Can Notley win over business leaders?
One must say this for Alberta Premier Rachel Notley: She really has learned how to land the punchline. Two years ago, when she was elected to lead the province, the surprise NDP premier addressed the Calgary Chamber of Commerce with praise for federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and the promise of a royalty review. The room died.
On Friday, to the same audience, she came out swinging: “I spent the earlier part of the week out in Ontario — you know, the home of those Eastern bastards,” she said.
She was not referring to Torontonians, per se, she insisted: “I am, of course, referring to those soon-tobe-trampled Toronto Argonauts.”
No politician in Alberta will ever fail to score a point by making fun of Toronto.
And, indeed, in stark contrast to her previous chamber speech, Notley received a standing ovation on Friday. Although the NDP still looks like it faces a bitter fight in the next election, slated for 2019 — the incumbent party is down 24 points in the polls in the face of a newly merged United Conservative Party — Notley wouldn’t be wrong to take the positive reception as a welcome early sign.
Notley is near the end of a cross-Canada tour, making a final pitch about the importance of the Trans Mountain Pipeline in B.C.
Both she and federal natural resources minister Jim Carr are expected to highlight the line’s benefits at a Greater Vancouver Board of Trade forum this week.
Notley is now unequivocal in her support for pipelines, and credits much of Alberta’s social safety net to the province’s energy industry.
She’s told the federal Liberals to “step up” on energy project approvals; at the chamber speech, she even lambasted the NEB’s decision to include downstream emissions during pipeline approval processes: "(That) was a historic overreach, something that no other industry is subject. It should not, it cannot be a precedent in the future.”
Even the NDP’s royalty review process came to nothing; it found that royalty rates should remain as they are.
Notley’s government also instituted a carbon tax and a $15 minimum wage hike; and the economy still feels fragile. Barely a week goes by when some noted Calgary business doesn’t shut its doors for good, citing the lagging economy and pending wage hikes.
Further, the domestic pro-pipeline tour seems especially geared to the hometown crowd. This is a premier who is trying to play for Calgary business; and if she can succeed, the UCP has reason to be concerned.
Even UCP MLA Ric McIver responded warmly to Notley’s overtures.
“I would say, in all fairness, the premier delivered a nice speech today and she did a good job of it, and she got a better reaction this year,” he told media after Notley’s address. “She sounded a lot more like Jason Kenney or like a UCP member when she got the applause.”
Many have disagreed with Notley’s ambitious legislative record, but she’s hardly played the radical. And if she can play off the federal and B.C. NDP by stressing the party’s traditional support for working class people — like the ones who are making a living in Alberta’s energy sector — this, too, will go over well at home.
The outstanding question of Notley’s regime is whether any of it has been enough; the carbon tax, the oilsands emissions cap, the sustainability plan. None of it seems to have bought the good will or social licence required of the rest of the country to put the pipeline proxy wars behind us.
But, then, none of what has been proposed by the UCP seems likely to do the trick either. Conservative Party leader Kenney’s proposals — scrapping the carbon tax, killing oil permits, taking the federal government to court, and holding largely theatric referenda — will do nothing to engender goodwill or force anyone’s hand. But Alberta might feel good doing it.
Which is due warning for Ottawa and B.C. both: Alberta has done everything the rest of Canada could reasonably have requested, short of rolling over and dying. Notley is Alberta’s nice guy. Kenney will be less so. There will be no credible national climate change strategy without Alberta. And no buy-in from Alberta if she feels she is not treated fairly.
SHE SOUNDED A LOT MORE LIKE JASON KENNEY OR LIKE A UCP MEMBER.