How Do You Handle a Problem Like Alberta?

 Let us be clear. There is no such thing as “western alienation.” Manitoba and B.C. do not share the aggressively negative views of Ottawa that are currently promoted by Alberta premier Danielle Smith, and Saskatchewan’s angst is only a pale imitation of the phenomenon more appropriately labeled “Alberta Alienation”.

Despite this misnomer, however, the fact remains that one province in Canada seems to be mightily unhappy these days. And that province has become a far more significant impediment to the healthy functioning of Canadian federalism than ever before. Yes, in one sense this unhappiness is nothing new. Hundreds of books have been written about Alberta’s historic grievances. But while several provincial premiers, including venerable former premier Peter Lougheed, may have framed the federal government as their adversary in provincial election campaigns while ignoring their actual opposition, they did not make a career out of attacking federal government policies – or individual politicians — at every opportunity throughout their time in office. Nor did they stray beyond the bounds of civil discourse and democratic convention.

Not so Ms. Smith. She has described the federal government’s climate change and environmental protection policies as “Ottawa’s unhinged vendetta” against her province,[i] and in a recent, highly controversial interview with American rightwing commentator and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson, she actually suggested that he “put federal environment minister Stephen Guilbeault in his crosshairs.”[ii] She has accused the prime minister of “demonizing” her province and declared she will “not stand idly by while Justin Trudeau sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for his extreme agenda.”[iii]

In comparison with the wide-ranging list of affronts to Alberta “sovereignty” that have been identified by Smith and her immediate predecessor, former UCP premier Jason Kenney, even one of the more noteworthy bones of contention of the past, the National Energy Program, now appears to be a minor irritant. And keep in mind Lougheed and prime minister Pierre Trudeau arrived at an amicable agreement on that one.

Of course the perennial issue of energy policy is still on Ms. Smith’s radar. But now she is heavily invested in a new battle with Ottawa. This time it is not ownership of the oil and gas sector that is in dispute, but the competing claims of the province’s pre-eminent industry and environmentalists committed to fighting climate change.  And environmentalists, of course, are seen by Albertans as a central Canadian phenomenon driving the actions of a left-wing Liberal government in Ottawa, conveniently ignoring the serious resistance to non-renewable energy prevalent in neighbouring BC.

This longstanding conflict over energy policy is at least motivated by blatant economic self-interest on Alberta’s part, something which can be understood and hopefully addressed by negotiation and compromise.  But many other perceived federal slights and injustices raised by Kenney and Smith increasingly appear to be based either on hardline ideology or electoral opportunism, rendering them much less receptive to rational discourse. 

This was exemplified by the so-called equalization debate launched by Jason Kenney. Despite having been a minister in the Harper government that revised the equalization formula a few years earlier, one of Kenney’s first acts as premier was to call into question the whole concept of equalization, which is entrenched in the constitution as an important Canadian value. Even while knowing this, Kenney launched a citizen referendum on the subject, allegedly in order to ensure Alberta got a “fair deal from Ottawa.” That referendum asked Albertans if they wanted to remove the section in the constitution that enshrines equalization, thereby implying, incorrectly, not only that the current equalization formula disadvantages the province, but that Alberta and/or the federal government could effect constitutional change unilaterally.[iv] Not surprisingly, given this deliberate disinformation, some 63% of Albertans voted yes. Perversely this led to many Albertans’ expressing further frustration with Ottawa, rather than Kenney, when they learned the vote had been meaningless.  Meanwhile in announcing what he labelled as “overwhelming” support for his position, (some 63% of those who actually voted), Kenney also said that “while the vote was about removing equalization, he actually wants to use it as leverage to address all federal transfers that he feels are unfair to Alberta.”[v]

Since then Danielle Smith has made Kenny’s equalization referendum fight with the federal government look like a minor lover’s quarrel when compared with her vitriolic no-holds-barred rhetoric and contrarian views. Her dislike of all things Ottawa resulted in her proposals to replace the RCMP with a provincial police force, the Canada Health Act with a made-in-Alberta plan, and the Canada Pension Plan with an Alberta-based one that she also believes should receive some 50% of the funds in the current national plan as a startup. On the environmental front, she has not only launched several legal challenges against proposed and existing federal legislation, but dismantled any and all alternative energy programs created by her predecessors and opened the door to more intensive development of the oilsands.

Smith’s aggrieved stance is often combined with an argument, as in the case of equalization, that Alberta is being impoverished by the various ‘unfair’ treatments ‘imposed’ on the province by Ottawa. Since residents of the province continue to enjoy the highest average annual income in the country, and since the Alberta government continues to eschew imposing any sales tax as a source of revenue (the only province to do so) it is not surprising that economists are unconvinced. Yet more recently Smith has made Alberta the only province to claw back the newly-announced $200 federal disability benefit, a move which could actually cost the most vulnerable residents of that province. She has also doubled down on anti-vaxxer rhetoric and announced that the province will now make all but extremely vulnerable seniors in long term care homes pay at least $100 for COVID vaccine shots that have until now been free for all, as is the practice in all other provinces.[vi] Her stated reason? The province needs to cut costs. Given that her earlier rejection of measles vaccine has led that province to experience the most cases in all of North America this summer, one can only speculate on the disastrous consequences of this decision. 

