Wanted in Alberta: one premier

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 3 Comments

Larry Wong/Edmonton Journal

Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government turned 40 on Aug. 30. That first win back in 1971 was regarded as an upset, but one man saw it coming—Peter Lougheed’s rural boss, House leader, and political Merlin, Dr. Hugh Horner. In the days before the election, the tall, soft-spoken Horner circulated amongst legislature reporters, promising skeptical scribes that the upstart PCs would capture about 50 seats (the final figure was 49). Today Horner’s son Doug is part of a six-person field from which PC members will select a chief for an election fight anticipated next spring.

It’s the latest chapter in the tale of eternal Alberta PC renewal. This time last year there were many who didn’t think the Tories would make it to age 41. Premier Ed Stelmach, the compromise candidate who had succeeded Ralph Klein, had turned out to be a tongue-tied bungler. And the Wildrose Alliance, a right-wing alternative party led by young and eloquent Danielle Smith, was at the government’s heels in the polls. A January caucus coup led by Ted Morton forced Stelmach into a slow-motion retirement.

Morton is one of the candidates for the leadership, and whether or not he triumphs, his move seems to have been the best thing for the party. With a gang of possible leaders capturing media attention and shoplifting Wildrose policies, Alberta’s natural governing party has surged back into a commanding lead. A late July Environics survey gave the PCs a towering 54 per cent share of voters, with the Wildrose (renamed simply the Wildrose Party this summer) at 16 per cent and the NDP and Liberals even further back.

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The prairie putsch to replace Ed Stelmach

By Colby Cosh - Friday, February 4, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 8 Comments

Photography by Chris Bolin

Ed Stelmach, who announced his eventual retirement from the Alberta premiership last week, is technically leaving as an undefeated champion. He won five elections as an MLA, came up the middle to shock the nation and succeed Ralph Klein as Progressive Conservative leader in 2006, and won one of the largest majorities in Alberta history in 2008′s general election.

He guided the PCs to impressive strength in the polls in the city once known as “Redmonton.” As Alberta’s first Ukrainian premier, he will retain living-legend status for the rest of his days. He is even relatively popular with the province’s public-sector unions, who are fretting over his departure.

But there is one group he never quite won over. Unfortunately for Stelmach, it was his own caucus, which collectively became convinced in December that the premier was leading them to disaster. A very quick decision to resign was the result. High-ranking employees in the premier’s office showed up for work on the morning of Jan. 25 suspecting nothing amiss, and were horrified to learn at around 9 a.m. that their fiercely loyal, unfailingly considerate boss was giving up.

The collapse in confidence is no mystery. Ever since the province’s budget tilted into the red in early 2009, Stelmach had given endless assurances that Alberta would be back in surplus for 2012-13. His finance minister, Ted Morton, was confidently repeating those assurances as late as November 2010. All along, Tories facing re-election had clung to the hope that, whatever Stelmach’s errors in areas like oil-patch policy and health care, they would have a balanced budget to run behind in spring 2012.

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Software for your Alberta politics B.S. detector

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 7:35 PM - 103 Comments

Some of you will be reading my column on the resignation of Ed Stelmach as Alberta premier as early as today; some of you will have to wait until next week. In the meantime, I’ll give you some principles you can use to filter the hypotheses of other observers.

First of all, don’t believe anyone who tells you that Alberta politics is governed by some mystical tidal pattern of stagnation punctuated by revolution. Anybody who’s been here for the past 20 or 30 years should have learned to tune out the “massive change is just around the corner!” refrain by now, if only because advancing age has made him half-deaf. Preston Manning alone has been guilty of a dozen or so end-times prophecies of this sort (though, in fairness, prophecy is sort of a family tradition with him). News flash: pretty much everybody who voted here in 1935 is underground, and not because a basement suite was all they could afford. The Alberta electorate of 2011 in no way resembles that even of 1981; not ethnically, not culturally, not spiritually, not ideologically.

