February 21, 2020 - Loonie Politics

On Thursday evening, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner with the endorsement of three fellow Conservative MPs released what she calls the "Buffalo Declaration" a manifesto that outlines the grievances of Alberta (and to a lesser extent Saskatchewan), claiming that they are unfairly treated within Confederation, and purports to lay out some fixes to them. The problem? That much of what is contained in the document is false, absurd, and is mere misdirection when it comes to the actual problems that the province is facing. And they are serious problems but what's in this document will do nothing to solve them, and will only serve to build even more false expectations and continue ignore the kinds of solutions that are necessary.

"The reality is that there are structural inequities in Confederation that disadvantage the people I represent," Rempel Garner claimed in a video accompanying the release.

I'm immediately dubious about the whole premise of this document because during nine years of government under the Conservatives when the West "got in" several of which Rempel Garner herself was a member of Cabinet absolutely none of these so-called "structural" issues were ever raised, let alone addressed. In fact, even when world oil prices crashed under Harper's watch and Alberta went into recession, they didn't do anything about equalization (they did tinker with the formula but not in a significant way) or fiscal stabilization, and when they gutted environmental assessment legislation, they only ensured that projects wound up in litigation instead of being easily approved. They offered none of the declarations that this Declaration demands either, which is a blazing klaxon that these are a load of Grade-A horseshit.

The premise of the Declaration is that Alberta is and always has been a colony, and that it has been structurally disadvantaged from the moment it was purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company. There is no argument that the purchase itself was hugely problematic but the problems were for the Indigenous people who were displaced as a result. Treaties were supposed to ensure that land and resources were shared, but that didn't wind up happening for the most part, and when control over natural resources was turned over to the provinces, it has been argued that this was in violation of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which should have ensured Indigenous control over those resources as it was their land. The Declaration seems strangely silent on that point.

The revisionist history around the National Energy Program conveniently ignores the international fuel crisis that preceded it, or the collapse of world oil prices that occurred shortly thereafter which had a bigger impact on the oil sector than the program itself. But Alberta has been nursing this inflated grievance for forty years, and it acts a bit like the linguistic zombie virus from Pontypool, where the mention of it makes Albertans even those who never lived through it start frothing at the mouth.

The Declaration is also completely disingenuous and I would go so far as to say that it outright lies on a number of key points that it lists:

The political veto of the Northern Gateway pipeline, regulatory strangulation of Energy East, silence over U.S. President Obama's veto of the Keystone XL pipeline, passing Bills C-69 and C-48; small business tax increases, the carbon tax, nationalization of the TMX pipeline, failures to address significant trade issues with major economies like China and India; and refusal to enforce the rule of law on approved resource development projects or on illegal blockades have all served to close Alberta's economy to investment and job growth.

Where to begin? The problem with Northern Gateway was that the Indigenous consultation was so flawed that the Federal Court of Appeal nullified its permit and chastised the Harper government in the ruling for their failure to fulfil their duty to consult. There was no "regulatory strangulation" of Energy East it was not economically viable once Keystone XL was back on the table, and it was never going to be used to feed Eastern energy markets, but merely act as a route for exports. Any "silence" over the Obama veto of Keystone XL was on Stephen Harper's part, as Trudeau went to Washington to advocate for the project, and that's on record. Bill C-69 was about providing better certainty to environmental assessments after Harper's 2012 legislation simply turned into a series of lawsuits. The "small business tax increases" were in fact cuts to small business taxes and closing loopholes that ensured that a small number of high-income earners were able to shield income from taxation through personal corporations. The federal carbon price is a free market instrument (which Alberta claims to cherish) to provide price certainty for environmental externalities which was supported by major players in the energy sector. The "failure" of resolving trade issues with China and India are because China takes hostages, and India's prime minister levied tariffs (that affected Australia more than they did Canada) in order to secure rural votes in advance of his own election. As for the "rule of law" assertion on the protest blockades, that's an abuse of the term.

Other fictions in the piece claim that Alberta is the most "underrepresented province" in the Senate, which is funny because the Senate is organized along regional and not provincial lines, and not on a population basis. The demands for Senate elections will do absolutely nothing to change Alberta's situation, other than create gridlock in Parliament. As for representation in the Commons, their seats reflect their population, and if one province is under-represented in that Chamber, it's Ontario (and would have been even more so if Harper's first attempt at seat redistribution were allowed to stand). The document resorts to the usual canards about how equalization works, and it goes so far as to complain that the West is not represented in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, which is a function of the economics of news and bureaus centralizing their reporting under the aegis of media concentration and has nothing to do with supposed "Laurentian" attitudes. It also claims that the promotion of bilingualism on the Supreme Court of Canada disadvantages Albertans when they currently hold both of the designated "western" seats on the Court.

There are other bizarre grievances, such as the fact that Ottawa doesn't recognize that Alberta is "culturally distinct," and proceeds to grouse that they are written off as rednecks. As an Albertan, I can assure you that I have no idea what "cultural distinction" Alberta supposedly possesses, except perhaps the sense of entitlement drilled into us from childhood that it was our hard work and ingenuity that put the oil into the ground, and it's our hard work and ingenuity that get it out, and everyone should bow down to us for that fact.

"A line in the sand has to be drawn, and it's being drawn here today," Rempel Garner declares, and claims that this Declaration is a starting point for a discussion, but this document is simply a recitation of grievances coming from a place of emotion, and not rationality. Nothing in this document will do anything to return Alberta to the "good old days," because those days are gone and aren't coming back unless someone can invent a time machine and stop the shale revolution from happening in the US. The province has hard choices to make about its future where persistently low global oil prices and the need for decarbonization are changing the economy, and they have to start tackling them head-on. The Buffalo Declaration ignores that the world is changing, and simply seeks to blame Justin Trudeau and "Ottawa" for problems that they didn't create. If their alternative is separation, that delusion won't help them either, and they need to start having an honest conversation with themselves. This is not that honest conversation.

