Carbon Tax Archives - Alberta Views

Creating a Buzz

Doug Firby — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:00:34 +0000

It was a frosty winter day, but Calgary supply chain specialist Dave Acquah was steaming. “I just renewed my auto registration for 2026,” he fumed on the Tesla Owners Club of Alberta Facebook page. “$300 total ($200 EV tax). I need someone to put me in a pile of snow for 5 hrs to cool my body temperature down. That electric vehicle tax.”

Acquah, who bought a 2024 Tesla Model Y, shares a frustration many owners of electric vehicles (EVs) in Alberta feel: they live in one of only two provinces in the country—the other is Saskatchewan—in which you’re taxed for simply owning a zero-emissions vehicle.

It’s not so much the existence of the tax that annoys Acquah and other EV owners. Instead, they say it’s a symptom of a larger anti-electric-car attitude in Alberta’s UCP government, which is actively stifling local EV adoption. The effort is marked by heated rhetoric by conservatives who see the vehicles as part of a Liberal anti-oil conspiracy. Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, for example, once claimed an EV sales mandate would be akin to “banning the rural way of life.” Danielle Smith called federal EV adoption targets “environmental extremism.”

But if the UCP is hostile to EVs, they’re swimming against a global tide. One in four new cars sold around the world in 2025 were electric. Some 20 million EVs were sold globally that year. In China fully half of new cars are EVs. Alberta lags far behind not only that rate but even other Canadian provinces. BC has 195,000 registered EVs on the road, for example, nearly 10 times Alberta’s meagre total of 20,000.

EVs remain polarizing in Alberta, says Andrew Batiuk, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Alberta (EVAA), where they pit environmentalists and tech fans against supporters of oil and gas who perceive a threat to the province’s economy. As the naysayers see it, the more EVs there are, the less fossil fuel that gets burned. And that’s a sore spot for Albertans who rely on oil and gas for their livelihoods. That’s partly why the province aggressively opposed the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard—the so-called EV sales mandate—that Justin Trudeau’s government introduced in December 2023 to reduce air pollution and fight climate change. Prime Minister Mark Carney has since cancelled the mandate.

Opponents aren’t wrong that the cars reduce the world’s demand for oil. It’s estimated that EVs already displace somewhere between 1.3 and 1.8 million barrels per day of oil consumption. That’s a fraction of the over 100 million barrels of oil currently being burned daily. Nonetheless, the trend has been noticed in the oil industry, which provides 144,000 jobs in Alberta. It also threatens a government that relies on that industry. Alberta is projecting $13.2-billion in non-renewable resource revenues in 2026/2027, 18 per cent of its total revenue.

All of this biases our government against EVs. Premier Smith has even gone so far as to aggressively promote the production of so-called blue hydrogen from natural gas for use in hydrogen-powered vehicles. Across the world, sales of these rivals to EVs are faltering. The cars are virtually absent from Alberta. The province’s only public hydrogen refuelling station, at Blackjacks Roadhouse in Nisku, which Smith’s government helped fund, closed down permanently in early 2025.

The economic impact of oil and gas gives the industry an outsized influence on provincial policy. Charges Daniel Breton, president of Electric Mobility Canada: “I see the premier of Alberta more or less as a puppet of the oil and gas industry, and her government as well.”

But for all of this hostility, EVs may yet prevail—even in Alberta.

Anti-EV campaigners often draw on outdated anecdotes and at times deliberate misinformation. One favourite claim is that EVs—with their multiple battery packs—are worse for the environment than gas-powered vehicles. Initially, an EV does indeed have a higher carbon footprint, Batiuk says. Making the batteries is energy intensive and requires rare-earth minerals. But the gap with gas-powered vehicles evens out within one to two years of ownership, depending on distance driven. After that, the carbon footprint of an EV becomes substantially smaller, especially since Alberta has converted its electricity generation from primarily coal-fired plants to natural gas, solar and wind.

The EVs-are-worse argument has been debunked by no less than the Trump-era Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose website announces: “FACT: Electric vehicles typically have a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline cars, even when accounting for the electricity used for charging, plus they are far more efficient when it comes to energy use.”

Other biases are almost comical. Angie Dean, president of the Tesla Owners Club of Alberta, says someone once asked her if it was OK to wash her electric car.

Ironically, the people who make and sell EVs don’t always help. “Misinformation is a huge problem, even when it comes to car manufacturers,” says Electric Mobility’s Breton. He argues some manufacturers are “spreading crap” about EVs—even their own models—because they don’t particularly want to build the vehicles, or are frustrated by “unrealistic” government EV sales mandates. The “green halo” effect of having an EV in, say, Ford’s lineup might be good for the company’s marketing image. But EVs are costlier to make, and many, such as the F-150 Lightning, are sold at a loss. (Ford recently announced it is ending production of the truck.)

Anti-EV campaigners often draw on outdated anecdotes and deliberate misinformation.

Dealers sometimes discourage buyers from choosing EVs. Doug Green, dealer principal of High Country Chevrolet Buick GMC in High River, says he invested $250,000 in equipment upgrades at the dealership to service EVs at the urging of GM, but he has sold only three of the vehicles, at a net loss of $10,000. “I was so happy to be rid of those,” he says. He also paid $6,000 to ship three additional unsold EVs to dealers in Quebec. Green says one customer in town bought a Blazer EV, only to discover she’d have to shell out $3,000 to install curbside charging from her duplex, which doesn’t have a garage. “She was unprepared,” Green said. Meanwhile, he says, the only public EV-charging station in town was out of commission. Chargers have since been added at the Ford and Chrysler dealerships.

Angie Dean wasn’t surprised to hear of the GMC dealer’s attitude. “I’ve heard so many stories from people who have gone into car dealerships and been excited about an electric car and [are told], ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me show you this gas car here.’”

And then there’s the myth that EVs don’t work in cold weather. Green claims an electric SUV with a rated 500-km range is really only capable of travelling 300 km, because you shouldn’t fully charge the battery. And, he contends, it will suffer dramatic power losses in the cold. “If you drive in the wintertime, and you put winter tires on, then it’s going to go in half,” he says. “If it’s cold out, then it’s going to go in half again, and if there’s snow then it’s going to go in half again.”

Dean scoffs at Green’s doomerism. She said her Tesla Model Y might lose 40 per cent of its range when the temperature hits minus 40, but that’s “extremely uncommon.” In Calgary’s more typical winter temperatures, she says she sees an estimated 15–20 per cent loss of range. Yet some people just don’t believe her. She recalls an incident in February 2025 when she parked at a local Home Depot. “This guy walks up to me and says, ‘You know those things don’t work here in the winter.’ And I was, like, I’m right here! Do you think I just pushed the car here?”

Dean’s experience reflects research by Recurrent, a US-based organization that tracks EV performance. The study, conducted during the winter of 2025–26, analyzed data from more than 30,000 vehicles across 34 models from 13 automakers. Although performance varied by make, the study found that EVs maintain on average around 80 per cent of their rated range in freezing conditions.

Meanwhile an underreported fact is that gas-powered cars are likewise less efficient in colder weather. The EPA estimates that a drop in temperature from 24°C to 7°C can increase gas consumption by 12–28 per cent. And EVs actually start more reliably than gas cars do in the winter, because they aren’t affected by cold-sensitive oil and have no sparkplugs, which are especially susceptible to low temperatures.

Even when people appeal to facts to disparage EVs, their assertions are often only half true. The UCP government claims, for example, that electric vehicles do more damage to roads than gas-powered cars do, because they’re heavier. An EV does tend to weigh more than its internal combustion engine equivalent—perhaps 10–15 per cent more. But as Breton notes, EVs are lighter than the giant pickup trucks so common in Alberta, and the province isn’t levying a special tax on pickups. “Alberta and Saskatchewan are both taxing EVs under some dubious excuse,” Breton says. “It has a lot more to do with politics than facts.”

Horner, the Alberta finance minister, also justified the $200 tax when he introduced it in February 2025 as a way to offset revenue lost by drivers who don’t buy gasoline or diesel, which is taxed by the province. But Breton questions why the flat rate is disproportionately high. Albertans, on average, drive 15,200 km per year, consuming 1,216 litres of fuel in a typical mid-sized vehicle. Under the province’s current fuel tax of 13 cents per litre, that would translate into $158 in road taxes—21 per cent less than what EV owners must fork over. Says the EVAA’s Andrew Batiuk: “It seems punitive.”

In an emailed statement, Horner claims the tax is “fair” and states: “Alberta’s tax on electric vehicles is in line with what drivers of a typical internal combustion engine vehicle pay in fuel tax annually.” EV proponents find such stonewalling typical. Batiuk says his organization just can’t get the ear of government: “We don’t have much of a relationship with them.”

And if Alberta’s government were truly interested in a full accounting of the costs and benefits of EVs vs. traditional vehicles, it would consider other facts. Pollution from gas- and diesel-fuelled cars and trucks is killing people. A March 2022 federal report analyzed data from 2015 and found that 1,200 Canadians, including 82 Albertans, died prematurely that year from the effects of pollution from cars and trucks. Another 2.7 million people suffered from acute respiratory symptoms. Breton argues considerations such as marginally higher EV weight need to be weighed against the $9.5-billion annual health cost to Canadians from gas-powered vehicle pollution.

Horner’s statement dismissed pollution and health concerns. “Alberta has some of the cleanest air in Canada and the world, and that isn’t changing,” it read. “Our transportation emissions have declined 12 per cent since 2015 and will keep falling.”

But the main barrier to EV adoption in this province isn’t special punitive taxes, uninterested EV dealers or disinformation. Alberta drivers won’t fully embrace EVs until there are enough public chargers available across the province to ease so-called “range anxiety”—the fear that one’s car battery will deplete far from home. Similarly, the extent of the local charging network affects whether or not we will attract EV-driving tourists from places like BC, says Danielle Wiess, director of transportation initiatives at the Fernie-based Community Energy Association. “EV drivers go where they can charge.”

But the UCP government is offering no help to expand Alberta’s charging network. The province had 429 EV charging stations in December 2025. That’s just 6 per cent of the 7,000 chargers found in BC, which has 5.7 million residents versus Alberta’s five million.

In 2020 the Community Energy Association managed the Peaks to Prairies charging network, which connected communities from Canmore to Medicine Hat and south to the US border. Working with local municipalities, ATCO installed 20 direct-current fast-charging sites across southern Alberta. The $1.2-million contribution from the then-NDP government was the last time Alberta has funded any EV charging infrastructure, says Wiess.

Charging one’s EV at home also remains a vexing problem for Alberta’s renters and condo dwellers. Provincial building codes don’t require EV charging capacity to be added to new multi-unit residential buildings—condos and high-rise apartments. “We’re still building condos and apartments without charging infrastructure considered,” says the EVAA’s Batiuk. “At [a single-family] home, you can plug in an EV. But when you live in a condo or apartment, you don’t have the option to charge at home. Selling that person an EV is a more difficult task.”

The situation is even more challenging in rural areas that lack the fast EV chargers found in the Peaks to Prairies network. “If I have a boat to pull to a lake, and I pull it to Little Bow Provincial Park, there’s no chargers down there,” says Green, the GMC dealer.

Under a joint federal/municipal program, incentives cover up to nearly half the cost of installing chargers at businesses, condos, Indigenous communities, public facilities and not-for-profit organizations. But remote communities that install such infrastructure can encounter sticker shock just to keep their chargers operating. In December 2025 a City of Cold Lake committee reported that it would need to quadruple the rate the city offers at its city-owned EV charger. Wiess says Level 3 (also known as DC fast) chargers incur high demand costs if they’re used infrequently.

