Alberta's grievances aren't actually reasonable

National Observer

2 days ago

It's time I gave Danielle Smith some credit: she certainly knows how to create a distraction. Her recent efforts to empower and enable Alberta's separatist movement have consumed so much of the political and media oxygen in the province that it's hard to talk about her government's various scandals and self-inflicted wounds, from the ongoing collapse of the healthcare system to the deliberate kneecapping of the province's renewable energy sector.
The bad news here, at least for the separatists she's given so much hope lately, is that the idea of an independent Alberta remains as unpopular as ever. A recent Janet Brown poll of Albertans conducted for CBC Calgary shows support for separatism remains stuck around 30 per cent, with the biggest recent change actually being a surge in self-reported attachment to Canada.
The idea that Alberta is being deliberately screwed over by Ottawa, on the other hand, finds far more favour. In a May 13 press conference — one where he refused to publicly condemn Alberta's separatists — Pierre Poilievre told reporters that Albertans have 'a lot of legitimate grievances,' ones that revolve almost entirely around the treatment of the oil and gas industry. 'Let's be blunt,' he said. 'Canada's biggest industry … largely situated in Alberta, has been under attack for the last decade.'
It's worth noting that said 'attack' includes the construction of the first two pipelines to Pacific tidewater in 70 years, one of which was paid for by Canadian taxpayers. Said 'attack' has also resulted in massive production growth and record profits for Canada's oil and gas industry. Most industries would probably kill to be 'attacked' like this.
Even so, this willful misrepresentation of the relationship between Ottawa and Alberta has become a shared reflex among Canada's Conservative political and pundit class. In a recent Financial Post column, Diane Francis — who once argued for an American 'merger' with Canada — hit all the familiar talking points. 'None of these complaints are new,' she wrote, 'but now they are potentially nation-busting. Albertans are not a bunch of whiny separatists, but have legitimate grievances that deserve respect and remedy.'
Do they, though?
Francis highlights Ottawa's 'unfair equalization system,' a system that nine years of a Stephen Harper-led Conservative government declined to change. It's true that Albertans pay more in federal taxes on a per-capita basis than other provinces, a reality owing entirely to the fact that they make more money than people in other provinces. They pay the same tax rates as other Canadians, and would continue to even if the entire equalization program was eliminated tomorrow.
Francis also highlights the 'unfair seat distributions in the House of Commons,' which she says 'favours Liberal-voting provinces at the expense of the West.' Alas, this isn't actually true. After the most recent electoral redistribution process, one that saw three seats added in Alberta, the most under-represented province in parliament in terms of the ratio of seats to population is actually Ontario. Two of the more over-represented provinces, meanwhile, are Saskatchewan — not exactly a Liberal stronghold — and Manitoba.
Whether it's Jason Kenney or Naheed Nenshi, federalist politicians in Alberta seem more than happy to accept Danielle Smith's framing of the province's relationship with Ottawa. That's a mistake — one that could prove fatal to Canada's future.
But these are mere appetizers to the main course on Alberta's menu of grievances: the treatment of the oil and gas industry. To hear Francis and others tell it, the current Liberal government has single-handedly stood between the province and its rightful status as a global oil and gas superpower.
The facts, as much as they even matter to grievance-hungry Albertans, don't support their feelings. As I've written before, previous federal governments — and, specifically, Liberal federal governments — have played a key role in helping Alberta's oil and gas industry. The feds directly funded some of the earliest oilsands ventures, and stepped in to backstop them when private sector partners pulled out. It changed the tax treatment of oilsands projects to make them more economically viable, which helped precipitate the massive boom in the early 2000s that many Albertans remember fondly. And yes, it got the Trans Mountain pipeline built in the face of opposition from provincial and local governments in British Columbia.
Even the dreaded National Energy Program would have been a boon to the oil sands if it hadn't been killed by Brian Mulroney's government. Yes, it would have built the very east-west pipelines that so many Conservatives have spent years pining for lately. But it also would have paid a premium for oilsands crude that would have generated hundreds of billions in extra revenue for the industry according to University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach.
Most of the angst in Alberta today revolves around Ottawa's ongoing attempts to reduce carbon pollution, involving varying proportions of carrots and sticks. Both the oil and gas industry and the Alberta government have committed to the same carbon neutrality targets, which makes their reflexive opposition to any policies aimed at achieving that goal deeply telling. But even here, and maybe especially here, the dreaded federal government isn't trying to 'kill' the industry. If anything, it's trying to save it from itself.
That's because it's easy to imagine a post-Trump future in which demand for oil has begun to decline and the carbon intensity of fossil fuel exports is penalized [or, taken into account] by importers (like, say, the ones in Europe). If Canada's oil producers don't start preparing for the net-zero world they claim they're committed to building, they're either going to be left behind or forced to eat an ever-larger discount on their barrels. And while Alberta's government has only offered a 12 per cent tax credit on carbon capture and storage projects, Ottawa is offering 50 to 60 per cent right now. Which one is the problem again?
Rather than retreating from these facts, the defenders of Canadian unity need to help Albertans better understand them. The more they cater to this jaundiced view of confederation, one in which Alberta is a perpetual victim, the more they undermine its durability. Danielle Smith and her fellow separatist enablers are telling Albertans one version of the story. It's time for the rest of us to tell them the truth before support for separation actually starts to grow.