Smith asks for Albertans' trust
Premier aims for a future we may not see with plans to boost the Heritage Fund
For a province long thought of as a bastion of conservatism, there's been little actual conserving going on in Alberta these past 40 years.
And our current premier didn't seem the type to start. Her campaign for the top job was built around standing up to Ottawa and righting perceived pandemic injustices, then pivoted to starting a provincial pension plan and jumping into the fire pit of today's identity politics.
But, seemingly out of some perceived farright field, Danielle Smith last week emerged as the type of small “c” conservative premier this province has needed ever since Peter Lougheed went on TV back in 1982 and famously announced: “Folks, it's raining out there.”
Indeed it was. Alberta was hurting big time: tens of thousands were losing their jobs as international energy companies fled, thanks to Trudeau the Elder's now infamous made-in-canada energy policy. Mortgage rates hit the high teens and houses sold for a single buck to those infamous dollar dealers, thereby allowing many families to flee back to places they'd recently arrived from, such as Ontario and the Maritimes.
It's why Lougheed announced that night his government would introduce a mortgage subsidy program and reduce those ruinous rates. This financial lifeline would come courtesy of Alberta's rainy-day piggy bank, better known as the Heritage Savings Trust Fund.
If anyone had the moral authority to do this it was Lougheed, because he'd pushed for the fund's formation a half-dozen years earlier; one in which 35 per cent of annual energy royalties would be saved so future generations would be protected when the oil ran out.
But that night the game changed. Suddenly, this heritage fund wasn't a sacred promise to Albertans yet to be born. It could be raided in bad times. And, of course, the definition of what constitutes bad times has since broadened so much that even the slightest pause in the relentless demand that government be responsible for everything, everywhere, is immediately scorned as some imminent return to the Dirty '30s.
Hence, the trust fund became a slush fund: and not a very big one. A mere $22 billion sits in its coffers today, unlike the Norwegian one, modelled on Alberta's, holding $1.6 trillion.
Sure, there were occasional deposits — Klein's government once pushed a few billion its way and Smith's lot did the same a year ago. But the impetus was surplus cash from an unexpected windfall. Other than that, various governments have sucked out earnings and spent them on prospective voters: a crude, but effective re-election strategy.
Then up stepped Smith with another TV address.
She echoed Lougheed's original vision — to provide support for future Albertans not cushioned by $16 billion a year in royalty payments. To do so, she wants to pour much more into the fund annually, aiming to have as much as $400 billion invested by that planned net-zero emissions date of 2050.
As we'll likely hear more about in today's budget, this will require increases in spending to be kept below both the rate of inflation and population growth, while a promised tax cut will be shelved.
Immediately the howls of outrage erupted — from Calgary's mayor to the public sector unions to the NDP. Yet, Smith is only doing what they've long demanded — transitioning away from the roller-coaster of provincial energy revenues and acknowledging Alberta faces a net-zero future in carbon emissions.
But as usual, everyone wants someone else to pay. In this case, the suckers are Albertans not yet born. That is weak, selfish and hypocritical, given the noise those same folk make about saving the planet by moving away from fossil fuel use.
Finally, an Alberta premier stood up and appealed to the better angels of our nature: that we'll take a little discomfort for a better tomorrow, even if we're not around to see it.
No wonder people are confused.