Alberta is also at odds with provinces that have created incentives to purchase EVs. BC offered rebates of $4,000 to buyers of electric vehicles but scrapped the program in May 2025 under budget pressure. Before the program ended, zero-emission vehicles accounted for almost one in four new vehicles sold in BC. In 2025 BC registered almost as many EVs in just its fourth quarter as Alberta’s overall number of EVs. (Alberta and Newfoundland are the only provinces that don’t provide Statistics Canada with data on new EV registrations. They only report total registered EVs.) Quebec, with a population of nine million, has even bigger incentives than BC did, and registered 82,700 EVs in 2025.

The feds announced in January they will allow 49,000 Chinese EVs into Canada. Previously tariffs made these prohibitive.

The ingrained resistance to EVs in Alberta manifests in some of the most unlikely places. Batiuk discovered that the owners of Ol’ MacDonald’s Resort and Campground, on Buffalo Lake about an hour northeast of Red Deer, imposed a $60/night EV surcharge in 2024. A notice on the resort’s website stated its “electricity etiquette” rule is “a small price to pay to ensure the fair and sustainable use of these shared resources.” (The Alberta Motor Association reports that the typical cost to charge an EV in Alberta ranges from free—at roughly half of Calgary’s public charging stations—to $15 at fast-charging sites such as those in the Peaks to Prairies network.)

Messages left at the resort for listed owner Jean MacDonald were not returned. “We [also] tried to talk to them,” says Batiuk, “and they weren’t interested in talking to us.”

But EV advocates such as Batiuk, Dean and Breton believe EVs will eventually prevail—including in Alberta. The federal government recently committed $1.5-billion to expand Canada’s public EV charging network, so essential to driving the vehicles any distance, especially rurally. Mark Carney’s government also announced in January 2026 that it will allow 49,000 Chinese EVs into the country at a nominal 6.1 per cent tariff rate. Previously a 100 per cent tariff had made the cost of these cars prohibitive. Even premier Smith had called for Carney to drop the tariff and let Chinese EVs in—if only because she hoped it would enable Albertans to sell more canola and pork in China.

Major Chinese manufacturers such as Chery and Geely are preparing to enter the Canadian market. BYD, which in 2025 surpassed Tesla to become the world’s largest EV maker, plans to open 20 dealerships in Canada, first in Toronto, then in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

Those Chinese EVs may comprise just a fraction of the 1.8 million vehicles sold in Canada each year. But more significantly, federal EV incentives are being restored. Sales of EVs across Canada dropped by nearly one-third last year as provincial and federal incentives ended. In February of this year Carney introduced a new, $2.3-billion, five-year program that offers individuals or businesses up to $5,000 to purchase various types of EVs. At the time, the prime minister predicted EVs will reach 75 per cent market share in Canada by 2035 and 90 per cent by 2040.

By the time the federal incentives end in five years, Breton says, they may be unnecessary. This is a point on which EV advocate Breton and EV skeptic Green agree. “I’m not asking for special treatment,” says Breton. “Just don’t stand in the way of progress.” “I’m always interested in change,” says Green. “Just let the free market decide.”

Dean, a planner with the City of Calgary, says she sees beyond the personal benefits of driving an EV. She believes she’s helping future generations, and every effort counts. Someone once told her, “Your one electric car isn’t going to do anything,” she says. “And I replied, ‘But it’s what I can do. If I can do something, I’m going to do it.’ ”

Doug Firby has over four decades of experience in newspapers, including at the Calgary Herald. He’s now president of Troy Media.

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Should Canada Cap Oil and Gas Emissions?

Aly Hyder Ali and Heather Exner-Pirot — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 10:00:34 +0000

Aly Hyder Ali says YES

Program Manager, Oil and Gas, at Environmental Defence

Canada is running out of time to meet its climate goals, and the biggest obstacle standing in the way is unchecked pollution from the oil and gas industry. Despite being responsible for nearly a third of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the oil and gas industry has made little effort to meaningfully reduce its carbon footprint. While other sectors have reduced theirs, oil and gas emissions have risen by roughly 80 per cent since 1990. The solution is clear: Canada needs a strong, enforceable emissions cap on the oil and gas industry—one that ensures real reductions, not more delay.

The global energy transition is accelerating. According to the International Energy Agency, demand for oil and gas will peak this decade, then decline. Other countries are ramping up investments in renewables, electric vehicles and clean technology. If Canada continues to lean on an emissions-intensive, high-cost, fossil-based economy, we’ll be left behind. An emissions cap would send a clear message that we’re serious about transitioning to a clean, future-ready economy. It would drive innovation, create opportunities in renewable energy and reduce the risk of stranded assets.

But this isn’t just about future markets; it’s about protecting Canadians right now. Pollution from fossil fuels is linked to thousands of deaths each year and contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Communities near oil and gas facilities face higher risks of exposure to toxic pollutants. Wildfires, droughts and floods—driven by rising temperatures—have become a costly reality across Canada. Cutting oil and gas emissions is a direct investment in public health and safety.

Then there’s the climate responsibility. Canada can’t meet its GHG emissions reduction targets without addressing its largest source of pollution: the oil and gas industry. Voluntary measures from the sector have been largely non-existent. Companies have spent millions of dollars to talk a good game, but data tells us a different story. Investments in decarbonization remain a fraction of what’s needed, while capital spending continues to expand fossil fuel operations. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies in Canada are actively lobbying against climate regulations, all while recording massive profits.

A cap isn’t about punishing the oil and gas industry. It’s about fairness and responsibility and building the kind of nation we want to be. We need to invest in a healthier, sustainable future, not cling to outdated, polluting systems that benefit the few at the cost of the many. Every sector must do its part. Canadian households are already adapting to reduce their carbon footprint. It’s time Canada’s biggest polluters followed suit to help build a stronger, cleaner and more equitable country.

We can’t afford more delays. This is a pivotal moment for climate leadership and for real nation-building. For the health of our economy, our environment and future generations, it is time to make the emissions cap a reality.

heather exner-pirot says no

Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Director of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment

Greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change, and it’s in our self-interest to reduce them. By doing so we would also improve air and water quality. I’m for reducing emissions. But the question is whether Canada should cap oil and gas emissions. I say no, and the main reason is that oil and gas isn’t under Canada’s jurisdiction; it’s under Alberta’s.

Section 92A(1) of the Constitution Act affirms that provinces have the “exclusive” ability to make laws for the “development, conservation and management” of non-renewable natural resources. This was tested with the Supreme Court’s October 2023 ruling in Reference re: Impact Assessment Act. The majority identified that the federal government’s broad scope of “effects within federal jurisdiction” under the IAA would allow them to deny projects solely based on their GHG emissions. They determined that this eroded the balance inherent in the Canadian federal state and was unconstitutional.

Indeed, Alberta has already exercised its jurisdiction on this issue and does have a cap on its oil sands emissions. It passed legislation in 2017, under the Notley government, and limits total oil sands emissions to 100 megatonnes (MT) annually. Currently the oil sands emit about 80.1 MT, and there is no foreseeable future where they would exceed that cap. Emissions intensity—the amount of CO₂e per barrel produced—has declined in the oil sands for six straight years.

So, Canada has no jurisdiction to cap oil and gas emissions, and Alberta has already capped its oil sands emissions. This should be the end of the debate. It’s not, however, because the federal government has expressed its intention to impose an emissions cap on Canadian oil and gas and has proposed draft regulations to that effect. These would be a disaster on every front: economically, politically, legally and technically.

It would be hard to imagine a more expensive or divisive policy. The regulations are a relic of Trudeau-era ideology rejected in the 2025 election. They wouldn’t just cut emissions but would cut production too: of oil sands oil, conventional oil, natural gas and liquids such as propane. They would result in less investment, fewer jobs, a diminishment of royalties and corporate taxes, no new LNG terminals, no new pipelines, no Atlantic offshore development and no new export markets. Just the threat of them has already harmed the economy.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer determined that the cost of the emissions cap to Canada’s GDP would be $20.5-billion by 2032 and that the cap would cut 7.1 megatonnes of GHGs. That’s an implied carbon price of $2,887 per tonne. Prime minister Mark Carney “axed” the consumer carbon tax of $80 per tonne. If our goal is to cut emissions, it could be done more cheaply by means other than an oil and gas emissions cap.

Canadians want to build infrastructure, grow the economy and diversify trade. No policy threatens this more than the proposed emissions cap does. It needs to be quashed, for good.

Aly Hyder Ali responds to Heather Exner-Pirot

Heather Exner-Pirot argues that Canada should not cap oil and gas emissions, citing constitutional overreach, economic harm and lack of necessity. But closer scrutiny shows these claims don’t hold. The oil and gas sector is Canada’s largest source of climate pollution, its voluntary emissions reduction methods have failed, and a federal cap is both legally justified and economically necessary.

Exner-Pirot references provincial powers under Section 92A of the Constitution and the 2023 Impact Assessment case. But this misrepresents the scope of federal powers. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the federal government has authority over matters of “national concern.” GHG emissions are transboundary pollutants, which means that what Alberta emits affects Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces. The 2021 Supreme Court reference case on carbon pricing explicitly upheld Ottawa’s right to regulate GHG emissions, calling this a national concern. A federal cap on oil and gas emissions targets pollution, not resource extraction, making it constitutional.

Yes, the oil and gas industry has made some progress in reducing emissions intensity. But total oil and gas emissions continue to be Canada’s largest source of climate pollution. Since 2005 oil and gas emissions have increased significantly, even as other sectors have shrunk theirs.

Exner-Pirot also foresees job losses and GDP decline under an oil and gas emissions cap. But global markets are already shifting: the International Energy Agency projects global demand for fossil fuels will peak this decade. Supporting fossil fuel expansion is bad for the environment and economically irresponsible. Conversely, clean energy investments are surging worldwide.

She also highlights the cost per tonne of reductions but ignores the massive economic and health damages tied to climate inaction. Climate disasters are increasingly expensive: 2024 was the costliest year for severe-weather-related insurance losses in Canadian history, at over $8-billion. And this is only expected to get worse, as 2025 is already our second-worst wildfire season ever. Furthermore, the Canadian Climate Institute estimates that climate impacts will reduce Canada’s GDP by $25-billion starting this year. The damage will only spread if we ignore climate change.

Oil and gas is Canada’s largest source of climate pollution, and voluntary emissions reduction methods have failed.

The health costs too are staggering. Air pollution from fossil fuels causes an estimated 34,000 premature deaths annually in Canada, with direct economic and societal consequences. Additionally, a recent study published in the journal Science shows that air pollution from the Athabasca oil sands may be up to 6,300 per cent higher than industry-reported figures. This pollution would rival all other human-made sources in Canada combined, and it raises dire health concerns for nearby communities.

The harms of oil and gas emissions aren’t evenly distributed. Air pollution disproportionally affects communities—particularly Indigenous, racialized and low-income—that are closest to industrial sites or lack resources to protect themselves. Indigenous communities near the oil sands face higher rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses linked to industrial emissions.

A cap is not an extra burden. It’s risk mitigation and protection for public health and the economy.

Exner-Pirot says an oil and gas emissions cap would be divisive. But depending solely on households and small businesses to shoulder Canada’s emissions-mitigation burden while oil and gas companies continue to pump out vast amounts of pollution with no accountability is inequitable. Rather than divisive, an oil and gas emissions cap would share responsibility fairly. It would ensure that industry’s operations align with national and international climate goals. If industry were to support a cap, they would show they’re serious about reducing emissions. This would send clear signals to investors, workers and communities that a smooth, fair transition is possible—rather than a chaotic collapse.