And the political spectrum itself has changed. As much as there might be a casual longing for a revival of “Peter Lougheed Conservatism”, Lougheed’s style of state corporatism, which led to budget disaster in the 1980s after his suspiciously timely exit, would probably now put any candidate who embraced it on the left wing of the federal NDP. Don’t believe anyone who tells you there is some unexploited, powerful hidden welter of Red Toryism in Alberta, waiting to spew forth into an appropriate channel. Even the reds aren’t that Red anymore.

There is no particular reason for Alberta politics to seek the same equilibrium in which our federal government is trapped, so don’t believe anyone who argues for realignment as some kind of cosmic axiom. Yes, I’m looking at Jeffrey Simpson here. Simpson is described endearingly by his employer as “a regular visitor to Alberta”, which seems like a deliberate invitation to scorn, but the man obviously is well-informed about the place. His characterization of the Alberta Liberal Party can only have come from someone familiar with it.

Simpson, however, believes Alberta politics is reverting to a “normal” shape (one it has never had) because the province no longer has any reason for hostility and suspicion toward a federal government led by a Calgarian. (With the bonus, one presumes, of a chief justice from Pincher Creek.) I think our visitor underestimates the ease of Ottawa-bashing in a world where Alberta farmers can still be jailed for defying the Wheat Board; where Alberta still pays toll upon toll for its presence in Confederation, layering pension and employment-insurance outflows on top of explicit fiscal equalization; where, as finance minister Ted Morton recently pointed out, Albertans are being billed specifically for the provincial sales tax liabilities of Ontarians and British Columbians. Morton’s a smart guy! He can find reasons to be upset with Ottawa almost as fast as Ottawa can come up with ways to screw Alberta!

I would tell you not to believe anyone who sees no difference between Ted Morton and Danielle Smith, but then, you barely have any choice aside from me. My column anticipating a personal tilt between Morton and Smith in the Calgary exurbs has been superseded with embarrassing speed by events, but at least it was written by somebody who can distinguish between various species of “right-winger” if given a pair of field glasses and sent out into the bush. The Morton-Smith personal combat, which already started when Smith announced a candidacy smack-dab in the middle of Morton Country, is more than superficial. Morton, by trifling with property rights as resource minister, has attacked the very principles Smith built her career around. She is physically moving to the rural south because Morton painted a target on himself; his core organizers and financial backers are gone, many directly to her, and they are not coming back. The Globe‘s Josh Wingrove is all over this, and understands it better than most writers for Alberta organs do; he, at least, is no mere visitor.

But, really, is there any realistic doubt that Morton and Smith could stage a pretty interesting political battle? Forget even the intriguing stylistic contrast: one of them has been a rights advocate for her entire career and the other is the country’s leading intellectual opponent of liberal “rights” rhetoric. One of them is pro-choice and pro-gay marriage; the other made his reputation blowing raspberries at the Morgentaler and Vriend decisions. It’s literally not possible that any reasonable person could be equally comfortable with either of the two as premier.

Other myths to be wary of? Don’t believe anybody who talks up the Alberta Party, at least until it has a leader, some policies, and a history of contesting elections. The idea that an Alberta political movement can go from zero to government in 6.8 seconds, just because Social Credit did it 76 years ago, is just a variant of the “every X years Y happens” myth. (Hasn’t anybody in this province read The Poverty of Historicism?) Don’t believe anything you are told about low Alberta voter turnout unless the province’s young-skewing demographics are factored in; young people don’t vote anywhere in the Western world, and we have more of them than you do.

And don’t put too much stock in the election of Naheed Nenshi as mayor of Calgary. What he accomplished was remarkable, but it also required less than 40% of the vote in a race where the establishment favourite, Barb Higgins, turned out to have a bad case of China Syndrome. The people who got giddy over big bad Calgary electing a relatively liberal mayor apparently haven’t heard that the last time Calgary elected a non-Liberal was 1977.

