PCs buoy hope for Alberta

Given how elated he was over the victory of Doug Ford you could be forgiven for thinking that Jason Kenney, Alberta’s would-be premier, had just won.

For Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party, Ford’s victory was a sign of things to come, not just in Alberta, but in the battle he wants to lead against the Trudeau Liberals and the NDP across the country. Ontario “has elected a majority Progressive Conservative government dedicated to joining our fight against Trudeau’s carbon tax,” Kenney said in a fundraising email shortly after Ford declared victory.

He then pointed out the Ontario PCs are “strong allies of our resource industries: oil, gas, mining and forestry.”

Note the order of the resources: sounds like Kenney thinks Ontario will line up behind him to defend the interests of the petroleum industry no matter what it may cost consumers there. Kenney may have an exaggerated sense of his own importance but he had good reason to be buoyed by Ford’s victory. Rachel Notley’s NDP government is lagging in the opinion polls and when the next election comes around in just under a year the NDP won’t have the benefit of a split vote among conservative parties.

Repeal of the carbon tax, which is a made-in-Alberta version of Justin Trudeau’s climate change strategy, has been Kenney’s rallying cry. Ever since he left the federal cabinet and returned to Alberta, Kenney has hammered away at the carbon tax.

For him it’s a tax that punishes people for heating their homes and driving their trucks and SUVs in a cold northern climate. Never mind, that under Alberta’s carbon tax policy, 60 per cent of households get a rebate.

Kenney also wants to bring back coalgenerated electricity even though the NDP government is phasing it out in favour of natural gas and renewables.

In a province where the economy still depends on plentiful jobs in the resource sector, any move to reduce use of those resources through a price on carbon emissions or boosting clean energy is seen by many people as a threat to their livelihood.

But Kenney may soon face a conundrum that won’t be easily solved.

Is he willing to put the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline at further risk by unravelling the federal climate change strategy?

What if Kenney is eventually elected premier and he and Doug Ford and Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan mount a court challenge to the feds’ authority to impose a carbon tax? Or simply refuse to let the feds impose carbon pricing on their provinces?

Approval by the federal cabinet of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which would ship oil to B.C’s coast, is linked to Alberta’s support for its climate change strategy. But now that the federal government owns the pipeline, it’s possible that if Kenney and his cohorts put the federal strategy to reduce carbon emissions in jeopardy, the feds will walk away from the pipeline.

That would not go over well in Alberta, or Saskatchewan.

Completion of that controversial pipeline is seen as crucial to the resource economy of those two provinces.

Since B.C. is opposed to the pipeline because it means more oil tankers along its coastline, would Kenney, Ford and Moe end up helping B.C. defeat the project?

There’s also another issue that Kenney will have to contend with: Ford’s bullin-a-china-shop approach to politics.

Given Alberta’s election is a year away and Kenney’s platform is similar to Ford’s, Albertans will have a preview in Ontario of what a Kenney government might look like. How will Ford balance the Ontario budget? How will tax cuts affect public services? How will Ontario’s economy fare, especially in light of the Trump tariffs? And how will Ford respond?

Certainly Kenney is happily chortling away now given the sweep by the Ford team in Ontario.

But perhaps Kenney is peaking too soon. Who would have guessed a year ago that Doug Ford would be elected premier of Ontario?

Even just a few weeks before Alberta’s last provincial election no one would have predicted that the NDP would sweep away Jim Prentice and the 45year-old Tory dynasty.

A year in politics is a long, long time.