Exner-Pirot calls a cap unconstitutional, economically damaging and unnecessary. But constitutionality is established by a Supreme Court ruling. An early transition is far more economically prudent than clinging to fossil-fuel dependence, as renewables offer stronger long-term returns and avoid risk of stranding assets. Emissions data contradict the promise of voluntary emissions reduction from the oil and gas industry. And the health and environmental costs of delay are crippling, with climate disasters and pollution already exacting a heavy toll.

Canada promised in 2021 to cap oil and gas emissions. Fulfilling that commitment is not about ideology but about survival. Implementing an enforceable federal cap is about safeguarding our climate, economy and communities. It is time to deliver on that promise.

Heather Exner-Pirot responds to Aly Hyder Ali

What’s the case for capping oil and gas emissions According to Aly Hyder Ali, it boils down to some tried and true environmentalist warnings: we can’t meet our Paris Agreement commitments without a cap; companies won’t reduce emissions without a cap; and we’ll be left behind in the energy transition if we don’t do it.

I’ll grant him that our efforts to meet the Paris goal are all but certain to fail. That doesn’t preoccupy me much. For those people who still prioritize that goal, however, I reiterate it could be achieved at less cost to the Canadian economy than through imposing an emissions cap.

Hyder Ali argues that “the oil and gas industry has made little effort to meaningfully reduce its carbon footprint” and that “emissions have risen by roughly 80 per cent since 1990.” The first point is demonstrably false, and the second is a red herring.

Emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector peaked in 2015, even though we’ve added over a million and a half barrels of production since then. How was this accomplished Through industry’s sincere efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, including through methane capture, electrification and efficiency measures.

Emissions intensity per barrel in Canada has decreased by over one-third since 2000. This kind of achievement takes significant human, physical and financial capital, and yet it is totally dismissed.

It’s unfair for Hyder Ali to point to 1990 as a benchmark year. Emissions rose sharply between then and the early 2010s because a couple hundred billion dollars of investment in the oil sands came to fruition and production grew dramatically. But ever since 2015—the year of the Paris Agreement—we have seen a decoupling between production growth and emissions. We know that the oil sands can meaningfully reduce GHGs.

Not only does the federal government not have the jurisdiction to enforce a cap, it doesn’t have the mandate.

The argument that Canada will be “left behind” unless we turn to greener alternatives is rarely substantiated. The main markets for our oil, led by the US, do not pay a premium for lower-carbon products. And our LNG is already some of the least GHG-intense in the world.

We can plainly see Europe’s economic trajectory as it has tried to decarbonize its energy and offshore its industrial activity. This isn’t a path to emulate. Today most of the world isn’t ramping up its energy transition but rather plateauing—or, in the case of the USA, retreating. Bans on offshore drilling and fracking in New Zealand and Mexico have been reversed. Canada would be an outlier if it didn’t recalibrate some of its own expensive climate measures.

At any rate, there’s no reason to believe that a supportive environment for oil and gas production detracts from investments in renewables, electric vehicles and clean tech. Quite the opposite: the revenues generated from a healthy oil and gas sector allow governments and corporations to invest in such technology. Starving the industry of capital and growth with a cap would inevitably result in it spending less on decarbonization, not more.

But my main criticism of Hyder Ali’s argument and those like it is they remain in the abstract, indifferent to the trade-offs involved. These are emotional and ideological appeals. They fail on the details. They’re impracticable. When the federal government proposed draft regulations and modelled the costs of an emissions cap, it was a hot mess. The assumptions made no sense, unintended consequences weren’t accounted for, the costing wasn’t logical and there were inherent contradictions.

How would a cap work with Alberta’s existing industrial carbon pricing and emissions trading system and comparable frameworks in BC, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland How can the energy sector meet ambitious targets without limiting production How can operators plan without knowing their exact compliance obligations We don’t know.

The proposed cap is emblematic of a policy approach that has put Canada’s unrealistic Paris commitment at the top of a hierarchy, with every other policy issue subordinate. This isn’t what Canadians want. We’re preoccupied with housing, the high cost of living, Trump’s threat to our economy. Prime minister Mark Carney ran on a promise to make Canada an energy superpower with the strongest economy in the G7. Paris and the 2030 commitment weren’t even mentioned in his platform. Nor was an emissions cap. Not only does his government not have the jurisdiction to enforce an emissions cap, it doesn’t have the mandate.

We all want a healthy environment alongside a strong economy. We all want world-class environmental, social and governance standards. But it’s manifestly not in our interest to regulate our oil and gas to the point where production is so uncompetitive that other jurisdictions, likely higher-emitting ones, take up our market share. That’s the choice: produce oil and gas in Canada or let someone else—likely not a democracy or an ally—produce it instead. Hyder Ali is arguing for the latter.

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Canada at a Crossroads

Alex Himelfarb — Thu, 01 May 2025 08:00:48 +0000

At the end of a recent interview about my new book Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge, I was asked how it was possible that I claim to be optimistic about Canada’s future. Good question. The book does tell a pretty bleak story of a world upside down, unmoored, a story of how the neoliberal counter-revolution of the 1980s made us more vulnerable in an increasingly turbulent world. It’s hard to know which of our multiple crises we should be most worried about from day to day. I expect many Canadians are looking for any reason to be optimistic.

Probably every generation thinks they’re at some crucial crossroads where the decisions they make or fail to make will reshape the future. In fact it feels like we have been living through a succession of such turning points, always on the verge of big change but somehow never quite making the turn.

After the 2008 global financial meltdown and the recession that followed, the worst since the Great Depression, pundits declared that we had got it all wrong, that the status quo could not hold. The financial chaos had revealed how costly the deregulation of the financial sector had been and how fragile was an economy built on massive mortgage-fuelled household debt. That many banking executives who had contributed to the crisis got huge bonuses while others were losing their jobs or their homes or were just hanging on made clear that things were indeed upside down. Political leaders talked about the need for a new morality, that we were seeing the dark side of globalization, that we could no longer tolerate corporate giants too big to fail. And yet in no time we were back to business as usual.

Or take climate change. A few years after the financial meltdown, Naomi Klein wrote her powerful This Changes Everything about how climate change will force the world to rethink, well, everything. It seemed no longer possible to ignore or pretend away the already evident consequences of climate change and the risks it poses to civilization. Extreme weather events were telling us our antagonistic relationship with nature could not continue. In Canada, pundits wrote that no political party could hope to win an election without an ambitious and credible climate plan. For a while we were making progress, albeit very modest given the climate crisis. Yet now it seems we are ready to backtrack. Not only can political parties run without a climate plan, they can promise to undo the limited progress we have made.

And then came the pandemic. COVID-19 exposed how woefully unprepared we were, how stretched we had allowed our health and social services to become, and the often fatal costs of privatizing long-term care. It made glaring the consequences of inequality and weak labour protections, as the poor, the marginalized, Indigenous communities, people of colour and frontline service workers were hardest hit.

COVID-19 made glaring the consequences of inequality and weak labour protections.

But the pandemic also showed us that better was possible. Governments of all stripes stepped up to protect our health and keep people and firms afloat, rolling out with unaccustomed speed billion-dollar programs that, for a time, even reduced poverty and inequality. Firms raised the wages of frontline workers who put themselves at risk so we could stay safe. We experienced the kind of solidarity that often comes with crisis, finding ways of helping each other and celebrating healthcare workers and others on the front lines.

In the midst of the pandemic, governments here and just about everywhere were talking about huge public investments “to build back better.” Change was in the air. And then inflation hit, the result of fragile global supply chains, war and greed. The pandemic programs were rolled back, as were the pay raises. There was no more talk of building back better. Even the COVID solidarity proved fragile, momentary, the now infamous “Freedom Convoy” revealing how angry many had become at government and how raw our differences. Social media, the major source of human connection through the lockdown, fuelled our outrage and magnified our divisions. Yet again the opportunity for change passed, the optimism and solidarity with it.

And now we face a new challenge. Donald Trump’s tariffs and insistence that Canada should become the 51st state have ignited an unprecedented burst of patriotism. Will this finally be the turning Perhaps to understand how to move forward we need to look back at how we got here.

It was not so long ago that most people assumed things would just keep getting better, that every generation would surpass the previous one. For decades after the Second World War, it seemed capitalism and democracy were not only compatible but mutually reinforcing, high profits and high wages could coexist, endless economic growth would benefit everyone. Unions were strong. Governments were active in the economy and in providing for our welfare. We owned things together—transportation, energy, cultural institutions, even a vaccine agency.

By the 1960s, in what has become known as the equality revolution, those who’d been left behind in the expansion of the welfare state were demanding to be let in and were making progress. Democracy was expanding, becoming more inclusive, more robust.

And then came the 1980s. While corporations and neoliberal think tanks had been fighting unions and the expansion of the welfare state all along, economic turmoil at the end of the 1970s gave the opposition their moment. The world was changing. Global competition was more intense. Former colonies were demanding more for their raw materials. Oil prices skyrocketed. Profits declined. Businesses raised prices. Inflation soared. Conditions were ripe for the neoliberal counter-revolution. Business leaders and neoliberal institutes pounced.

Defining neoliberalism is a tricky business. It’s a slippery concept and, like every -ism, is used in different ways and takes different shape from place to place and over time. Essentially it holds that competition in the free market is the route to freedom and prosperity, and that government’s role is to create the conditions for the market to work its magic.

As Karl Polanyi wrote in his classic work of economic history and social theory The Great Transformation, ideologies are often hijacked by powerful interests and transformed to support those interests. That was certainly the case especially in the Anglosphere as corporations invested heavily in a network of persuasion—media, think tanks, university chairs—to attack the welfare state and sell neoliberalism.

As a political project, neoliberalism is best understood as the single-minded focus on economic growth, the primary role of government being to create the conditions for business to thrive, stripping away as many of the barriers to profit as politics allows—capitalism with the gloves off. Competition in the “free market” would sort out the winners and losers. Inequality, in this framing, is not only inevitable but right. If the winners are unleashed, everyone benefits; good things will somehow trickle down to the rest.

The winners did win big, but without much of the promised trickling down. Instead, we got extreme inequality and increasing insecurity, as many, especially the young, find themselves competing for precarious jobs with few benefits or prospects, often working in cities where they cannot afford to live.

Neoliberalism has delivered corporate concentration, monopolies, plutocracy, a massive shift from public power to private power. It has even failed in its own terms. Profits grow but the economy not so much.

And yet neoliberalism refuses to die. It contains, it seems, the seeds of its persistence. Of course, those with power and privilege always try to hold on to both. Money talks, and with extreme inequality it talks louder than ever. Neoliberalism changed us. It changed how we view government and how we view one another. It changed what we think is important and what we believe is possible. It’s in how neoliberalism has changed us that it exerts its greatest hold.

Taxes are how we pay for the things we do together that we cannot do alone.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argued that we’ve organized ourselves such that our collective action problems—the ones we can only solve together—have hit the level of “polycrisis” while our collective toolkit has rarely been weaker. Decades of neoliberalism has eroded public power. Nowhere is that more evident than in how we have come to view taxes.

Taxes are how we pay for the things we do together that we cannot do alone. They are also the way we reduce inequality and deconcentrate power. The generations that preceded us were much readier to pay taxes than we have been. No doubt they grumbled—who likes paying bills?—but they kept voting for governments that raised taxes. That was how we got medicare, expanded education, built public infrastructure.