This week: Newsmakers

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

The greatest skate
To say Patrick Chan blew away the competition as he skated to his fourth straight national men’s title is a gross understatement. It was, according to the Vancouver Sun, “inarguably the greatest skate ever by a Canadian.” Chan didn’t so much as wobble as he laid out two back-to-back quads—the calling card of the sport’s greats—and went on to shatter the world record score for a male skater. “Brian Orser? Kurt Browning? Elvis Stojko? All great on any number of days,” wrote Cam Cole. “None as great as Chan was, on this one.” The spellbound crowd in Victoria brought down the house as Chan, finally, slowed to a stop. “That was the reaction I wanted at the Olympics,” said the Toronto native. “That’s what I dreamed about every night when I went to bed. And I finally got it.”

Attack of the former presidents
The dust has barely settled after former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s arrival in Haiti, and another name from the country’s past is attempting a return to the homeland. Former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who’s been living in exile in South Africa since being forced from office in a 2004 coup, is eager to return, he said this week, to serve his “Haitian sisters and brothers as a simple citizen in the field of education.” “Baby Doc” Duvalier, meanwhile, whose lavish life in exile in France was abruptly halted by a pricey divorce, says he’s returned “to help”—not, as is widely suspected, to lay claim to a frozen Swiss bank account. Now that he’s there, investigators are building a fresh case against him over the alleged theft of $120 million—what they describe as a “gigantic fraud . . . from one of the poorest populations on Earth.”

Alas, poor Andy
British PM David Cameron’s embattled communications chief Andy Coulson stepped down on Friday amid continued questions about his possible involvement in the illegal hacking of celebrity voice messages when he was editor of the News of the World—making him, as Britain’s Independent cheekily reported, “the first person in history to resign twice for something of which he knew nothing.” In lesser political disgraces, a British MP was interrupted mid-speech by his own musical tie, whose tinny tune was picked up by his mike. Baffled MPs hunted for the source, until Tory backbencher Nad­him Zahawi realized who was to blame. “I apologize,” he said. “It is my tie to support the campaign against bowel cancer.” “Perhaps next time the honourable gentleman will be more selective in the ties he wears in the chamber,” said deputy speaker Dawn Primarolo.

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A splash in Ontario makes waves in Alberta

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 11:01 AM - 0 Comments

The Ontario Superior Court’s Charter finding against prostitution-related provisions of the Criminal Code has unexpectedly cast light on the new Alberta politics. The hard-charging Wildrose Alliance talks a good game when it comes to defending provincial rights; the logical corollary, one might suppose, would be for it to observe a dignified silence about matters reserved to the federal government. This is never how things work, of course, and the Alliance couldn’t move fast enough to issue a joint statement in the names of its two turncoat MLAs, Heather Forsyth and Rob Anderson.

Just as the mind of Newton was instantly discernible by contemporaries from his anonymous solution to the brachistochrone problem, so the corresponding organ inside Heather Forsyth is recognizable from the language of the press release. Forsyth never heard an idea for “protecting children” she didn’t like, and certainly never, as an Alberta cabinet minister, implemented one she would recognize as a failure.

“No little girl,” reads the statement, “ever dreams of growing up and becoming a prostitute, and no parent wants to see their child become a sex worker.” As an argument in favour of the existing prostitution laws, this immediately raises the question whether the parents of Robert Pickton’s victims dreamed fondly of their fate, complete with a soundtrack of swine gnawing bone. No little girl does foresee becoming a sex worker, any more than little boys imagine becoming garbagemen or sheet-metal cutters. (Hands up, all those of you who do have the job of their dreams! I’ll admit I’m relatively blessed in that regard, but then again I am not writing this note from the deck of the space shuttle.)

It is precisely the unpleasantness of such professions that demands we attend carefully to their occupational safety. That is the ground, for better or worse, on which Justice Susan Himel acted. The Wildrose statement does not object that Himel’s decision will fail to make prostitution safer; it concedes the point, and specifically rejects the idea that prostitution should be made safer for women. Why, one wonders, is Robert Pickton in prison at all? By the Forsyth standard, surely he should be freed, perhaps even subsidized as a public benefactor.

