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'Very effective': Why Alberta is talking about autonomy — again

Many of the seven men and women vying to replace Kenney have made Alberta autonomy, in some fashion, the centrepiece of their campaign

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EDMONTON — As the candidates jockey to replace Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, Alberta alienation has become firmly wedged in the agenda. What’s perplexing is why it — along with the shadow of secession — has raised its head once again

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“Typically, these do coincide with tough economic times, but the difference being, you know, the pandemic and some of the extraordinary measures that were taken to  combat COVID-19,” said Matt Solberg, with New West Public Affairs. “It’s given people who have skepticism towards government, something to latch onto — a very real thing in which they believe Ottawa has intruded into their rights.
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“I think we’re seeing this play out in the leadership as a result of that.”

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On May 18, Kenney announced he would step down as leader of the governing United Conservative Party after narrowly winning a leadership review. As the race to replace him got underway, former Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith garnered early attention for a proposal that would, in theory, allow Alberta to opt out of federal legislation, regulatory decisions and court rulings that legislators felt ran contrary to Alberta’s interests.

While constitutionally dubious — the Alberta Sovereignty Act has been roundly panned by constitutional experts — it helped frame the early days of the leadership race, prompting the other front-runners to launch their own versions of a pro-Alberta agenda, even as they have made pointed criticisms of Smith’s proposal.

“We have campaigned against Ottawa for 120 years in this province,” noted Duane Bratt, a Mount Royal University political scientist.

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On Thursday evening, three candidates — Smith, Brian Jean, also a former Wildrose leader, and Todd Loewen, an independent MLA who represents a mostly rural northwestern Alberta riding — were to attend a forum hosted by the Alberta Prosperity Project, an openly pro-independence organization.

Many of the seven men and women vying to replace Kenney have made Alberta autonomy, in some fashion, the centrepiece of their campaign.

Jean, a founder of the ruling UCP, is running under an “Autonomy for Albertans” banner, and has his own set of proposals, including trying to get Alberta a permanent seat on the Supreme Court of Canada by reopening constitutional negotiations.

Travis Toews, the former finance minister, has promised to implement a series of targeted levies to hit back should other provinces do harm to Alberta, and has also latched onto prior proposals to create an Alberta Pension Plan and to explore the possibility of ditching the RCMP in favour of a provincial police force, along the lines of Ontario’s OPP.

Josh Andrus is the executive director of Project Confederation, a group that aims to build grassroots support for measures that would increase Alberta’s power on the federal stage. For many, Andrus said, the last seven years — when Alberta’s economy slumped due to dropping oil prices — have been “scarring,” and that’s prompted the desire for change.

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I think people are just tired of the lack of action or lack of any meaningful progress

Josh Andrus

“It was a big reason why, I think, Jason Kenney was elected in the first place. I think people are just tired of the lack of action or lack of any meaningful progress,” Andrus said.

Indeed, Alberta alienation hit its most recent high-water mark in 2019.

“You could appreciate why alienation was such a big issue in 2019,” said Bratt.

It was the period of time when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government had introduced legislation to overhaul the regulatory process for major infrastructure projects and another bill that would ban crude oil tankers in the Salish Sea. Both were widely seen as direct attacks on Alberta’s energy industry, at a time when the province had been dealing with a major collapse in oil and gas prices and challenges getting new energy projects and pipelines completed.

It was also, at the time, harnessed by Kenney’s party, which swept to power in the 2019 Alberta election promising a vigorous “fight back strategy” against the federal government, foreign governments and environmental activists. This led to the creation of the Canadian Energy Centre — colloquially known as the “war room” to counter perceived anti-Alberta propaganda — and the Fair Deal Panel, which canvassed Albertans for input and eventually brought back 25 recommendations on what the province could do to assert itself in Ottawa.

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Donna Kennedy-Glans, who co-authored the Fair Deal Panel report, said there was a considerable amount of pain they heard at the time. And years later, after the pandemic fear has waned, people are “unpacking” those feelings.

“And they’re sort of looking at it historically and saying, you know, unless there’s a prime minister in Ottawa, who … cares about our interests or understands us when we speak, we’re not going to be heard,” Kennedy-Glans said. “It is definitely being tapped into at points; I think it’s being exploited by political actors who want to get elected. They want power, and it’s something that’s been very effective.”

The Fair Deal  report largely recycled ideas contained in the Firewall Letter, a set of proposals published in January 2001 on the front page of the National Post, that urged then premier Ralph Klein to implement a series of policies to protect the province from “an increasingly hostile government in Ottawa.”

The outcomes of this strategy have been, arguably, less than successful, Solberg said.

On U.S. President Joe Biden’s first day in office in January 2021, he revoked a presidential permit and essentially killed off the Keystone XL pipeline, a project into which the Alberta government invested $1.5 billion. While the TransMountain expansion, which runs from just outside of Edmonton, Alta., to Burnaby, B.C., is still underway — and now owned by the federal government — it isn’t yet online. Also in 2020, Teck Resources Ltd. abandoned its Frontier oilsands project, a stark sign of the struggling oil and gas sector.

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Other initiatives, such as the inquiry into so-called foreign funded environmental activists, and a rash of lawsuits launched by the government, have either had little impact or failed outright, such as the legal battle against the carbon tax. And the United Conservatives’ 2021 equalization referendum, which ended with 61.7 per cent of Albertans saying equalization should be removed from the Constitution, amounted to little beyond giving Kenney a bully pulpit.

“All we’ve had is a resolution … in the legislature. Nothing’s happened other than that,” said Andrus. “That’s woken up this, this level of frustration with the fact that the system is rigged against us. We can’t even get a discussion going.”

While in progressive circles this has led to the suggestion that, perhaps, the province’s politicians — and residents — should try to play nice with the rest of the country, in conservative circles, there’s the perception that the problem was that Kenney wasn’t nearly tough enough on Ottawa.

“Simply pointing out that the federal Liberals giving Alberta a raw deal has never created leverage over the federal government,” wrote Calgary member of Parliament Michelle Rempel-Garner in a recent blog post. “The next part is harder for a politician — acknowledging that nothing that’s been tried to create leverage to date has been particularly effective, and then following that through publicly suggesting new ideas to shake things up.”

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Enter Smith and the Alberta Sovereignty Act, or Jean and his proposal to reopen the Constitution — both designed to ante up of the rhetoric surrounding Alberta’s place within confederation.

“Is the answer more fighting? Is the answer sort of the same approach, but with a little more vinegar? I’m not sure, but I think it’s clear that that is what a big chunk of the membership wants to hear,” said Solberg. “This next leader, whomever it is, is going to have to be extra cautious around that same scenario playing out where they just simply set expectations that can’t be met because it’s politically opportune to do so.”

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter:

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