All that changed. Taxes became the third rail of politics, a no-go zone. Just think of the reaction of many business leaders to the modest change the federal government introduced to the capital gains inclusion rate in the 2024 budget. Even though it largely affects the affluent. Even though capital gains are still taxed at a lower rate than earned income. Even though Canada’s marginal effective tax rate is still the lowest in the G7. Investment will dry up, we are told. Why would it Investment didn’t suffer when not so long ago capital gains taxes were even higher.

People will flee, we are warned. Really Where will they go A telling study in the US puts the lie to the taken-for-granted assumption that when governments raise taxes on the rich, the rich take their money and run. Cornell sociologist Cristobal Young and his team recently published a study that examined whether millionaires do in fact move to lower-tax states when their state raises taxes. Their answer: no. Taking your money and moving to another state should be relatively easy compared to changing countries. But millionaires are less likely to move than any other income category, whether to avoid taxes or for any other reason. They prefer to stay right where they made their millions. The poor are far more likely to move, to escape poverty. Opportunity, community, quality of life matter more than tax rates. Of course tax increases have behavioural consequences, but so too do tax cuts.

Think of the language our political leaders use whenever they talk about taxes, offering us tax cuts as though those have no consequences, appealing to us as hard-working taxpayers as if to say we are paying taxes for what some “others” get—the hard-working taxpayer versus the undeserving. So we come to see taxes as a burden, punishment, even theft. No political promise seems to resonate quite as positively as the promise of a tax cut or a “tax holiday.” The revenue-neutral carbon tax, even as most Canadians got back more money than they put in, was made into a contentious issue.

Part of the “problem of taxes” is that people don’t like to be played for suckers, to think they are paying more than their fair share. Not only have we over the last decades shifted the tax burden from the rich and the corporations to the many, but the rich have become extremely effective at avoiding taxes, exploiting tax havens and loopholes, or even using illegal means to evade the tax collector. Ordinary people begin to think: If the system is rigged, why should I pay taxes?

Politicians have learned they should avoid any perception that they are “tax and spenders.” Yet all governments tax and spend. The questions ought to be: What is it we should be doing together that we could not hope to do alone, and what is a fair and equitable way to pay for that What better way to constrain our ability to do big things together than to take tax increases off the table and treat tax cuts as a free good?

Not only were taxes off the table but government borrowing came to be seen as “for emergencies only.” We have been encouraged to view deficits as toxic and to measure governments on their ability to balance budgets. Here’s how this combination of tax and deficit phobia has changed our world: governments cut taxes on the promise that the cuts will generate so much growth that they will pay for themselves or will be paid for through greater government efficiency. But tax cuts never pay for themselves, and there’s never enough waste to cover the lost revenue. So deficits soar. And because deficits are supposedly toxic, public services are cut back. Quality declines. Wait times lengthen. We come to believe that we are no longer getting our money’s worth. If service is lousy, why not opt for a tax cut—even though that will make things worse—and why not support privatization, even if that makes services more expensive and less accountable?

Of course we need to be fiscally responsible, to manage fiscal risks, but that cannot mean giving priority to fiscal health over human health and the health of the planet. When the Trudeau government eschewed the long-standing commitment to annual balanced budgets, that was to the good. But fiscal hawks and much of the mainstream media continue to view deficits and increasing debt as a sign not that governments should raise taxes but that they must cut spending, regardless of whether spending was the primary cause and with no consideration of the human and economic costs of austerity. Robert Reich, after resigning from Bill Clinton’s cabinet, described the combination of tax and debt phobia as a conceptual straitjacket. And as we obsess over public debt, private debt breaks records and sets us up for more bubble-bursting.

Similarly, think about how we view government regulation. Regulations are how we protect the environment, labour and human rights. Instead, we have been encouraged to think of them as red tape, a drag on the economy. We are, it seems, ready to use the heavy hand of criminal law to regulate people but not so much giant corporations, despite their enormous power to drive prices and deflate wages, despite their devastating impact on our environment and on our democracy.

Yes, we have to take into account the costs of regulation, but we also need to consider what we lose through deregulation and regulatory capture, allowing corporations to self-regulate. Think of the bursting of the dotcom bubble, the Gulf oil spill, Enron, and of course the 2008 meltdown. Bruce Campbell’s book on the tragic oil train crash in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, lays out in devastating detail how regulatory capture contributed to the disaster. Years before, a deadly E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ontario, traced directly to deregulation of the water system, helped bring an end to then premier Harris’s “common sense revolution.” And of course, climate change and nature loss are the most threatening examples of regulatory failure.

All this to say we have organized ourselves in a way that makes crises more frequent and intense and has undermined the tools we need to make things better.

Government has come to be viewed as the problem. Disdain for government now comes not just from those who have been ill-treated or who got the short end—that is to be expected—but from our political leaders themselves. Governments, we are told, should not interfere in the market.

Decades of neoliberalism—of favouring private power over public power and, for that matter, private debt over public debt—have left us with bargain-basement citizenship: government asks less of us, and we ask less of government. There is no society, we were told. Don’t look to government for help or to society for excuses. Look after yourself and your family. Not surprisingly, research has revealed an epidemic of loneliness, as many feel on their own to manage all the change that’s coming at them. If strength is not to be found through common citizenship, many turn to the people they know and like, often people “like them.” The trust and solidarity necessary to act together across our differences are weakened. If the future is not ours to shape, democracy itself is diminished.

The answer for Canada is in rebuilding our collective toolkit and rediscovering our collective power.

So, given all that, am I optimistic, and if so, how is that even possible I find comfort in Antonio Gramsci’s formulation “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” I am optimistic, in other words, because I have so decided. Pessimism or cynicism sucks out all the energy for making things better. Despair is not an option. Gramsci, writing in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s as fascism was on the rise, cautioned that we must not underestimate the hurdles nor assume that better is assured—only that better is possible and we must fight for it. In these in-between times things could flip either way.

Most of us know the future we’d prefer—living in harmony with one another and the natural world, with security for ourselves and our kids, access to health, learning and the arts, affordable housing, decent work, a balanced life, a secure retirement, liveable communities, peace. Polls bear this out. What’s missing is the belief that we can do big things together, that we are in fact in this together.

Despite this, I do believe there are grounds for optimism of the Gramsci sort. While it’s true that Donald Trump’s Republicans won the White House and Congress, barely, Americans also consistently voted for progressive measures such as higher minimum wages, paid sick days, reproductive rights—when given the choice. Polls show that Canadians are ahead of their politicians in readiness to tax the rich and rein in corporate power. According to a recent Abacus survey, over 70 per cent of Canadians believe the rich and corporations are not paying their fair share.

Big change usually starts outside of conventional politics and political parties—in civil society. Despite everything, many people are fighting to make things better and sometimes winning. #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Pride. Four Indigenous women decided to fight against a bad bill that undermined Indigenous rights. They lost that battle, but their efforts became a movement, Idle No More, whose impact continues to ripple. It’s been a very tough time for environmental causes, but we might take heart from the recent victory of a coalition of activists in stopping the mayor and council of Vancouver from implementing their plan to reintroduce fossil fuel heating in new homes and buildings, which had been banned since 2022. It was only through the tireless efforts of childcare advocates over decades that we are finally getting a universal $10/day childcare program. Disability activists made important if modest progress with the recent announcement by the federal government of a new disability benefit for working-age adults. Unions are making something of a comeback, bringing in some of the hardest to organize service workers. Recently 20 unions got a taste of collective power when they joined together to stop the Ontario government from thwarting a teachers’ strike.

If the many out there fighting—for decent work, for peace and against racism and hate and poverty, for human and civil rights, for electoral reform, for basic income, for climate action—can overcome the learned neoliberal competitive bias and distrust, to see that they are stronger together, who knows what big things could be achieved Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth examined hundreds of protests and civil actions globally, trying to understand what it takes to move the yardsticks, and what she found, to her surprise, was that if just 3.5 per cent of a population join together to fight—peacefully—for progressive change, they almost invariably succeed.

Previous generations built things. They gave us medicare, pensions, welfare, employment insurance, universal education, public infrastructure. They passed along a world better than they inherited. We have not taken good care of what they built. What will we build?

In the face of Donald Trump’s threats and tariffs, some are urging us to do whatever it takes to appease him, and many business leaders are calling for more of the same: even lower taxes, fewer regulations, no more climate action—peak neoliberalism. Some are pushing for greater integration even as Trump has made inescapable the dangers of our US dependence. The answer for Canada is not this; it is in rebuilding our collective toolkit and rediscovering our collective power—taking back the future and breaking free of neoliberalism.

Alex Himelfarb is an author and academic. He served three prime ministers as Clerk of the Privy Council, 2002–2006.

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Read more from the archive “The Case for Taxes” January/February 2015.

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March 31-April 4, 2025

Alberta Views — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 19:18:32 +0000

Monday, March 31: The Ministry of Children and Family Services announced it would stop funding the Child & Youth Support Program. The program primarily provided financial and medical benefits to children whose parents or guardians are unable or unwilling to care for them.

March 31: After Alberta Health Services (AHS) cut funding for “nourishment” for hospital and ER outpatients in late March, an upset Calgary mother posted on Facebook that the Children’s Hospital had denied her 11-year-old son, who has brain cancer, his usual post-treatment ginger ale or popsicle. An AHS memo said the cut would “improve efficiency” and that patients can use vending machines. On March 31 Health Minister Adriana LaGrange responded to the Facebook post, saying the information was “incorrect or being misrepresented.”

Tuesday, April 1: Andre Tremblay, interim president and CEO of AHS, announced that AHS would not proceed with the changes to food policy in ERs and other non-inpatient areas.

April 1: Premier Danielle Smith celebrated the removal of the federal consumer carbon tax and the average of $215 in fuel savings and $480 in home heating savings a year for Alberta families the move represents. The consumer carbon tax rebate, also discontinued, previously provided a family of four with up to $1,800 a year via quarterly tax-free payments.

Wednesday, April 2: Premier Smith responded to President Donald Trump’s announcement of new, sweeping global tariffs, calling the lack of new tariffs on Canada “an important win for Canada and Alberta.” Tariffs on Canadian cars, steel and aluminum remain in place.

April 2: AHS released a health advisory about a confirmed measles case in Lethbridge. As of the announcement, the province has recorded 24 cases of measles.

Thursday, April 3: The United Nurses of Alberta, representing over 30,000 nurses, reached a four-year deal with the province representing a pay increase of 20 per cent over four years.

Friday, April 4: After Reform Party founder Preston Manning wrote in a Globe and Mail op-ed that “a vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for Western secession—a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it,” Liberal leader Mark Carney replied at a news conference. “I think such dramatic comments are unhelpful at a time when Canadians are coming together,” he said, adding that he grew up in Edmonton. “I’m part of a government that governs for all of the country, and very much for the West.”

April 4: Statistics Canada’s March 2025 Labour Force Survey showed that Alberta was one of only two provinces where employment fell from the month prior, and that Alberta now ranks fourth in unemployment in the country with a rate of 7.1 per cent. The decline is largely found in manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade.

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A Work in Progress

Graham Thomson — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 20:23:40 +0000

Will the real NDP please stand up Because I’m not sure what you look like. Come to think of it, I’m not sure the NDP itself knows what it looks like.

The Alberta NDP is a political party undergoing a face lift. And the person holding the scalpel is the new leader, Naheed Nenshi.

The transformation began the moment Nenshi entered the race on March 11, 2024, 14 weeks before being declared the winner on June 22.