The fact is, Alberta already has a governing party that was happy to implement Forsythian ideas of justice and child welfare, dozens of them, before Forsyth became the victim of a geographic squeeze and left the PCs in a snit. The party’s statement thus leaves one wondering whether a vote for the Wildrose is a vote for ideological change, or just the same old formula with a different gang of ministers. It suggests tentatively that Danielle Smith’s “big tent” is going to fly the Oriflamme of social conservatism rather than the Gadsden flag of libertarianism.

Other priorities?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 5:31 PM - 0 Comments

Whatever’s about to happen in Quebec City, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach says his government won’t be providing funding for NHL arenas in that province.

“As I said before, there won’t be any public money going to the arenas. We’re trying to catch up with badly needed infrastructure in health and schools…

“Maybe we’re getting close to an election federally, I don’t know,” he said. “Our teams are doing well. I know the pressures in terms of the need for refurbish or get new arenas. We are prepared to provide the infrastructure to the buildings, whether it be LRT or any of the other supporting infrastructure. But the building itself will be private sector.”

Enter the taxman

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Dan Riedlhuber/Reuters

It’s becoming a familiar ritual for Alberta Finance Minister Ted Morton and Premier Ed Stelmach. Some press gadfly asks Morton about the possibility of introducing a provincial sales tax. Morton acknowledges the idea’s merit, but insists that it is not on the short-term agenda. And Stelmach thumps his chest and declares, more or less, that such a thing could only happen over his dead body. The playlet was reprised last week, as Morton announced that the anticipated deficit for 2010-11 had risen to a record $4.8 billion. He admitted, again, that “in the medium to long term, looking at all the options is a good idea.” The denouement followed the next day, when Stelmach said: “I can tell you as long as I’m premier, there won’t be a sales tax.”

Albertans are proud of not having had a PST since 1937. A 1995 statute requires a referendum to be held before one can be adopted. All three opposition parties are against it. So why does the issue keep coming up? Because a sales tax may be inevitable anyway.

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Going into battle, alone

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 2 Comments

Jeff McIntosh/ CP; John Ulan/CP

“You can only be bloody and unbowed to a point,” grumbled a frustrated Liberal candidate, calling upon the opposition parties to stop splitting their vote against a monolithic right-wing governing party. “We have passed that point.” The Liberal brand, he complained in an election-night interview, should be abandoned in favour of uniting the parties on the progressive side.

“We would have to get by the personal pride of the leaders and the hollow speeches,” he ventured. But he had spoken with “high leaders” in opposition, he said, and “had found agreement with his views.”

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The league table

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 12:23 PM - 25 Comments

As a general rule, I limit the amount of polling discussed here—and avoid horse-race polls entirely. The horse race is almost always the least interesting thing going on in Ottawa.

And the following is almost definitely of questionable significance. But, for whatever it is worth, here are Canada’s most prominent political figures ranked by their most recent approval ratings (as determined by Angus Reid here, here and here). Continue…

Strange bedfellows indeed

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 12:12 AM - 16 Comments

The theory that new Alberta finance minister Ted Morton was put in place to placate the fiscal hawks and play the cold-eyed budget-slasher—a zombie Steve West—was always dubious. I’m not saying Morton wouldn’t suit the role, and he may still be called upon to wield the scalpel. But the Stelmach government has one obsessive, overriding imperative: to announce a budgetary surplus for the fiscal year 2012-13, immediately before calling an election. And Alberta’s revenues depend to a fantastical degree on world prices for commodities, chiefly natural gas (though the end-products of the tarsands are catching up fast).

So either the Tories will pull it off or they won’t. Morton’s job is to keep the fiscal plan on track for the 2012 “Mission Accomplished” announcement and pacify various interest groups in the meantime—if possible, without exhausting the rainy-day Sustainability Fund established in 2003 to address temporary revenue downturns resulting from the volatility of Alberta’s petro revenues.

