Windsor should understand Alberta’s anger
Former Essex Conservative MP Jeff Watson had just finished outlining the economic woes of his adopted city of Calgary when I confided that Windsor councillors were grappling this week with the thorny problem of how to entice reluctant young folks to apply for once-coveted summer jobs with the city.
“Gee. That was like winning the golden ticket in those days,” winced Watson, recalling his failed bids as a teen to secure what was considered the region’s best summer job with its high pay, short work day and other perks, and you became the envy of your peers. Now kids turn their noses up at working in the elements.
Watson, who moved his family to Alberta following his defeat in the 2015 federal election that brought Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to power, said that story starkly underlines the gulf between Ontario’s prosperity and the economic misery battering Alberta, especially its former boom town energy capital, Calgary.
In Calgary, said the 48-year-old former autoworker, nobody has to be “enticed” to take a job. Instead the city is wrestling with whether to raise taxes or slash services as head offices either move to the States or drastically downsize. Billions of investment dollars have fled. “White-collar jobs are cratering,” said Watson. In downtown Calgary, the office vacancy rate exceeds 20 per cent, devastating tax revenues.
Watson, who works in the Calgary office of Alberta Transportation Minister Ric Mciver, said crime is up 50 per cent in the past five years, while the city contemplates cutting the police budget in a drastic overall civic expenditure reduction.
I contacted him because I wanted to hear a former Essex County resident’s take on the fury that has seized the West, especially Alberta and Saskatchewan, with the re-election of a Trudeau Liberal regime, albeit a minority, that most westerners consider either hostile or indifferent to their concerns. “I’m deeply concerned,” he said, “that this election was really about national unity.”
Watson downplayed talk of western separatism. He believes the “overwhelming majority” of Albertans are still federalists. But people in the rest of Canada, he said, need to understand the extreme anxiety, anger and discontent that have seized a region that has lost 150,000 high-paying oil and gas sector jobs (the equivalent of 30 automotive assembly plants) since the 2014 collapse of petroleum prices.
Watson believes the Windsor region, with its reliance on the cyclical automotive sector and its periodic recessions, might understand better than most of Ontario what Alberta is going through.
Imagine, said Watson, if the Great Recession that rocked our region in 2009 when both Chrysler and GM went bankrupt (and were rescued in Canada by a Stephen Harper government that included Watson) had gone on for years instead of months. And imagine if the government was erecting roadblocks for our vehicle exports instead of building bridges.
That’s what’s happened to Alberta, said Watson, and it has really worn down the province’s psyche. “We understand what being down looks like in Windsor.”
One thing that deeply troubles Albertans, according to Watson, is the lack of awareness in Eastern Canada of the province’s suffering. “What happens in Alberta doesn’t penetrate Ontario’s consciousness.” He blames that, in part, on a Toronto-centric media.
He holds out little hope the Trudeau regime, led by a white-collar “Laurentian Elite” that is dismissive of blue-collar work and hostile to the energy industry, will meet Alberta’s needs.
If this government responds with token gestures, like improving employment insurance provisions or offering plans to retrain oil workers for the service industry, Albertans will go nuts, Watson warned. “Albertans are way past symbolism. We want substance.”
Substance, he said, would begin with getting the endlessly delayed Trans Mountain pipeline built. “Their fear of this government would remain but it would be at least a signal that they’re willing to make a commitment.”
Windsor is all too familiar with the misery Alberta is experiencing, and our turn will come again. Alberta pumps oil. Windsor builds internal combustion engines. We are kindred spirits as well as prime targets for a green movement that is, more and more, calling the shots in Canada. God help us both when the next big downturn comes.