Photo Credit: The Western Standard

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

If I told you I was the best, thank you very much, would you consider me an egotist? Out-of-touch? Deluded? Or simply "a politician"?

I ask because Newfoundland & Labrador Premier Dwight Ball just announced his sudden retirement and in so doing said he felt "great" about his record. I'm having trouble imagining George Washington or Sir John A. Macdonald thus awarding themselves a "A+" on leaving office.

To be fair, Macdonald died in office and was not the retiring sort so he wasn't in a position to award himself anything on the way out. But you know what I mean. He would have thought it unseemly even if in private he regarded himself as marvellous. Which he might reasonably have done unlike some premiers I could name.

As for Calvin Coolidge, my favourite 20^th-century President, his verdict on himself was a characteristically tart "I should like to be known as a former President who minded his own business." But back to Ball.

His retirement was unexpected and his excuse, that he wanted to spend more time with his family, is always suspicious in such settings. Maybe he really does; politics is a gruelling and lonely business. And maybe they really want him to, not always exactly the same thing. But like his insistence that the decision to quit was his and his alone, it tends to raise skeptical eyebrows.

Be that as it may, my real question is what's the deal with the lavish self-praise? At least, my first real question.

As my reference to Washington, Macdonald and Coolidge indicates, it is unseemly. Still, we live in unseemly times, where restraint and modesty seem hopelessly square. Kim Kardashian famously tried to "break the internet" by revealing her intimate parts. Not a good look in the era of #metoo, one would think. But it has apparently done her no public relations harm.

Indeed one publication said "Whatever you think about the photos, you've gotta give the girl credit for owning her curves and sharing her body confidence with the world. Let's face it, the woman knows what people want." Which turns out to be, rather unoriginally and I'd have thought unprogressively, a shapely young woman with no clothes on. But apparently I'm behind the times.

I'm also behind the times, I gather, in objecting that a certain recent American president is fond of calling himself and his policies the best ever, his events the biggest ever and so forth and, again, it raises fewer eyebrows than it might once have done. Self-praise and self-promotion are no longer faux pas, and may indeed have become de rigueur.

Even so, here's my second real question. Assuming Ball is allowed to pronounce himself great, and need not actually have been so, can we at least know what he thinks was so great about his performance? He had been premier since December 2015, with a majority until 2019 and in a minority parliament since, and I can see him pronouncing himself tired. Or discouraged. Or unsuccessful.

Let me dwell on the last. You see, the day before the National Post carried the story of Ball's resignation, it ran a very bleak piece by Jackson Doughart on the state of governance in Ball's province. Its centrepiece was the disastrous Muskrat Falls hydro project, already backed by Ottawa with large subsidies because what the heck the money's free to us, and now needing and getting more because it has more than doubled in cost over 10 years without generating a watt of power.

Muskrat Falls is now projected to cost over $13 million, which is $26,000 for each person in the province. Also known as $104,000 per family of four. Ouch. Now the province is scrounging for quarters down behind Parliament Hill to avoid a near doubling of electricity rates next year. And while Ball did not start this ball rolling, he's been premier for much of the unfolding disaster. And what has he done to fix it?

Um yes well. But wait. It's just one thing, albeit a ruinously expensive, ill-judged one. What of his broader record? Unfortunately, as Doughart noted, "this story isn't only about Muskrat Falls, but also its impact on an over-leveraged government that's careening toward a fiscal cliff." Newfoundland & Labrador has the highest per-capita public debt in Canada. And Ball has done what about that issue?

Made it far worse, of course. Now again, he didn't invent living beyond your means. We've all been doing it, most of the time, since Trudeau Sr. (And yes, it was Stephen Harper who made the original federal loan guarantee to Muskrat Falls, during a federal election of all things.) And remember how much people loved feisty former Premier Danny Williams, the guy who refused to fly the Canadian flag, for his bad attitude. The guy under whom Muskrat Falls got started. And under which, as the Post noted, the already parlous state of provincial finances was made far worse because under Williams the province received a massive oil revenue windfall and of course spent it all on voters.

In case you don't remember, Williams' approval ratings in the province were consistently in the 70s and even 80s. Yet he was premier from 2003 to 2010. And guess what? Doughart notes that from 2005-14, which roughly overlaps with Williams' effective budgeting years, provincial per-capita spending adjusted for inflation rose 30%. There were three premiers between Williams and Ball, two holding office so briefly they may never have located the Treasury. But then came Ball and he added nearly $6 billion to the provincial debt, something on the order of $8,000 per person.

As I've said before, if you suddenly handed every family in the province a bill for $32,000 a surprising number would be in bankruptcy the next day and quite annoyed at this profligacy. But as the bill is hidden in the basement of the legislature everybody goes woo hoo, free money.

Oh, one more thing from that Post piece: "if the government had chosen to spend at the national average relative to population over the past five years, it would have saved $12 billion by now and accumulated more than $6 billion in budget surpluses."

So Ball is getting out of town as the Muskrat Follies unravel in a province that he and his predecessors have run ever deeper into already alarming debt, and feels "great" about his record. Well, I guess you've gotta give the man credit for owning his yield curves and sharing his fiscal confidence with the world. Let's face it, the man knows what people want. Which turns out to be free money and soothing words.

As for what they need, well, it's his successor's problem now. How great is that?

Photo Credit: Facebook

Day: February 21, 2020

Click here for more

Click here for more

loonie politics

premium content