As of today, the master plan is still pretty much on target. Revenues were slightly stronger than expected for 2009-10, limiting the deficit to $3.6 billion. Today’s 2010-11 budget allows for another deficit of $4.7 billion with a 4% overall increase in spending. After that, the government expects gas prices to rise slowly from the present trough and pull Alberta out of the red. The futures markets expect pretty much the same thing. (Alberta finance ministers could conceivably play dirty with oil-and-gas pricing projections, since they ultimately get to pick which forecasters they listen to; but while the temptation must be strong, as a rule they refrain. International lenders and rating agencies are watching, and they expect stern realism. From governments, anyway.)

That’s not to say that Morton and his predecessors haven’t cut things close. The projected 2012-13 surplus is tiny and the amount expected to be left in the Sustainability Fund account is less than $3 billion. One unexpectedly warm global winter or other economic shock could eat into both quantities fast, as could a simple continuation of the methane glut. And that would mean scalpel time. The Finance Minister is already screwing a tight lid on spending in some areas that are, considered from a non-Machiavellian moral standpoint, particularly recession-sensitive: child-welfare interventions, employment retraining for adults, anti-homelessness measures and social housing (whose relevant ministry’s 2010-11 budget takes a 19% boot in the shorts).

But, like the political scientist he is, he’s taking care of the electorally armed-and-dangerous departments: seniors, health, and education—the S.H.E. Who Must Be Obeyed when governing a province. Anybody who still thinks of Morton as a whip-cracking Wyoming cowboy bent on Goldwaterizing Alberta should contemplate the astonishing reactions to this budget. The president of the Alberta Federation of Labour called it “clearly a victory” for public services (by which they mean, “for the union”). The Friends of Medicare (i.e., the Most Holy Order of Nurses Militant) agreed. The President of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, still amicably disposed after its pension bailout, declared with satisfaction that “The government listened to Albertans.” These are the dogs who have barked loudest and most persistently during the past 17 years of Conservative government. Ted Morton sure makes for a funny-looking pack leader.

Alberta Kremlinology bite of the week

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 4:41 AM - 15 Comments

Preston Manning holds a two-day beauty contest for Alberta’s governing Progressive Conservatives and the surging right-wing alternative, the Wildrose Alliance. PC minister Thomas Lukaszuk agrees to attend, but suddenly discovers a “family commitment” and “other work” that make it impossible for him to show up either day. Calgary backbench MLA Kyle Fawcett is sent in his place, but is stricken with illness after the Friday session. By all accounts, the root cause of the illness may well have been the beating he received in his head-to-head debate with Wildrose leader Danielle Smith.

A friendly suggestion

By Colby Cosh - Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 3:15 PM - 31 Comments

Wildrose Alliance leader Danielle Smith might want to get the word out to her supporters that likening Alberta’s Ukrainian premier to the architect of Ukrainian genocide is probably not too cool.

The Boissoin case: freedom gains a moral victory

By Colby Cosh - Friday, December 4, 2009 at 7:53 AM - 41 Comments

So how stands freedom of the press in Alberta after Thursday’s Queen’s Bench decision tossing out the Boissoin human-rights panel ruling [PDF]? Justice E.C. Wilson’s reasons establish two big things, pending some higher-level judicial review of Alberta’s human-rights regime:

1. The Charter of Rights can’t be used willy-nilly by content creators in magazines and newspapers as a shield against tribunal oversight, but
2. The tribunals have to confine themselves strictly to the powers granted them by statute, defer to Charter values, respect the presumption of innocence, and in general act a lot less like a cross between a military junta and a three-ring circus.

In 2002 Red Deer preacher Stephen Boissoin had written a sweaty, sulfurous letter about the Great Gay Conspiracy to the local daily paper (pause for ironic smirk: it’s called the Advocate). Among other things, Boissoin denounced the spectacle of “men kissing men”, which suggests he may not know his way around the synoptic Gospels too well. In any event, a panel of the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission found him guilty of discrimination-by-the-word, and he was subjected to a fine, prior restraint on his future speech, and a demand for a written apology.

Justice Wilson found that while the speech provisions in the Alberta human rights statute pass Charter muster under the principles of the Supreme Court’s Taylor decision, he put a lot of practical problems in the path of future complainants. A province, Wilson observed, isn’t allowed to duplicate the Criminal Code provisions against hate speech. It’s only allowed to suppress hateful speech that can also be shown to encourage discrimination in the specific areas that lie within provincial powers and are enumerated in the statute—i.e., housing, employment, access to goods and services.

