For the past month I have been intending to write a
column about Alberta politics and the comparisons that can be made with B.C., but
it seems that our premier, Christy Clark, has beaten me to
the punch! Which, of course, was the whole point. For her entire term as our premier she has
been something of a one-trick pony, hoping that revenues from LNG would wash
away her worries, obscure her bad decisions and help her to avoid difficult
ones. Now, she realizes that her dream of easy money won’t happen before the
next provincial election, so she has used the most recent B.C. Throne Speech to
re-invent herself as the Queen of Economic Diversification. The Speech made it
sound like Alberta could learn a thing or two from our glorious leader. Nothing
could be further from the truth. While Clark manouevres to take credit for
B.C.’s luck and geography, Rachel Notley has shown intelligent, visionary
leadership as reflected in the 2016 Royalty review; the institution of a
progressive tax system; a comprehensive infrastructure strategy; a new,
greener, responsible image in relation
to energy development; and an economic diversification plan that features $500-million
royalty credit program for new petrochemical plants; a
credible program for replacing lost apprenticeships in the trades sector; and a re-booted expert economic panel to advise
the premier on diversification initiatives that spur economic innovation and
job creation opportunities outside the oilpatch.
That is a huge improvement over Ralph Klein’s
flat-tax, flat-Earth talk of “dinosaur
farts” and steadily-accumulating reality
of multibillion-dollar infrastructure deficits.
From the time Peter Lougheed left office in 1985 until Rachel Notley took
office in 2015, successive Alberta governments oversaw the production of many hundreds of billions of dollars of
revenue from oil and gas (in 2014 alone, gross revenues from all hydrocarbons
amounted to $111.7 billion and energy exports totaled $90.8 billion), including
almost $200 billion in revenue for government, and used this “Alberta
advantage” to subsidize both the highest per capita operating budgets and the
lowest taxes in Canada. (It would be interesting to know how many millions in
subsidized low taxes ultimately flowed into the B.C. real estate market.) That
after three decades Alberta would have a paltry $17.4 billion in its Heritage
Savings Trust Fund, major hospitals badly in need of repair, a lack of a mental
health strategy, long waiting lists, and major unfulfilled needs in
infrastructure, was an indictment of post-Lougheed conservatism, and of the short-sightedness of the Ralph Klein era
in particular.
So Christy Clark wasn’t entirely wrong to criticize
Alberta’s historical over-reliance on energy revenue. But to blame the Alberta
NDP for any of those mistakes, or to heap undeserved credit upon her own
party’s wisdom for avoiding them, is just plain political hogwash.
Mark Crawford is a former public servant and
teaches political science at Athabasca University. He can be reached at
markcrawf@gmail.com.