And what can one sensibly say about Smith’s signature  Alberta Sovereignty Act, (which allegedly “is designed to “protect” Alberta from federal laws and policies that the Alberta legislature deems to be unconstitutional or harmful to Albertans or the province’s economic prosperity, in areas such as natural resources, gun control, COVID-19 public health, education, and agriculture”)[vii], apart from the fact that it has been widely panned and considered by many legal scholars to be blatantly unconstitutional? Even former premier Kenney has described it as a “full-frontal attack on the rule of law”, as well as a step towards separation and a “banana republic.”[viii]

All of this aggressive discourse about Ottawa and its unfair treatment of Alberta, including the considerable amount of misinformation and disinformation promoted by the government, has not surprisingly taken its toll on the average Albertan’s perceptions of Canada.  One important study of voter intentions, related to the 2023 provincial election that delivered a majority for Smith, found that fully 88% of supporters of Smith and the UCP party could be described as having internalized a high level of disinformation. The same study also found that some 51.6% of all Albertans, and 82% of those who voted for the UCP, agreed that the federal government could never be trusted to do the right thing for the province.[ix]

Meanwhile Smith has her own problems with opponents on the far right. Many commentators argue that it is precisely her endless critiques of the federal government that have led to a growing Alberta separatist movement. Recent polls have found that some 30% of Albertans are now seriously committed to the idea of separation from Canada, and possible integration with the United States. While this level of disaffection is obviously a serious concern, it is perhaps equally remarkable that some 67% of the province’s residents are still firmly committed to remaining in Canada, despite their misgivings about the intentions of the federal government.[x]

Last but hardly least, Ms Smith has taken a contrarian view on almost all of the positions put forward by the federal government and her fellow premiers regarding the ongoing tariff wars with the United States. Rather than accepting the importance of teamwork, Smith actually visited president Trump in Florida on her own, to request that he exempt the oil and gas industries from his plans. The move sparked widespread criticism and led Ontario premier Doug Ford to denounce her behaviour publicly. [xi]

In short, it is increasingly clear that Alberta has replaced Quebec as the problem child of confederation. This leads to the obvious question of what can be done to rectify this situation.

In the 1984 federal election, prime minister Kim Campbell famously declared “an election is no time to discuss policy.” This off-the-cuff remark not surprisingly became the butt of media and public scorn from which Campbell, the newly elected party leader who had been prime minister for barely 100 days, never recovered. Many saw this debacle as a classic rookie campaign mistake. Yet there was more than a grain of truth in her frank assessment. The sad fact is that elections by then had already become popularity contests and media circuses, where the window of opportunity for serious discussion of policy options had shrunk, along with the length of campaigns themselves, in the face of mass communications technology.

Needless to say, in the current era of social media, misinformation and disinformation, no politician or political party could possibly correct the raft of widespread misconceptions held by the general public during the course of a five-week campaign. Put another way, an election now is emphatically not the time to set the record straight. In the case of Alberta what is needed is an immediate, concerted and intensive effort to not only disabuse individuals of their misconceptions about the federal government, but to monitor and redress as necessary any further misleading commentaries by Smith and other Alberta politicians on a timely basis.

An excellent precedent for this approach can be found in the Plan B program adopted by the Chretien government in the aftermath of the second referendum on Quebec independence. That campaign, in which the arguments of the “Yes” side were notoriously misleading, led prime minister Jean Chretien to decide an aggressive proactive federal information campaign was needed, directed at future claims by then premier and separatist Lucien Bouchard and his government. Chretien recruited a well-known Quebec federalist, Stephane Dion, to be his point person on the file, and Dion went on to prove devastatingly effective at discrediting the premier’s rhetoric. By the time Chretien left office, support for separation in Quebec had fallen to its lowest level since the 1970’s and Bouchard had admitted defeat and left public life.

This, then, is the challenge. For too long Alberta politicians have been able to plant the seeds of mistrust and misinformation about Canadian federalism with impunity. In the past, Liberal majorities have been formed without support from Alberta, and there was no perceived urgency to undo such misinformation. Clearly this was a mistake. Now, with the need for all hands on deck to assure Canada’s future economic prosperity and sovereignty, the importance of ensuring individual Albertans are equipped with factual and relevant information about the state of the federation is not merely desirable but essential. It is up to the federal government to create an information program and communications strategy to take on this challenge as an urgent priority.