He flooded the party with tens of thousands of new members and captured more than 62,000 votes, or 86 per cent of the final ballots. Albertans signed up not to support the old New Democratic Party, but to join a “new” New Democratic Party led by a charismatic and nationally known former mayor of Calgary.

Nenshi’s leadership campaign was short on policy specifics but long on energetic promises to defeat Danielle Smith and the UCP in the next provincial election in 2027.

The NDP was becoming the “Nenshi” Democratic Party.

Nenshi doesn’t like that description. In an interview for this column, he said, “the ‘N’ in NDP doesn’t stand for Nenshi any more than it stood for Notley. It’s a party with a huge diversity of views.”

Except that under Notley’s leadership the Alberta NDP was very much the “Notley” Democratic Party, not just because she built the organization from a rump opposition with four seats into government in 2015 and then emerged from the 2023 election loss with the largest official Opposition in Alberta history. Notley was a walking embodiment of traditional NDP values, social and economic.

Nenshi is still finding his sea legs as leader and doesn’t want to trip himself up three years out from an election.

The NDP under Nenshi, however, is a work in progress. That’s because as leader of a political party Nenshi himself is a work in progress. “I’ve never been in opposition,” said Nenshi, who as Calgary mayor from 2010 to 2021 was his own boss. “We’re thinking really hard about how to reach out to Albertans in new ways. You’ll see a lot of that going forward, both for me and for my caucus colleagues.”

He is happy to bash the UCP government as “immoral and dangerous” while offering up the NDP as a “predictable, dependable and rational” government-in-waiting.

It’s all rather vague. But Nenshi insists he has a plan.

He wants to find a balance between attacking the UCP government while also offering up positive alternatives.

He is determined to flesh out a policy on healthcare, for example, by having MLA Luanne Metz, a medical doctor, travel the province speaking with healthcare stakeholders “to develop a really comprehensive blueprint for the future of healthcare in Alberta. So instead of healthcare decisions being made like a pinball machine based on whatever Danielle Smith heard on Tucker Carlson last week, and completely changing things around, we will be going into 2027 with a fully developed, fully costed program for healthcare.”

In other words, wait and see.

That’s pretty much Nenshi’s answer on many fronts.

While taking questions at a Calgary Chamber of Commerce luncheon in September, Nenshi refused to say where he stands on issues like a federal carbon tax, saying he wants to see who wins the next federal election. “My real goal is to hear from all of you about precisely what you mean and what kind of government would make sense for you,” said Nenshi, in the kind of pandering response offered up by politicians trying to avoid the issue.

Nenshi is still finding his sea legs as leader and doesn’t want to trip himself up or box himself into a corner three years out from an election.

For politicians, being something of a mystery has an upside. They are a blank slate on which voters can project their hopes.

Conversely, blank slates are easy to defile. And the UCP has been busy trying to paint the former mayor as a Trudeau ally who botched Calgary’s Green Line LRT project. They want voters to see him as controversial, a risky choice.

But while that will work for the UCP base, it could otherwise be a hard sell. Nenshi is outspoken, skilled and charismatic. He poses a real threat to the UCP. That’s why so many anti-UCP Albertans, particularly those in Calgary, became members. They saw Nenshi as the best bet to take on Smith and defeat her in 2027.

Electing Nenshi as NDP leader was never about maintaining the course set by Rachel Notley. It was never about shoring up the New Democratic Party but about tearing down the UCP.

Nenshi’s followers boarded the NDP ship en masse and made him captain.

He is now promising to lay out a course to take Albertans to a new, better destination.

We have yet to see the map.

Graham Thomson is a political analyst, member of the Legislature Press Gallery and former Edmonton Journal political columnist.

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Should Alberta Seek More Autonomy?

Ted Morton & Jared Wesley — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 20:00:50 +0000

ted morton says YES

U of C professor emeritus and former MLA and cabinet minister

“Screw the West. We’ll take the rest.” That’s how a Pierre Trudeau strategist summed up the Liberals’ plan to win the 1980 federal election. With the promise of cheap oil and gas for central Canada, the Liberals won and enacted the National Energy Policy. The result was disastrous for Albertans. Capital investment and drilling rigs fled south. Hundreds of companies went bankrupt; thousands of Albertans lost their jobs or homes. Alberta plunged into a decade of deficits and debt.

This is how the Liberals have won elections for the past six decades: by promising and implementing policies that transfer wealth from resource-rich/voter-poor Alberta and Saskatchewan to voter-rich/resource-poor Ontario and Quebec—which together have 199 seats in the House of Commons, well over the 170 needed to form a majority.

The result Over the past 60 years, net federal transfers out of Alberta have surpassed $700-billion and now average $20-billion/year. Over the same time Quebec has been the net recipient of over $500-billion. In the most recent equalization program, Quebec received two out of every three dollars.

Alberta’s liability to predatory federal policies is structural. It is entrenched in the constitutional status quo. To protect our future, the status quo must go. We must either increase Alberta’s influence in Ottawa or decrease Ottawa’s influence in Alberta.

The key to the former was senate reform: an elected, equal and effective (EEE) senate, as in democracies such as the US and Australia. This was a principal policy of the Reform, Alliance and Conservative parties and strongly supported by voters in the Prairie provinces. But Senate reform is dead. In 1996 the Chrétien government enacted the Regional Veto Act, which effectively gives Quebec a constitutional veto. In 2014 the Supreme Court went even further, declaring Stephen Harper’s informal consultative Senate elections unconstitutional. Only by formal constitutional amendment, it ruled, can the Senate be reformed. No Quebec government will ever consent to this.

That leaves one alternative: decreasing Ottawa’s influence in Alberta. Some 23 years ago Harper, I and several others laid out a plan to do precisely this—the Alberta Agenda. We recommended that Alberta withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan and create a provincial plan; collect our own personal taxes; and establish a provincial police force to replace the RCMP. Better known as the Firewall Letter, it was widely denounced as too radical or impossible. Too radical Quebec already does all three. Impossible The Alberta Agenda was the centerpiece of my 2006 PC leadership campaign. I nearly won.

More recently Jason Kenney and Danielle Smith have succeeded where I fell short, first with Kenney’s Fair Deal Panel and the 2021 referendum to repeal equalization, and now with Smith’s Sovereignty Act. Both premiers have won majority governments campaigning on these issues. As Don Braid recently observed, the Firewall is now mainstream in Alberta.

jared wesley says no

U of A political scientist and former director of Alberta intergovernmental relations

If decades of polls, elections and government panels have taught us anything, it’s this: Albertans don’t want more autonomy. They want more respect. They don’t want less influence over national affairs. They want less politicking over Confederation. But this hasn’t stopped right-wing politicians and operatives from seeking to seal Alberta off from the rest of the country. Whether threatening to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan or RCMP, bar provincial bodies from receiving federal funding, or disregard federal jurisdiction altogether, autonomists have advanced a radical, elite-driven platform unbefitting Canada’s most conservative province.

This is why Albertans have repeatedly rejected the autonomist agenda. Decades apart, two panels sought Albertans’ views on building a “firewall” around Alberta. Ralph Klein’s MLA Task Force (2004) and Jason Kenney’s Fair Deal Panel (2021) heard the same thing loud and clear: Albertans don’t want less to do with Canada. They want more say in how the country is run.

Most Albertans see autonomism for what it is: at best, consolidating more power in a provincial government they don’t trust; at worst, slowly paving the way to separation from Canada. Most are enamoured with neither prospect. Instead, polls show Albertans consistently support measures to enhance their voices on the national stage. Dating back to the days of the Reform Party, Albertans have longed for more influence in federal institutions. Recent Viewpoint Alberta surveys (part of U of A’s Common Ground project) show Senate reform, freer internal trade and more federal jobs in Western Canada are among the most popular solutions to regional alienation. Leaving the RCMP, CPP or Canada Revenue Agency and establishing the Sovereignty Act rank dead last, as these moves would lessen Alberta’s standing within Canada. Albertans want their governments to work together. A majority feel Canada is better off with a strong federal government.

This isn’t to dismiss the deep sense of alienation felt across the province. Since 2019 our Viewpoint surveys have shown that a majority of Albertans feel their province doesn’t receive its fair share of federal funding, that Ottawa treats their province worse than others, and that Alberta deserves more respect in Canada. It will be interesting to track these sentiments should Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives win the next federal election.

But these same Albertans feel a strong sense of belonging within Canada. A full 85 per cent report feeling somewhat or strongly attached to their country, just higher than those with the same connection to Alberta (82 per cent). This helps explain why autonomist fantasies fail to resonate with most Albertans: people don’t like being asked to choose between loyalties or shift power from one order of government to another.

In short, Albertans view themselves as integral parts of the federation. They simply wish more Canadians, particularly those in power in Ottawa, would see them in the same light.

Ted morton responds to jared wesley

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Critics portray the Sovereignty Act as new and dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth. Alberta has always had to challenge Ottawa’s central Canadian bias. In 1904 Frederick Haultain, premier of the Northwest Territories, urged Ottawa to admit Alberta and Saskatchewan as a single province: Buffalo. But prime minister Wilfrid Laurier refused. He didn’t want to create a province so large it might one day challenge the power of Quebec and Ontario. (That day has arrived!) He also refused to give the new provinces ownership of Crown lands and natural resources. Alberta Premier John Brownlee fought a long battle with Ottawa to acquire what every other province received at Confederation.

In the “Dirty Thirties” Ottawa used the discredited federal powers of disallowance and reservation to strike down Alberta policies designed to help bankrupted farmers and ranchers. Premier William Aberhart responded by cutting off funding for Government House, the office and residence of the federally appointed governor general. No lieutenant governor has resided there since.

Ottawa’s next attack on Alberta was Pierre Trudeau’s infamous 1980 National Energy Program. Premier Peter Lougheed fought the NEP tooth and nail. He cut oil and gas exports to Eastern Canada. He launched a constitutional challenge to the Liberals’ export tax on gas (and won!). He insisted that the principle of provincial equality be entrenched in the new constitutional amending formula—no more veto for Quebec. He demanded that a notwithstanding clause be added to Trudeau’s Charter of Rights, thus protecting provinces from policy vetoes by federal judges. And he made Trudeau add a clause to the constitution (section 92A) to give provinces jurisdiction over natural resources—and prevent another NEP.

Critics call the Sovereignty Act new and dangerous. But we’ve always had to challenge Ottawa’s central bias.

But now there is another Trudeau NEP—Justin’s national environmental programs: the carbon tax, Bill 69; cancellations of Energy East and Northern Gateway; clean-energy regulations that are easy for hydro-based provinces like Quebec but an expensive disaster for Alberta and Saskatchewan, which depend on natural gas.

Fighting for more Alberta, less Ottawa is not new. In politics the beneficiaries of the status quo never willingly give up their advantages. Change requires push. Kenney and Smith are only the most recent in a long line of Alberta premiers to push.

jared wesley responds to ted morton

Hinging on anti-Liberal grievances from the 1980s, Ted Morton’s argument is out of step with Alberta today. The proposed withdrawals from the CPP, RCMP and Canada Revenue Agency are also unpopular in Ottawa. Even Conservative governments place as low a priority on these ideas as most Albertans do. A signatory to the “Firewall Letter,” Stephen Harper had nine years in government and didn’t advance a single measure from the “Alberta Agenda” he co-authored with Morton.

For good reason. The measures are tough enough to sell in Alberta. For a party trying to win a majority in Ottawa, destroying popular national institutions would be political suicide. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, a one-time member of Harper’s government, knows this as well as anyone. It’s why he has openly supported the CPP and remained silent on other autonomist goals.

