As we hurtle toward the referendum vote on Alberta’s place in Confederation, I have a question: When exactly did Alberta slip into an alternate universe? I mean, at what point did we become a hornet’s nest of alternative facts, where the federal Liberals landlocked our province, destroyed our energy industry and robbed our treasury? Where the only solution to this litany of delusional complaints is to separate from the anti-Alberta hellhole that is Canada?
Today’s unhappy Albertans have taken their griping to a whole new level. These are not your grandfather’s separatists.
But they aren’t wholly to blame. They’ve been coached, encouraged and even given talking points from UCP leaders. During the party’s 2022 leadership race, for example, candidate Todd Loewen declared that prime minister Justin Trudeau “isn’t just trying to destroy the oil and gas industry, he is destroying it.” Without any sense of irony, Loewen delivered this line just a few hours after then-premier Jason Kenney had announced the province was on track to rake in a $13-billion surplus, thanks to high oil prices.
Not to be outdone by Loewen’s unhinged rhetoric, fellow contestant Danielle Smith claimed that Trudeau had stymied all pipeline construction—despite Ottawa spending tens of billions to expand Trans Mountain to the west coast. Smith also vowed to build transboundary pipelines without Ottawa’s permission, ignore federal laws deemed to be un-Albertan, and stop an imagined plot to force Canadians to get vaccinated.
But Smith and Loewen weren’t the first to take Albertans down the garden path. The trailblazer was Kenney himself, who orchestrated the referendum vote on October 18, 2021, in which 62 per cent of Albertans voted to end the federal equalization program. It was all a ruse. Kenney knew all too well that a single province can’t overturn the Constitution.
That referendum was based not on fact but on emotion, part of Kenney’s “Fight Back” strategy, which included a “Fair Deal” panel that recommended an Alberta pension plan, provincial police and more control over immigration. To preserve his UCP leadership, Kenney inflamed disgruntled Albertans’ emotions by suggesting they could change the conditions of Confederation unilaterally. He passed a law to allow citizen-led petitions—e.g., on separation—to become referendum questions.
Past Alberta premiers, most notably Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein, had managed to stand up to Ottawa while dismissing talk of separation and keeping a lid on Alberta’s fringe elements.
Nowadays Kenney speaks out against separation, but a few years ago he was actively recruiting what he’d later call “lunatics” into the UCP. When Kenney failed to live up to his promises, those people turned on him, forced him out as party leader and premier, and elevated Smith to the premier’s chair.
Kenney’s fate was a warning to Smith: Don’t upset the lunatics. She’s pushed ahead with a political agenda that plays to Albertans who want to break from Canada. She has gone so far as to bypass a court ruling that disallowed a referendum question on whether Albertans should separate.
This is not to say Albertans have no legitimate gripes. Alberta has rankled at flawed aspects of Confederation over the years, such as its underrepresentation in the Senate, a tendency to be an afterthought in federal elections (in part because Albertans’ votes are so predictable as to be taken for granted by all parties) and perceived issues with the equalization formula.
But under the UCP government, those grievances have been inflamed, distorted and weaponized to such a degree they have become not just a mockery but a parody of themselves.
Here are the real-world facts. The federal government has now spent $34-billion to buy and expand the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Ottawa is working with Alberta to try to build another pipeline. Alberta is exporting more oil than ever before. And the province has the highest per-capita GDP in the country. Economist Trevor Tombe, who has been an adviser to Smith, has warned that Alberta would only get poorer by separating.
Smith still wants it both ways. She’s now campaigning for the pro-Canada side in the referendum but says she’ll accept the result if Albertans want to pursue separation. The debate has popped the lid off Alberta’s own Pandora’s box.
Even if, as I expect, a strong majority of Albertans reject separation, the disgruntled minority will not immediately go away. Inflamed by misinformation, disinformation and outright falsehoods propagated at times by the Alberta government itself, it’s difficult to imagine them giving up the fight. And rather than just target the federal government, they may well make life very uncomfortable for Danielle Smith. Just ask Jason Kenney.
Graham Thomson is an Edmonton-based political commentator who has covered Alberta politics since the early Don Getty era.
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