Latest news with #WilliamAberhart
Calgary Herald
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Calgary Herald
Nelson: Five million reasons why PM Carney must act
Finally, there's something to celebrate in Alberta: our province just cracked the five million mark. Article content Article content Some lucky soul this past weekend made history, though they'll never know it, as the population numbers relentlessly tallied by StatCan are gathered anonymously. Article content Thus, that magic five-million milestone arrived without any fanfare, late on Sunday. (As I write, we're already diligently working on our next five million — Alberta's population now stands at 5,000,648 and counting, according to Canada's real-time population clock.) Article content Article content It's an important milestone, nevertheless, and one we should take a moment to acknowledge. Article content Article content Because it was the various struggles and triumphs of those millions who came before us that collectively turned this province into such a unique slice of Canada. Article content It's likely most Canadians would say the same of their province: how special it is. Still, there's something about Alberta that is indeed different. Article content Most Canadians beyond our provincial borders would probably describe it as a conservative place. It isn't. Sure, Albertans have voted Conservative for decades — the recent federal election cementing that political tradition. Article content But in its wider connotation, we're not conservative at all. Not in the least. That lowercase noun implies an adherence to the status quo: keeping things the same with an aversion to change. Really? When was that ever part of Alberta's DNA? Article content No, at its heart, this is a radical province: the most radical in Canada by a country mile. Article content Article content All sorts of political and social movements were born or blossomed here, from the United Farmers, to the CCF — forerunner of today's NDP — to the wild and wacky world of William Aberhart and Social Credit, and the more recent rise of the Reform party. When Emmeline Pankhurst, the famous leader of the British suffragette movement, toured Canada in 1917, it was in Calgary where she received the most vociferous welcome. Article content Article content Yes, that radical and populist strain has run through Alberta from inception, which is why anyone who dismisses the current push for a vote on separation as a silly sideshow makes a dangerous mistake. Article content This undercurrent to go it alone isn't new. It has always flowed below the surface. It took a decade of Justin Trudeau's antagonistic federal rule to turn it into a raging torrent.
Globe and Mail
12-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Alberta's separatist angst has bone-deep economic roots. Ottawa cannot ignore it
John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian. A radio personality-turned-populist Alberta premier fanning the flames of a constitutional crisis. Many Albertans convinced that central Canadian business and political big shots neither understand Alberta's economy nor the aspirations of its people. This was Alberta in 1935, under the premiership of William 'Bible Bill' Aberhart. It resembles Alberta in 2025, led by populist Premier Danielle Smith, who believes Albertans' livelihoods have been under attack for the past decade. According to Ms. Smith, the federal 'onslaught of anti-energy, anti-agriculture and anti-resource policies have scared away global investment to the tune of over a half a trillion dollars.' After the recent election of another federal Liberal government, led this time by Prime Minister Mark Carney, Ms. Smith has opened the door to a separation referendum in 2026 if, over any 120-day period, 10 per cent of voters sign a petition for one. In 1935, Aberhart wanted a separate Alberta banking system. Some in Alberta now want a separate country. What one has to do with the other is how the Eastern 'big shots,' as Aberhart called them, responded to Alberta's economic angst in the 1930s and why a replay of history could be our national undoing. Aberhart and his Social Credit Party campaigned against the Canadian banking system because the financial pipelines connecting Alberta's farmers and businesses to internal and external markets were inadequate, constraining growth and exacerbating the hardships of the Great Depression. Canada's banking system was designed in the 1870s. Its goal at the time was to generate stability and protect depositors by facilitating mostly short-term credit (a year or less) for merchants and mixed farming in Eastern Canada. Alberta, founded in 1905, needed a different system, one suited to an economy based on large single crops of wheat, oats and barley, or cattle-raising where viable. This farming required longer-term, lower-cost loans to better manage the ebbs and flows of boom-and-bust commodity markets. By 1935, Albertans were demanding change. Moderates wanted a central bank to manage monetary policy and deliver liquidity to a banking system that could then deploy longer-term loans, keeping the banking system stable. Most bankers from Toronto and Montreal were ideologically opposed to a central bank, believing it would be politicized by Ottawa. Albertans were told by bankers their commodity-driven economy was the problem and that they should mimic Ontario's diversification and make do with the economic results. Moderates won the fight to create the Bank of Canada in 1934 and it opened its doors in March the next year. But the battle for changes to the kind of lending banks could do (longer-term credit facilities that better supported Alberta's economy and consumers) was lost. Banks, for instance, were not permitted to finance even insured mortgages until 1954. Using a mix of incoherent, redistributionist assumptions (social credit), underwritten by conspiracy theories about bankers, Aberhart and his Social Credit Party promised voters in 1935 to take control of the loan policies of Canadian banks and give Albertans the credit they needed to thrive. Two years on, Social Credit hardliners wanted action and forced Aberhart's hand. The Credit of Alberta Regulation Act was passed by the provincial assembly in August, 1937, giving the province regulatory authority over the lending policies of Canada's chartered banks operating in Alberta. Legislation was enacted outlawing use of the courts to invalidate provincial statues, a 1930s attempt at what we know today as a 'notwithstanding clause.' The late constitutional expert J.R. Mallory noted that by this legislation, Alberta 'stood committed to a rejection of the financial system of Canada and of the basic assumptions of national unity in matters of national scope.' Canada was faced with a full-on constitutional crisis. John Hugill, Aberhart's attorney-general and a moderate, resigned from cabinet. Banks prepared to close all bank branches in Alberta. Ottawa acted within 10 days and disallowed Alberta's legislation under the Constitution. Establishing the Bank of Canada was considered good enough to address Alberta's concerns about banking in the early 1930s. To do more, to change the kind of banking system the country needed to support Alberta prosperity, was deemed a step too far. What the experience of Alberta and Canada in the 1930s tells us today is this: When there is opportunity for wholesale change, what looks good enough from the perspective of Ottawa and Toronto is not enough. Failure to understand this in the 1930s planted the seeds of Western alienation deep in Alberta's political soil. Failure to understand this today may well uproot Confederation as we know it in the future.