The same goes for the constitutional reforms Morton suggests. Reopening talks on the division of powers would jeopardize Alberta’s control over its natural resources, a hard-earned win in previous reforms. And Alberta already has an effective veto over constitutional reforms by virtue of the same law that grants Quebec that power. That too would be back on the table if we reopen the constitution.

Instead, a Poilievre government would likely follow Harper’s “open federalism” approach. This benefited Alberta, particularly as the federal government vacated areas of provincial jurisdiction. Harper also improved Alberta’s fiscal situation by restructuring fiscal federalism. In exchange for bolstering equalization, Harper shifted the Canada Health Transfer to a per capita formula, which brought Alberta an additional $1-billion annually. These reforms did more to address Alberta’s “net federal transfer gap” than any other initiative—aside from Justin Trudeau’s investment in the TransCanada pipeline.

Fortunately the autonomist agenda will likely melt away if federal Conservatives gain power. Aside from fitting an anti-Liberal narrative, the ideas are massively unpopular. Indeed, a provincial government that actually pursued them would struggle to win a referendum, let alone an election. That’s why neither Jason Kenney nor Danielle Smith ran on withdrawing from the CPP or RCMP. In fact, Smith flatly denied intending to tamper with pensions just months before launching a campaign to do exactly that.

Harper’s government increased Alberta’s capacity to act within its existing policy space and jurisdiction, without needing the drastic measures proposed by autonomists. Achieving greater influence for Alberta within Canada requires a co-operative federal partner and diligent work behind the scenes, not bluster from Alberta autonomists when their team isn’t in power in Ottawa. The autonomist agenda is, at best, all hat and no cattle.

Ted morton’s concluding response

Strengthening Alberta’s political autonomy is not about “anti-Liberal” grievances. It’s about Alberta’s constitutional vulnerability to predatory and destructive federal policies. The Liberal Party is not so much the cause as it is the consequence of the constitutional status quo: the ability of a national party to win majority governments with policies that transfer wealth from resource-rich, voter-poor provinces like Alberta to voter-rich/resource-poor provinces like Quebec and Ontario. “Screw the West. We’ll take the rest.” It’s simple and predictable.

And it’s getting worse. Lougheed’s three greatest constitutional wins—section 92A, the notwithstanding clause, provincial equality—have been erased or gutted.

Quebec has regained its veto over formal constitutional amendments. Section 92A has been stripped of any meaningful legal force. In the words of former Alberta chief justice Catherine Fraser, the Supreme Court’s acceptance of Ottawa’s “national dimensions” standard is a “constitutional Trojan horse that under the guise of fighting CO₂ emissions would give the federal government potentially unlimited power over provincial regulations.”

As for the notwithstanding clause: Lougheed saw that Trudeau’s proposed Charter of Rights could become a form of “disallowance in disguise”: a federal veto over provincial policies exercised by the Supreme Court rather than by cabinet. Neither Lougheed nor any of the “gang of six” premiers would have accepted Trudeau’s Charter without the addition of the notwithstanding clause.

Federalism is itself a form of protecting minority rights. Each province is a minority. But this version of Canadian federalism is now being sacrificed on the judicial altar of a new version of minority rights. This centralization of power in Ottawa has been fuelled by the Court Challenges Program, which funds the litigation costs of groups that the Liberals support and who in turn support the Liberals. Harper cancelled the program, but it was resurrected by Justin Trudeau. Pierre must be smiling from his grave.

Where do I advocate “reopening talks” on amending the constitution I’m advocating acting, not talking; adopting policy reforms that all provinces have the right to pursue. And how are these “massively unpopular” with Albertans Kenney and Smith campaigned on an equalization referendum and a sovereignty act, and voters gave them both majorities. Why does Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid—hardly a fan of the UCP—describe the once “infamous” firewall reforms as now “mainstream”?

If Albertans could renegotiate our relationship with Canada, we’d never accept the status quo. If Quebec had been treated like Alberta, it would have separated long ago. I’m not advocating separation, but the status quo must go. As Peter Lougheed said in the 1970s: The time is “Now!”

jared wesley’s concluding response

Albertans don’t want more autonomy; only a small number of conservative elites do. Outside of political backrooms, schemes like an Alberta pension plan, police force and revenue agency remain impractical and unpopular. Like zombies, these measures come back from the dead anytime provincial conservatives want to take on the federal Liberals for political gain. Designed to distract from failures at home and to unite a fractious base, autonomist policies are little more than props. If they were serious policy proposals, provincial and federal Conservatives would have advanced on them decades ago. They haven’t, and that’s good for Alberta and for Canada.

Outside of political backrooms, an Alberta pension plan, police force and revenue agency are unpopular.

Over decades of polling, elections and panels, the message is consistent: Albertans don’t want less Canada; they want more respect within it. The autonomist agenda is also a non-starter nationally. Most Canadians are bridge-builders when it comes to national priorities such as retirement security and public safety. Albertans are no different, according to our Viewpoint surveys. While aware that Alberta doesn’t get the respect it deserves in Confederation, they are overwhelmingly attached to Canada—even more so than to their provincial identity.

For these reasons they are far more likely to prioritize and support measures that bring Alberta voices to bear on national issues than to wall themselves off from Canada. Albertans want freer internal trade, more federal jobs in the West and more representation in Parliament. They don’t want to sever ties with the CPP, RCMP and CRA. And they don’t like being asked to choose between orders of government; they want their leaders to work together on issues that matter to them.

In other words, typical Albertans aren’t fed-up radicals seeking to upend the constitutional order. They’re jilted realists when it comes to Alberta’s place in Canada. They feel misunderstood and undervalued, but they have little interest in igniting firewalls and hiding behind them. Indeed, a majority of Albertans prefer a strong federal government and can distinguish between a governing party they dislike and federal institutions they value.

When the federal Conservatives return to power, this will be good news for the majority of Albertans who want constructive intergovernmental relations. With no Liberal menace to haunt them, autonomists will fade into the shadows, and the real work of empowering Alberta and increasing its influence within Canada will restart.

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Kenneyism

Roberta Laurie — Wed, 29 May 2024 22:15:46 +0000

by Jeremy Appel
DUNDURN PRESS
2024/$27.99/312 pp.

Kenneyism, by journalist Jeremy Appel, is the definitive political biography of former Alberta premier Jason Kenney. It’s a wild ride, propelling the reader through three decades of the often shady antics of a political maverick until his rapid fall and disappearance from public life.

Seen through Appel’s retrospective lens, Kenney’s rise is relentless. In high school Kenney dreamt of becoming prime minister. In college “the young zealot” dabbled in anti-gay and pro-life activism. As a rising conservative star, he palled with fellow “snackpackers” Ezra Levant and Rahim Jaffer. Jaffer dubbed Kenney “minister curry in a hurry” for his habit of wooing the immigrant vote at ethnocultural events in aid of Stephen Harper’s eventual majority win. Once he became Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Kenney’s open arms proved selective. While boasting of increasing immigration quotas, he created roadblocks to family reunification and stated his preference for “high-value innovators.” This bait-and-switch behaviour is a recurring theme throughout his rise to power.

Appel quips that Premier Kenney’s “war room was too absurd not to write about.” As I read the book, I decided one might say the same about nearly everything Kenney did. Driving into Alberta in his blue pickup, Kenney set to work winning the vote of the working class. As premier he waged war on the very institutions the working class depend upon, and single-mindedly “reduced burdens on big business.” Kenney’s Act to Repeal the Carbon Tax turned out to be hustle too. He axed the tax, which was immediately replaced by a federal one, costing the province $1.3-billion in annual revenue and allowing Kenney to self-righteously point his finger at the feds—absurd indeed.

Appel’s astute analysis, understanding of the neoconservative agenda and on-point references make Kenneyism an engaging—if often troubling—read. Kenney’s response to the drug-poisoning epidemic was governed by his “strict moralism.” Subsidized private, abstinence-based recovery clinics became the go-to solution as harm reduction sites in Alberta were shut down and the provincial government demonized safe supply. An absence of data now cloaks this issue. While Kenney’s ideology governed his approach to drug rehabilitation, his response to the pandemic “was an incoherent mess.” Appel concludes that on several fronts Kenney’s government put policies into practice “that did incalculable harm.”

Drawing from his experience covering Kenney-era politics, Appel also offers insightful analysis of the province’s relationship with its petroleum wealth. On the hypocrisy and subservience to industry demonstrated by successive governments, he writes, “[Alberta] didn’t become [a petrostate] by letting the free market do its work. It got that way by putting the thumb of the state on the scale in favour of the oil and gas industry, conflating the collective interests of Albertans with companies that seek to… rob the population blind”—a concise summary of the predicament of our oil-dependent province.

Tying together the threads that define Kenney, Appel concedes that the man is “a deep political thinker” driven by an inner compass that orients toward materialism and authoritarianism. He may have used “populist framing” as the means, but Kenney’s singular goal was to strengthen the interests of “the very elites he raged against”—and therefore his own. Appel’s review of Kenney’s politicking provides a chilling tableau of the former UCP leader’s strategy and personal ideology. Kenney shifted “the contours of political debate rightward,” showing us the trajectory of the emergent “New Right agenda.” I may have lived through these events, but I was still left shaken.

For this self-proclaimed lefty, Kenneyism is a well-researched, comprehensive journey down a nightmarish memory lane of jingoist bugaboos and populist demons. It’s a compelling look at our times for anyone concerned about our future.

Roberta Laurie teaches communication studies at MacEwan University and is the author of Weaving a Malawi Sunrise.

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Between Doom & Denial

Junaid Jahangir — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:00:48 +0000

by Andrew Leach
SUTHERLAND HOUSE
2023/$34.95/150 pp.

Climate change is “the environmental, political and societal challenge of our time,” writes Andrew Leach in Between Doom & Denial. This slim, clearly written book was published in conjunction with the author’s talks for the inaugural McGill/Max Bell Lecture in 2023. Acknowledging that global warming is “mostly human-caused,” Leach notes that climate change “is a challenge to which we, as Canadians, have not always responded with best efforts and grand ideas.” Just the opposite: “Too often, our discussions of climate change devolve into denial or countervailing promises of doom,” he writes, with both sides resorting to “half-truths, lies by omission and too-clever-by-half excuses” to bolster their take. Leach isn’t having it—the mendacity in the public square—and wrote the book to confront “the most pervasive and/or insidious lies and half-truths that permeate the climate change debate in Canada today.”

An energy and environmental economist and a professor at the University of Alberta, Leach titles each chapter with a “half-truth” that he wants to confront, such as chapter two: “Climate change will not be that bad, and we can adapt.” To the argument that climate change will be just fine because of the benefits of longer growing seasons, increased agricultural productivity, tourism, and lower heating costs due to warmer temperatures, Leach counters by pointing to the huge increase in wildfires in recent years. He also alludes to the pine beetle infestations that decimated our forests, amplifying fire weather and wildfire smoke that increases the use of air conditioners and decreases solar power generation. And, not least, global political crises and mass migrations linked to climate change impact Canada in myriad ways. Instead of “adaptation”—as proposed by “self-described climate skeptic Bjorn Lomborg”—Leach advocates for mitigation. This will not be easy. “Climate change mitigation is the purest of public goods,” he writes, in that the whole world benefits, but “there is limited incentive for any individual nation to mitigate its emissions, since it can enjoy the benefits of others’ mitigation efforts. The economic incentives tell us to free ride and wait for others to act.” Still, “technologies such as renewable electricity, electric vehicles and heat pumps” are improving and “the list of cost-effective mitigation efforts will get longer each year.” This “gives us a fighting chance,” he writes, quoting climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe: “The difference between a higher versus a lower emissions future is nothing less than the survival of our civilization.”

