Fair Deal report details shelved until pandemic eases
Only a few months ago, the UCP would have run a report from its Fair Deal panel straight up the legislature flagpole.
Now, it’s been tucked away in a quiet corner, the contents undisclosed.
Launched amid flaming rhetoric only last November, the ideas for a provincial police force and an Alberta pension fund now look overheated in the face of COVID -19.
Premier Jason Kenney created the Fair Deal panel partly as a counterweight to growing separatist feeling. He said the sentiment had to be heard and the people respected, although he did not agree with them.
Last Friday, the government said the report has been received but won’t be released “until the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over.”
Asked when that moment will come, a government official estimated about two months from now. As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, there may still be an appetite for deep reforms considered by the Fair Deal panel.
They include provincial income tax collection; holding a referendum on equalization; opting out of any federal pharmacare program with funding compensation; and creating a formal provincial constitution.
But for now — and maybe for some time — COVID-19 has changed perceptions, perhaps including the view of separatism.
It must be hard even for ardent separatists to imagine Alberta being alone in a crisis like this, without help from a national government.
The thought is terrifying, frankly.
Alberta would have to pay vast amounts more in pandemic supports. This year’s provincial deficit, now estimated to be about $20 billion, could double or triple.
To be clear, separation is no part of the Fair Deal mandate.
But the health crisis also shows the risk of Fair Deal talking points that are within Alberta’s constitutional rights and seem to be on Kenney’s to-do list.
If a provincial pension plan were in place, for instance, it could collapse under the weight of the imploding economy, unemployment and lost investment income.
A bad bet against stock prices recently cost provincial investment arm AIMCO $4 billion. And AIMCO already manages public sector pension funds for nearly 400,000 Albertans.
The pandemic has also brought out some of Canada’s best qualities at a moment when national unity was increasingly shaky.
The provinces have all done things slightly differently, adapting responses to their own needs, but with the shared goal of suppressing the disease by using sound scientific practices.
They routinely share information, ideas and resources. The provincial differences actually encourage innovation and improvement.
Earlier on, the Justin Trudeau government had a moment when it was tempted to declare the federal Emergency Act.
Wisely, Ottawa didn’t go through with it. Rather than assuming provincial powers nationwide, a sure recipe for bureaucratic disaster, the feds concentrated on direct help for individuals, businesses and key institutions.
Faced with real crisis, the nation’s many moving parts started shambling along in the same direction with goodwill and little destructive partisanship.
Compare that with the ugly scenes from the U.S. — the political weaponizing of a health crisis, sometimes with real weapons; the bizarre quackery in the White House — and we can be grateful to Canadian politicians for handling the crisis with decency and dignity.
But there have been discordant notes that show all the old problems are waiting in the wings.
Green party MP Elizabeth
May and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-francois Blanchet declared the oil and gas industry dead. They said it has no right to federal support.
It would be wonderful if the collaboration born of COVID-19 became the new national norm; and even better if no Albertans thought the Fair Deal measures were necessary.
A fantasy?
After all this we have the right to one or two.