Wilson thus ended up throwing several witnesses who testified against Boissoin overboard: the ex-cop who thought Boissoin’s anti-gay babblings might make teens “act out”, for example, and the shrink who warned that the Reverend’s letter might provoke a second Columbine. (Untold thousands have read the letter who wouldn’t otherwise have seen it, precisely as a consequence of the proceeding against Boissoin, but it doesn’t yet appear to have played a role in any school shootings.) Wilson has thus made expert evidence in future tribunal proceedings a lot harder to come by: the logic of his decision suggests that complainants will no longer be able to round up every bleeding-heart social scientist or self-styled hate expert they can find, but will have to provide evidence of potential economic impacts from hate speech.

Wilson also reaffirmed that the standard of judicial review for Alberta tribunal rulings is a low one, requiring the appellant to raise questions of mere “correctness” in matters of law; he beat up the panel for some of its one-sided interpretations of the evidence against Boissoin; he emphasized that hate speech isn’t hate speech under Taylor unless it’s “unusually strong” and appeals to “deep-felt” emotions; he notes that tribunals must take note of not only the majority decision in Taylor, but also not-yet-Chief Justice McLachlin’s monumental dissent warning against vagueness and subjectivity; he observes that Taylor also requires hate speech to have been repetitive; he suggests that the law does not generally concern itself with “puny anonymities”, but only with speech that is likely to be influential and dangerous in some way; and he notes that the AHRCC panel had no statutory warrant for any of the punishments it levied on Boissoin.

And believe it or not, I am leaving some criticisms out. The Commission has a Herculean amount of procedural and constitutional cleanup ahead if it hopes to scrutinize speech and press activity in Alberta. Which is good. It would be better still for the legislature to take the “fundamental freedoms” in the Charter as seriously as other provinces do, and eliminate the Commission’s jurisdiction over the press altogether, but it seems that won’t happen while Ed Stelmach is premier.

Lotus land is still lovely, thank you

By Nicholas Köhler - Friday, November 6, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 14 Comments

Like barbarians calling forth some mammoth creature lurking behind great walls—I’m thinking King Kong here, people—Alberta Tories banged their rubber sticks together on Friday in Red Deer for Ed Stelmach, their leader.

It was for many reasons a surreal show of support—Stelmach, for all his good qualities, probably doesn’t deserve to be treated like Churchill flashing the V sign—one echoed last night in the results of a leadership review vote that had offered PC delegates the chance to seek a new chief for the PC party. Few Tories were disappointed when Stelmach won the support of a large majority of voting delegates.

And yet for a while the prospect of low numbers for Stelmach seemed very real. Support for the Tories has plummeted in recent polls to historic, 16-year lows, driven down by a ballooning deficit, healthcare woes, and anger within Calgary’s oil and gas community. The charismatic Danielle Smith has arrived as leader of the Wildrose Alliance, which recently stole a by-election from the Tories, slapping a name candidate to third place, behind even the Liberals. Most recently, the government’s botched H1N1 strategy resulted in vaccination clinics being shuttered for four days.

But despite it all, Stelmach received the support of 77.4 per cent of the voting delegates.

The forces that had been gathering against the premier from within his own party—mainly Calgary Tories with links to the Ralph Klein era (including Klein himself, who’d set a widely-accepted threshold for the vote of 70 per cent)—seemed to dissipate some weeks ago, after influential party members like Peter Lougheed called for delegates to support the premier.

Nor were there any alternatives waiting in the wings, as there had been when a similar vote forced Klein from politics in 2006—Jim Dinning, Ted Morton, Stelmach.

So the premier’s numbers tonight were nowhere near as surprising as last year’s massive electoral victory, when he slammed his critics by capturing 72 of 83 seats and reduced his political opponents to rumps in the legislature.

Last night, after the vote, one aide confessed he’d been worried—hadn’t slept much over the past two weeks. Nothing had been certain. In the end, it all turned out fine.

