Danielle Smith's lies are a bigger threat to Alberta than the liberals

Alberta angst is the gift that keeps on giving for conservative leaders.

Since Alberta Premier Danielle Smith “predicted” a national unity crisis in January, threatened a national unity crisis in March, approved legislative changes to reduce the required signatures needed for citizen initiatives at the end of April, and then followed up the next week by committing to put a separation referendum to Albertans if a citizen initiative petition to do so was successful, her actions should be viewed through the lens of ensuring the national unity crisis she obviously wants to create happens.

Charitably, Ms. Smith is a victim of the lies she wants to believe and those she makes up herself. Therefore, I do think she believes what many of her supporters do: the way to get concessions from Ottawa is as “easy” as threatening a national unity crisis. In the minds of those who want every answer to be the easy one, “it worked for Quebec”.

Quebec gets “concessions” or “special treatment” because they have electoral weight to throw around. Alberta, a province that typically refuses to vote anything but conservative, does not. My favourite example to use is from 2014 when Jason Kenney, then-Minister of Employment in Stephen Harper’s majority government, stated that while pipelines were “strategically important”, referring to two projects proposed to move Alberta oil through B.C., “no particular project is a national priority.”

Making the TMX expansion a “national interest”, however, is precisely what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had to do in order to overcome opposition to the project in B.C..

Albertans didn’t stop voting for the CPC when they, in a majority government, wouldn’t use their political capital to get the pipeline built, and neither would they acknowledge the political capital the liberals spent to do it.

Ergo, conservatives can take Alberta’s votes for granted and Albertans will not punish them for it. Quebeckers would never stand for that. Hence, they have political weight to throw around.

Is the Liberal-NDP alliance in the room with us right now?

On Wednesday, Danielle Smith compared fears in “the east” over the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs on the auto, steel, aluminum, and lumber industries to manufactured claims that federal policy has cost the province “hundreds of billions” in investment over the past ten years.

Big fears like big numbers.

No one likes economic instability (unless it can be forced with a separation referendum). Albertans have been through so many booms and busts that economic instability is always just an oil price drop away.

When I need to find out what’s going on with oil and gas in Alberta, I look outside the country to avoid the spin cycle much of that information is put through here. I know it’s easier to just blame the liberals for decreased oil and gas investment. Conservative leaders know it too, and they’ve come up with the easiest solution: just don’t vote liberal. Easy peasy! All your worries will fade away and your feelings will be good!

Blech.

Full disclosure: I’ve been angry at oil and gas companies, the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, and then the Alberta NDP after them, since 2018. Why? Because in 2018, I discovered that oil and gas companies shelved new projects in 2014. Oil and gas field workers are mostly sub-contracted temporary employees. They sign on for the duration of the project and after that project is complete, they move on to the next one. This is how it works for a huge majority of Albertans who work in the industry.

I was working as a career coach after the downturn and I had a lot of clients who came from oil and gas and could not find work. It wasn’t until after I’d been writing about Alberta politics for a couple of years that I found out those workers could have been told, in 2014, that there would be no new projects waiting for them after they completed the ones they were working on until summer/fall of 2015 — but they weren’t. Therefore, I was mad at oil and gas for not taking care of their employees.

I got mad at the PCAA because Jim Prentice knew those projects were being shelved as well, and the NDP should have after they formed government, and neither of them said a word either.

I’m an idealist who thinks government should have the spine to tell people about things that will actually affect their livelihoods, even if it’s not what they want to hear.

Yet another reason I happily remain unfit for public office.

Back to oil and gas investment, which has seen a decrease of over 40 per cent in greenfield (new) projects in North America since 2014, according to a 2024 report for the Gas Exporting Countries Forum. Greenfield projects that have seen continued levels of investment since 2014 have been small and medium-sized — as in, excluding oil sands because those projects are massive, capital intensive, and years away from reaching production (aka; return on investment).

Brownfield (existing) projects have also seen continued, but necessarily less, investment. Again, in Alberta, this would refer mostly to smaller expansion projects in the oil sands; more temporary, shorter terms than a single large project.

Ironically, it was the pause, or delay, of new projects in 2014 that allowed Jason Kenney to pad the provincial budget with a whopper of royalty revenue in 2021: over $20 billion. Oil and gas had long since figured out the loophole to retain the lower rates: always expand. Once they stopped expanding, capital investment was paid off and higher royalty rates finally applied.

The other reason I prefer to look outside the country for this information is because neither the Prime Minister of Canada, nor a provincial Premier, has any control over U.S. regulations. If the “Trudeau-Notley-Singh alliance” was to blame for decreased investment in oil and gas development in the province, the U.S. would not be having a similar experience.

Clean up on aisle five

The time has finally come, it seems, for a conservative leader to be held to their promise to finally end the disastrous relationship with the rest of Canada that they’ve been pointing at and whining about for decades. The name of one who didn’t rely on that anger against Ottawa to bolster their own electoral chances escapes me, but I am not optimistic many will ever bother to examine their personal contributions.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is, they’ve made it everyone else’s problem, and they’re still demanding someone else fix it.

Just one sticking point: no one else can.

Every conservative leader in recent memory has been labeled a “liberal” when they try to move away from their talking points. Jim Prentice couldn’t blame Ottawa because Stephen Harper was still Prime Minister, and that led to him trying to tell Albertans they were responsible for their fiscal situation. Jason Kenney swooped in to grab the grievance baton. Brian Jean’s brief foray into reasonableness ended with being attacked by his own team. Jason Kenney’s attempt to rein in the “lunatics” failed miserably with Danielle Smith drawing the “hope” from their ire like a magnet. Erin O’Toole’s “I hold the pen on the platform” moment was used by Pierre Poilievre to deliver the death blow. And Pierre Poilievre, when the moment presented itself to do more, to be able to reach more Canadians, could not manage to centre himself without putting himself in the same position that weakened Erin O’Toole. And Mr. Poilievre knows, I’m certain, that there is someone on his team waiting for their moment to step on him as well.

Almost certainly, there is someone waiting with baited breath for Danielle Smith to fail, too.

They have built this anger, tapped it when they wanted something, and then skated through their term without acting.

It’s the unfortunate side effect of only having rhetoric and behavioural conditioning behind you.

Our provincial leaders have made big speeches about how bad Alberta is treated, and how bad we have it here. We shouldn’t be grateful that we make a lot of money, we should be angry that we have to pay tax. We shouldn’t be thankful for the wealth of our resources, we should be angry that it also benefits other Canadians.

Well, congratulations — you won. Albertans are angrier than they’ve ever been and they want it fixed, once and for all.

And no one else can.

Admitting someone else might have something to offer Albertans takes away their power — it takes away their advantage.

This is the mess they made and no one else can clean it up for them.

The only question is whether they are willing to give up their losing coalition to save the province, and possibly the country, for the rest of us.

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