Saskatchewan Premier Invents The Ethical Potash, Available Exclusively From Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has urged the United States to stop buying "blood potash" from Belarus, a phrase that took the fertiliser industry roughly four seconds to recognise as the greatest branding manoeuvre in the history of crop nutrients.
The argument is not wrong. Belarus is run by a man who has not lost an election in thirty-one years, which is either remarkable popularity or remarkable arithmetic. Its potash moves through sanctions-dodging channels with the enthusiasm of a teenager moving through a side door. Saskatchewan's potash, by contrast, moves through a rail bottleneck near Regina and a quarterly earnings call.
Still, there is something bracing about a premier who spent two years explaining that trade should be free of politics suddenly discovering that some rocks have a moral colour. Potash is potash. It is a grey-pink salt that makes canola grow. It does not know where it came from. It does not have a passport. The premier is asking American buyers to purchase not a mineral but a set of values, priced per tonne, FOB Vancouver.
Washington will consider the appeal carefully, weigh the human rights implications, and then check which option is cheaper after the 10 per cent tariff it put on Canadian goods for reasons nobody has fully written down.
The real test of the doctrine comes later. If "blood potash" catches on, someone will eventually ask about blood aluminium, blood softwood, and blood hydroelectricity, at which point Saskatchewan will explain that the framework applies to competitors only.
Ethical sourcing: a principle so powerful it can be discovered the moment it becomes profitable.