right to criticize our energy megaprojects.

Good for you, Sonya. Yet there’s a problem with being overly harsh towards these UN denizens, striving so hard for global peace and understanding. (Hey, maybe they mouth that old Coke commercial ditty, the one about teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony, before sitting down to an expense account nosh-up at some Big Apple five-star joint?)

So why is such criticism a tad off base? It’s because we invited them in. Yes, we Canadians. Or rather the fellow who represents us: that would be the one known far and wide as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

See, we can be forgiven to have forgotten that we are, in fact, up to our armpits in the committal of genocide. After all, that atrocious condemnation didn’t feature much in the recent federal election campaign.

Oh yes, many of us have managed to let that dramatic episode of virtue signalling by our prime minister slip our busy minds. Certainly, Trudeau hasn’t mentioned the word much lately.

And why would that be? Because it was all flimflam from the prime minister. He couldn’t stop himself. He simply had to agree with the accusation that Canadians are involved in the systematic and deliberate annihilation of Indigenous people across this land.

This conclusion of targeted, race-based slaughter came in the report by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. And, after a brief pause, our prime minister agreed with this wording.

And what happened after that bombshell? Not a darned thing. All the issues facing Indigenous people in Canada were put back on the shelf, all the valid questions about the role of the Indian Act once again shunted down the tracks.

Words, the more dramatic the better (and they don’t come more dramatic than genocide), are what matter to Trudeau. Actions are a completely different matter.

But words do have consequences. And when the leader of a country publicly announces he presides over a population involved in genocide, it’s a condemnation that can’t be washed away, like blackface makeup subjected to a little soap, water and the passage of time.

So why wouldn’t the UN subsequently train their moral big guns on Canada? We asked them to.