In chapter four, “Canada accounts for less than 2 per cent of the world’s emissions,” Leach dismantles the idea that a carbon tax in Canada will not have a significant impact, as Canada is responsible for only 1.6 per cent of global emissions. He counters that Canada ranks fourth in the G20 countries on a GHG emissions per capita basis. Thus he projects carbon pricing as the best policy to reduce emissions, even though he has also argued for government procurement of renewable energy and the phasing out of coal-fired power. Additionally, he emphasizes stringency of “policies, not targets,” as Canada often promises outcomes it cannot guarantee.

In other chapters, Leach dismisses as irrelevant the idea that there will always be demand for Canadian oil and gas. “What will matter much more than how oil and gas are used is how much the world is willing to pay for fossil fuels,” he writes. “Global energy prices will decline in a world acting on climate change [and] Canadians could be left with both economic calamity and a large, unfunded environmental cleanup.” Alternatively, “in the event that climate action slows,” we will face “a world with too little oil and gas production capacity facing high prices.” Not to mention the damage done from doing little to mitigate the issue.

For those looking to solar and wind power as a panacea for climate change, Leach cautions that “the problem with renewable energy in Canada is not sunsets, it is winter.” Neither solar nor wind energy provide reliable capacity, he argues, because expensive seasonal storage is required for renewable energy. As such, he warns against superimposing the US experience with renewable energy onto our “cold country,” instead arguing for transmission lines to facilitate sharing hydro, nuclear and renewable energy across Canada.

In contrast to economist Jim Stanford—who does not view energy transition as unique and is optimistic other industries can replace the oil and gas industry—Leach argues that transitioning away from oil and gas has no precedent. In other cases, such as the phase-out of coal in Alberta, Ontario or Germany, or of oil and gas in Denmark, those industries were already in decline locally, he asserts, whereas in Alberta the oil and gas sector is a “huge wealth and government revenue generator” that cannot be replicated by government programs.

“The world will still use oil and gas for decades to come, but that provides little assurance that our fossil fuel industries will not be affected by action on climate change,” concludes Leach. “Oil and gas demand is on a collision course with action on climate change, and the more we look to hide behind solutions like carbon capture and storage, the more likely we are to fail to plan for the much larger challenges we face in the coming transition.” On that front, he writes, “While some are quick to imagine that government action can create new industries to replace lost jobs, wages and tax revenues, and provide a just transition away from fossil fuels, the reality is that the coming energy transition will be unprecedented, painful and costly to many here in Canada even as it will also have substantial global benefits.”

Between Doom & Denial will likely please no one. But everyone should read it. Especially policy makers. “The hard truths of climate change” mean that almost every government policy “from infrastructure to housing to fiscal policy” is now a climate change policy, Leach writes. It’s time to act accordingly. n

Junaid bin Jahangir is an associate professor of economics at MacEwan University in Edmonton.

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Island Alberta

Curtis Gillespie — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:00:30 +0000

As a young boy growing up in the barren yet beautiful suburbs of northwest Calgary in the early 1970s, I remember feeling that the place still felt new, a blob of provincial protoplasm awaiting maturation. The election of Peter Lougheed’s Progressive Conservative party and the advent of big oil revenues set Alberta’s course, and it hasn’t changed much since. But although Peter Lougheed was liked in our house, Pierre Trudeau got even more love. I am a fifth-generation Albertan, and if my parents were proud Albertans, they were ardent Canadians.

It wasn’t until I went to university that I found out most of the people I knew from Calgary thought Pierre Trudeau was all but a criminal. No one in my family had much to do with the oil patch, even though in the early 1980s I did have a summer office job at Gulf Oil. During that time I was vaguely aware of this thing called the National Energy Program (NEP) that people were mad about, but the province seemed prosperous enough and so did Canada. From the point of view of a young Canadian living in Alberta, Canada seemed like a pretty great place to hail from, a plucky country that punched above its weight and mattered in a moral sense, a country the rest of the world looked up to and admired.

Unfortunately, this was also when the hypersensitive Alberta psyche was in its most malleable state, a time when our provincial lava boiled out onto the open prairie and got moulded into something angry and contorted. Ottawa was the enemy. We were getting ripped off. We were being exploited. The feds were taking us for suckers. Trudeau gave some western Canadian protesters the finger and we were going to let those eastern bastards freeze in the dark. End of story.

Except it wasn’t. Grievance politics became entrenched in our brains, and it has warped our entire political outlook ever since. There’s always a fight. Take your pick. The NEP. Equalization payments. A provincial police force. Senate reform. Carbon taxes. Pipelines. Health transfers. Quebec favouritism. The latest expression of this irascible political posture is the United Conservative Party proposal to decouple Alberta from the Canada Pension Plan and create our own Alberta Pension Plan. It’s an idea so dumb, so patently immature, it almost doesn’t merit discussion. But it is evidence of something it pains me to say, which is that we are suckers, and we are being exploited. Ottawa, however, isn’t the perpetrator. We’re being exploited by our own victim narrative. And it’s hurting us in the long run, no matter how satisfying the rage and self-pity feel in the moment. The current conflict is being dressed up by Danielle Smith as fighting for Alberta, but in reality she’s taking advantage of our inclination to be aggrieved.

We are not victims. We are not persecuted. We are not hard done by. We’re missing the point.

Alberta became a province on September 1, 1905. On September 2, 1905, Alexander Rutherford, the province’s new premier, lashed out at the federal government for ignoring the long-standing concerns of Albertans. I’m joking, but only partly. Over the ensuing decades, various skirmishes broke out between the province and Ottawa, becoming a coherent pattern after Leduc #1 in 1947, and erupting into open battle with the unlocking of the oil sands in the 1970s—once Alberta became flush with money, in other words. Money it began to resent having to share.

The never fully settled question hovering over this decades-long pattern is not so much whether the disagreement(s) actually exist, but rather which larger forces are generating them. Having your car break down is the problem immediately in front of you, but it might not be the manufacturer’s fault if you’ve never changed your oil. If Alberta has a problem with Ottawa, what is the problem, and what caused it?

The briefest answer to whether Alberta has a problem with Ottawa is to just say yes. That’s reality. But so does every other province. It’s inherent in the nature of the relationship. We must bear in mind that provinces are not partners with the federal government, or at least not equivalent partners. The federal government necessarily has a different set of concerns and responsibilities than a provincial government, a broader scope, a wider lens. If it didn’t, our country would turn inward and parochial (as many others have). But too often both levels of government use this difference in roles to generate friction and feign action, rather than as a platform for collaboration and compromise. The process morphs from policy into theatre.

“I do think the APP idea is grievance politics,” says the Globe and Mail’s Calgary correspondent, Kelly Cryderman. “If you look at it from Danielle Smith’s point of view, we’re talking about an Alberta-first policy. Alberta does have the power to withdraw, but everybody agrees it would be detrimental to the national plan. It’s absolutely about making a point.”

It was Albert Camus who said, “The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.” There is, increasingly it seems, a petulance to the never-ending hue and cry from Alberta that we are hard done by. Where is this from, this aggrieved sense of injustice that comes across too often as immaturity, like a teenager yelling that no one understands them and it’s all so unfair and they’re just going to move out and show you and then when they’re gone, you’ll be sorry!

In diagnosing the root causes of our provincial persecution complex, so that we can assess more clearly how even floating, let alone implementing, the APP might (further) damage Alberta reputationally, we can probably limit ourselves to the two most significant contributors. Those would be the NEP and equalization payments.

The rest of the country probably already considers Alberta unreliable and possibly even unhinged.

Make no mistake, the NEP was panic-driven by the skyrocketing cost of imported oil at the time. The National Energy Program, federal policy from 1980 through 1985, was intended to keep energy affordable for all Canadians and to secure our supply independent of the world oil market. It harmed Alberta’s economy not just through enforced pricing but because Lougheed cut production to force Trudeau to the negotiating table. This negotiation did eventually happen and resulted in the Western Accord in 1985, a deal that mitigated but didn’t repair the harm. However, for a Canadian prime minister not to have taken every step possible around national energy security in the late 1970s and early 1980s would have been political malpractice. The way Trudeau went about it was haughty and he got the process wrong, but the overarching goal made sense in context.

The real problem is that the NEP is too often viewed as a simplistic, binary issue. Ottawa was evil and Alberta got screwed. Except that’s not quite how it went. We know that Suncor and Syncrude drove the development of the oil sands and therefore created much of Alberta’s prosperity. What people forget, or don’t know, is that when Syncrude was under construction in the mid-1970s, it had four partners—Cities Service, Imperial Oil, Royalite/Gulf and Atlantic-Richfield. One day in late 1974, suddenly and with very little notice to its partners, Atlantic-Richfield pulled out, citing a shift to Alaskan exploration (which may have been simply the excuse it used, as it was unhappy with Lougheed’s royalty terms). A mad scramble ensued, as Lougheed’s dream for Alberta’s resource prosperity looked to be in jeopardy.

And who stepped in to save the project The federal government, that’s who. Yes, Pierre Trudeau. Atlantic-Richfield owned 30 per cent of the Syncrude venture. Trudeau and his government quickly agreed to make up half of the shortfall, buying 15 per cent. The Lougheed government invested 10 per cent, and the province of Ontario chipped in 5 per cent. In other words, Syncrude, the giant of the Alberta oil sands, might have foundered had Ottawa not stepped up to the plate.

But that’s not all. Lougheed also negotiated a new deal with the Trudeau government to let Syncrude treat profit-sharing between Syncrude and Alberta as a standard royalty for tax purposes, thereby allowing for the deduction of royalty payments from federal tax owed. This was a substantial concession from Ottawa, one that Syncrude might have been dead without.

Did the NEP harm Alberta Yes. Was it about snooty Ottawa trying to stick it to those hicks in Alberta No. Trudeau simply put national interests ahead of provincial interests, as you would expect any prime minister to do. (Note that Conservative leader and would-be-PM Pierre Poilievre opposes Alberta creating its own pension plan.) To claim that the NEP, as bad a policy as it was, was evidence that Ottawa had it in for Alberta is to misread events. It was simply that one province had what all of Canada desperately needed, and the prime minister made that one province supply it cheaply.

To use the NEP as a stick to continue to beat the feds with, without seeing the larger context, is to misinterpret both the symbolism and the actual development of the industry. The oil sands resource has been responsible for the prosperity of millions of Albertans and other Canadians, but it would probably not exist in its present form without the direct financial investment of the federal government. The NEP was a bad policy and Brian Mulroney was right to kill it after he got elected (though he did leave parts of it in place for over two years), but it was not evidence of an Ottawa conspiracy to defraud Alberta of its rightful assets.

What happens if the UCP goes through with the APP and Alberta gains but the rest of Canada suffers?

The other Ottawa bone of contention Alberta has been gnawing on for decades is that of equalization. This one is dealt with rather easily since the gripe most Albertans have is due to a misunderstanding of the concept. University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe has said that most people don’t understand how equalization works. In 2018 he wrote, “Much of the anger—especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan—is stoked by commentators and politicians who are deliberately fanning the flames,” and that, “it’s up to each of us to be informed about how equalization actually works.”

The three major transfer programs in Canada are the Canada Health Transfer, the Canada Social Transfer, and Equalization. The first two distribute funds according to population. If Ontario’s population is three times that of Alberta, it will get three times the money. Roughly 75 per cent of all federal transfer payments are bound up in these first two programs. Equalization payments comprise the other 25 per cent and they are distributed through a formula based on what a province’s revenue would be if all its tax rates tracked the national average. Again, simple math. Equalization, Tombe writes, simply tops up provinces whose tax revenue falls below the national average.

