Will Alberta endanger climate goals?
Danielle Smith has a majority government in Alberta.
It may be razor thin, the smallest in provincial history in fact. She may have lost to the NDP’s Rachel Notley in Alberta’s two major cities, she presides over a province split along rural-urban and ideological lines and is expected to face threats from within during her tenure. But a majority is a majority.
That’s what we know.
What will unspool in the coming months are answers to some pretty big questions. Specifically, which Smith is set to govern, what impact, if any, the Alberta vote could have nationally, and its impact on Ottawa’s climate change goals.
Smith is an accomplished communicator and she used those skills to her advantage over the course of the campaign. Whether she was following a script or is evolving into a more responsible, polished leader has yet to be determined, but she benefited from voter behaviour that is becoming increasingly prevalent, the notion that views of a leader are “baked-in” and met with a shrug as long as he or she is wearing the right team colours and the bad guys on the other side need to be held at bay.
Voters already knew that she had compared the province’s unvaccinated to followers of Hitler and felt they were the most discriminated people in the history of her province, that a “neutral” Ukraine could assuage the fears that led to Vladimir Putin’s invasion, that doctors should never again lead the response to a pandemic and that the provincial ethics commissioner had concluded her intervention in the case of a radical anti-vaccine street pastor charged with his role in the blockade at the Coutts border was “a threat to democracy.”
This “baked-in” voter determination has popped up regularly in recent years — most obviously among Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters — but the Alberta of 2023 may not be an ideal laboratory to study this phenomenon nationally. Smith and her United Conservatives were dragged to victory by the weight of conservative history in the province; a historical pull that is clearly waning.
Smith chose blandishments over blasphemy and avoided thinking out loud over the campaign, but she also stayed clear of some issues as well.
What of her goal to create an Alberta pension plan or a provincial police service, her musings on privatizing hospitals or her much ballyhooed Sovereignty Act? Were they mere baubles for the base, fully formed thought bubbles, or are they still sitting in her back pocket, to be pulled out with her majority?
Most alarming was Smith’s call to arms for all Albertans to battle the Trudeau government on its quest to meet carbon neutral targets, including his “just transition” for energy workers moving to cleaner energy jobs, regulating power plants fuelled by natural gas and imposing emissions caps.
“We need to come together, no matter how we have voted, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against soon-to-be announced Ottawa policies that would significantly harm our provincial economy,” Smith said in her victory speech.
She said Trudeau was plotting actions that would “massively” increase Albertans’ power bills and endanger the power grid the province depends on during “cold and dark Alberta winters.” She called Trudeau’s proposed emissions cap a “production cap” that would cost tens of thousands of jobs, tens of billions of dollars of lost investment and “bring economic hardship” to Albertans.
“As premier I cannot under any circumstances let these contemplated policies be inflicted on Alberta. I simply can’t. And I won’t.”
She has her allies in this, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe most notable among them. And even though key Trudeau cabinet ministers spoke the language of co-operation and conciliation Tuesday, they know the road to effective carbon reduction is now strewn with fresh potholes.
Make no mistake. Acrimony was always on the Alberta-Ottawa agenda, but it is back with a bang. And that is bad news for the majority of Canadians who are demanding substantive action to fight climate change.