In a country as vast and disparate as Canada, a strong nation-building case can be made for such federal transfers. A Canadian living in Moncton, New Brunswick, should have access to roughly the same level of services as someone living in Regina, Saskatchewan. Equalization payments are the financial weave of the broader social fabric we profess to embrace as Canadians; namely, a dignified existence and fair opportunity for all.

We in Alberta do pay more into equalization (gross, not rate), but as Andrew Coyne so succinctly put it in a September 27, 2023, Globe and Mail column, Albertans pay more simply because we make more money. “As a federal program,” he writes, equalization “is funded out of federal taxes, which, again, Albertans pay at the same rates as citizens of other provinces… And yet people who should know better, including some economists, continue to bandy about [the idea that Albertans pay more into the federation than they get out] as if it held any meaning. It might politely be described as a false correlation—it’s not Albertans, as a group, who pay more than they draw out, but rich people. Less politely, it’s a lie. But it’s a useful lie, as we can see in its latest deployment.”

The point, writes Tombe in a different article, is that being part of a federation allows us to pool and therefore dilute risk. A rich province contributes when it’s doing well and receives funds when it isn’t. Even after a recession, Alberta’s economy remains stronger than any other province’s, which is why we continue to be net contributors to equalization. “Recognizing this is not defeatist or anti-Albertan,” Tombe writes. “We have to recognize our strong position in Canada relative to other provinces if we’re to have any hope of understanding why fiscal balances are what they are. The pandemic may have upended the typical patterns, but it also starkly revealed the value of being part of a broader whole. When grievances directed at Ottawa are inflamed once again, we should keep this value in mind.”

The offices of federal Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland and the Alberta Pension Plan panel were quick to respond to my questions, though the promptness of their replies was not matched by their specificity. Freeland’s office referred me to a press conference she’d given after a finance ministers’ meeting in December, in which they’d kicked the APP can down the road by saying their staff were going to hold further meetings to talk about how to talk to the chief actuary at some unspecified future date. Freeland’s office’s response to me was the definition of slow-walking an issue in the hope it might dry up and blow away.

The APP panel’s response to numerous pointed questions was even more content-free. They wrote, graciously, that “the panel is giving the office of the chief actuary of Canada some time to release its findings” and hopes “to hear back soon.” The actuary is determining what percentage of the CPP’s assets Alberta would be entitled to take if it left the plan. Smith’s government claims the province could keep $334-billion, or just over half of the CPP’s total assets.

Graham Thomson, a long-time political commentator, did not resort to similarly analgesic language when asked about the APP and the overall pattern the idea falls into with the UCP. Thomson notes that Alberta premiers have usually favoured pragmatism over ideology. Small-government Peter Lougheed bought airlines and pipeline companies because he thought Alberta wasn’t being well served by the market. Environmentalist Rachel Notley supported the oilpatch because she knew the local economy would collapse if she didn’t. Where does Danielle Smith fit into this pattern?

“Her ideology is purely situational,” said Thomson. “She talks like a libertarian but will give Calgary $300-million for a new arena. This is someone who isn’t very nuanced, who was pushing Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic, who tends to look at things very superficially. I don’t think she’s actually thought through this APP idea thoroughly, even though she’s been talking about it for awhile.”

Ken Boessenkool, an influential conservative activist who tried to get Smith kicked out of the UCP leadership race, co-wrote an article with University of Alberta professor Jared Wesley positing that Smith could not even really be called a conservative and that her politics amounted to “libertarian-laced populism, directly opposed to the sort of principled, incrementalist politics Albertans have appreciated from conservative governments in the past.” Smith, they wrote, “shows little understanding or respect for the rules and norms that guide our democracy,” and that her attraction to quackery and plain lack of knowledge raise “serious questions about her judgment and the ability of her advisers to provide her with a factual basis to make important decisions.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like exactly the type of person I’d want in charge of my pension.

Says the Globe and Mail’s Cryderman, very few people inside or outside Alberta want the province to pull out of the CPP, simply because “nobody wants the chaos.” And while “energy policy or climate policy might not affect every person in this country in a real individual way, pensions do.”

Thomson has no doubt the issue is further damaging Alberta’s already tarnished reputation across Canada, possibly irreparably. “Of course it is,” he says. “I mean, Smith wants other Canadians to join in a fight with the federal government. But, ‘Oh, hang on a minute; do you mind if we completely undermine your pension plan while we’re at it?’” Smith just doesn’t have the political imagination to see shades of grey, he says. She’s in the cab of an Albertans-only train running out of control and thinks pulling the airhorn demonstrates a steady hand on the throttle. “There is so much risk in [the Smith government’s] APP strategy, but if you try and put it in terms of common sense to them, they don’t hear you.”

The APP toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube.

It’s also common sense to look at the plain facts on the ground. If Alberta were being so appallingly exploited by those Upper Canadian parasites, wouldn’t this be a pretty dire place to live Why do people continue to flock to this province, why do we have the youngest and best-educated population in Canada, how does Edmonton now have the largest office tower in Canada west of Toronto, how did Calgary manage to create such a thriving film and television production scene, how is it that such prominent political leaders as Pierre Poilievre and Chrystia Freeland hail from Alberta How have we managed all this under the tyranny of Ottawa I guess it must be because we’re so exceptional, so extraordinary, so Albertan, that we can thrive even under this obscene oppression.

Or—here’s an idea—could it be that we’re doing okay because we’re part of Canada?

Sadly, the damage to our reputation has surely already been done. Whether Alberta leaves the CPP or not, the rest of the country probably already considers Alberta unreliable, a less than trustworthy member of the confederation and possibly even unhinged. The APP toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube. It’s not like chatting about which movie to watch on Netflix. If you say to your partner over dinner one night, “I wonder what our lives would be like if I left you and took all my possessions and lived my own life but still wanted to have sex with you every now and then We’d still be happy, right I mean, I’m not saying I’m going to do it. But, you know, legally, I could.”

Imagine an alternative universe, one in which a premier of Alberta declared the province a proud member of Confederation willing to do whatever it took to make Canada successful, not just Alberta. Imagine the goodwill. Ottawa doesn’t put Alberta first, but that’s not Ottawa’s job. Alberta doesn’t put Ottawa first, because that’s not Alberta’s job. I get it. But aren’t we all Canadians The point is Alberta benefits from being part of Canada.

What happens if the UCP goes through with this and Alberta gains but the rest of Canada suffers If we as a province think we’re already targeted, just wait until every other Canadian’s pension is worth less and costs more. If portability annoyances can’t be resolved or if the APP creates more red tape, not only will non-Albertans be furious, so too will Albertans. Merely floating the APP question has already demonstrated to the rest of Canada that we’re not all that committed to the relationship. Real-world problems will generate even less goodwill toward us.

The small house of my youth on the slopes of Nose Hill was packed full of optimism and goodwill towards my province and my country, both of which I grew up believing were examples of good sense and shared purpose at home and abroad. I don’t feel that way anymore.

Edmonton’s Curtis Gillespie has written five books of fiction and non-fiction. His magazine writing has won seven National Magazine Awards.

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A Premier’s Promises

Fred Stenson — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 09:25:46 +0000

In Robert Kroetsch’s novel The Words of My Roaring, Johnnie Backstrom, a rural undertaker, is running for Social Credit in the 1935 Alberta election. He needs an edge, and so he tells the parched farmers of his riding that, if they vote for him, it will rain. When it rains on the eve of the election, Backstrom’s victory is guaranteed.

A comparison to Danielle Smith may not seem apt. Premier Smith, after all, won an election just last spring. Why would she have needed to make ludicrous promises One reason would be if the election had been frighteningly close, but by most standards it wasn’t. She won a majority. Smith, however, might have been examining trends in Alberta and finding things potentially not so rosy for the UCP.

While Alberta’s population continues to grow at a rapid clip, it doesn’t grow uniformly. It grows fastest in cities and slowest in rural areas. The cities happen to be where the UCP is shakiest. Actually, shaky is kind. In 2023 the UCP lost Edmonton in its entirety. That’s 1.2 million (out of a province of 4.7 million) unrepresented by a UCP MLA. Even in Calgary, once thought to be an unassailable conservative bastion, the UCP lost more seats in 2023 than it won. It’s true that the UCP retained its iron grip on rural Alberta, but that’s not where the population is trending. The rural–urban shift, long underway all over the world, is projected to continue.

So maybe Smith did need to promise some kind of rain.

What the premier did promise—and has delivered on—is sovereignty, of a sort. Almost immediately after Smith’s victory in the 2022 UCP leadership race, her government passed the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act. The latter part of the title sounds tacked on out of desperation, and the back also nullifies the front, but the Act has created some advantages. When Alberta found itself on fire for most of last spring and summer, we didn’t feel shy about asking Canada to send in the military and millions of dollars in financial assistance, nor did we hesitate to allow thousands of firefighters from elsewhere in the nation to come to our aid. Without all of that, we would have been hooped—but the “sovereignty” part of the Act lets Smith keep right on being shirty about the Canada Health Act, the carbon tax and federal equalization. The “united” part is her agreeing to continue to let Canada save Alberta’s bacon. (Please understand Smith is not a fanatic, just a reasonable person like the rest of us, with her own quirky aspirations toward specialness and her vast stomach for embarrassing contradiction.)

Johnnie Backstrom was offering people what they did in fact want and need. Danielle Smith’s politics are far stranger.

An even more recent example of political rain from the UCP is Smith’s refusal to be dictated to by Justin Trudeau and the federal government on the matter of decarbonization, climate change mitigation, call it what you will—the thing with the 2035 target date. In the UCP’s concept of nature and science, the massive forest fires of 2023 are not further evidence of human-caused climate change or any reason to tamper with Alberta’s first-rate cash cow, which is to say our oil industry. Mitts off. The whole world might be acting on this problem, but Smith feels our province and its oil companies are unique. In mid-summer her defence of our oil industry took the odd form of a “seven-month pause on renewables,” a period in which a multi-billion-dollar boom has been made to stop—or rather the Alberta Utilities Commission has been ordered to stop ruling on renewable project applications.

The reasons given were strange. The premier says municipalities asked for the pause; they didn’t. (They want the tax revenues and jobs.) She says the AUC asked for the pause; it didn’t either. Another reason given is that some rural communities don’t want wind farms—and this, while not representative of a large group, is true. I know this because there is a wind farm I don’t want either. It’s a case of 47 turbines, each slightly taller than the Calgary Tower, to be built on undeveloped land where migrating trumpeter swans take rest and endangered bats could be thumped out of existence—all within the Waterton Biosphere Reserve! But did we ask for all Alberta renewables projects to stop in sympathy No.

Seeing wildlife advocates at odds with climate activists must have been an exciting moment for the premier. Perhaps her very first wedge issue…! And right there within groups traditionally pro-NDP. Of course, she went a little overboard and cost a whole lot of people who might ordinarily vote for her their (future) jobs. It’s also a little strange in the almost-sovereign-province-of-free-enterprise to send billions of capitalist-investment-dollars packing.

The thing about Johnnie Backstrom’s promise of rain was that he was offering people what they did in fact want and need. The wind-farm caesura is far stranger politics. Here, my fellow Albertans, have what you don’t want, and your government accepts your thanks.

Fred Stenson’s novels include Who By Fire, The Trade, Lightning and The Great Karoo.

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