Yes, everything is fine now. The results concluded a two-day AGM wherein Stelmach’s enemies were conclusively marginalized. But the party’s Red Deer experience also left the door open for change “in due time,” painless modification, a tweak here and there. The numbers, said Edmonton MLA Thomas Lukaszuk, “puts our premier in the position of comfort, where he knows that a vast majority of party members support him, but also indicates to him that there’s room for improvement. That’s a good place to be in.”

Stelmach hinted that a cabinet shuffle is coming (his health minister, Ron Liepert, is the target of much criticism, what with an unpopular campaign to reform the healthcare system and in the aftermath of H1N1). A tough, to-the-bone budget, answer to the fiscal conservatism of the Wildrose, is expected early next year; insiders promise, almost gleefully, that it will make the Stelmach government even more unpopular.

But more substantial change does not appear in the offing. Indeed, all of it—the AGM, the leadership review results and Stelmach’s own remarks—feeds into a single theme: continuity.

“There were those (during the AGM) who said, ‘Be very careful, because we are not to the hard right’—like some are,” Stelmach said during a press conference after the results were announced, a veiled mention of the Wildrose  Alliance. The Progressive Conservative party, he added, is “a big tent. That’s one of the reasons for the success of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party over the decades.

“Change, new leaders, new ideas. Fresh ideas.”

Same old party, though, 38 years later.

Two, maybe three years remain before Stelmach must call an election. Last night’s results risk making his team even more smug—he has defied his critics, again. Over the next 24 months, Alberta’s economy will improve, the Wildrose will stumble and sputter out, and the Tories will remain, ready for another mandate. Or so goes the orthodoxy within the PC party, it seems.

Therefore all the nice-making over the weekend. Why change? And perhaps they’re right. Why quit eating lotus when you’re in no danger of exile from lotus land?

(7:30 p.m.) The question was simple: “Do you wish a provincial leadership convention to be held?”

There were 1191 ballots cast. A scant 269 answered in the affirmative—for a new convention. Nine hundred and twenty-two said no—77. 4 per cent. Within the sweet spot—not to low, not to high—but only just.

Stelmach assured his fellow party members: “Changes are coming but they will be done in due course …. We shall plan, and then we shall execute.” He stopped. “I shouldn’t have used that word.”

(4:30 p.m.) Some members of the Tory crew gathered at the Capri for the Progressive Conservative party’s AGM—and today’s mandatory leadership review—speak of a sweet spot, a minimum threshold for Premier Ed Stelmach’s support, but a ceiling that demonstrates acknowledgment his government has made missteps.

Less than 70 per cent support for Stelmach, say many Tories, and he is in trouble. More than 80 per cent, and the party is in trouble—out of touch, disconnected, tin-eared. Think of the rig worker who’s not seen a paycheck in a while, watching Stelmach accept a standing ovation after a big number is announced.

Dinner for the delegates and the rest of the Tory funmakers in Red Deer is at 7 p.m. Mountain. There the results will be officially released.

Meanwhile, tales of goings on at the convention emerge. Calgary Tories—the unhappy kind—confronting the premier’s people over the polls. How has the party of Lougheed and Klein been laid so low, they ask, and blame the denizens of Room 307, the premier’s office. People are invited outside, but the verbal scuffle ends in a handshake. Another Calgarian, prominent in business, looks around the Capri Friday night and checks out in disgust, judging the assembly blind to the perceptions of regular Albertans; he does not even vote.

And the party keeps trucking along.

(1 p.m.) A quick update from a question-and-answer session between voting Tory delegates and Premier Ed Stelmach in Red Deer.

Responding to a question posed to him concerning a recent Toronto Dominion Bank-financed report, put together by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute, that said Canada could in fact meet the Kyoto reduction targets, but only on the backs of the western provinces, Stelmach said: “As long as I have breath in my lungs, there’s not going to be another tranfer of wealth from Alberta to any other jurisdiction in Canada.”

Taking recourse in a well-worn Alberta premier strategy, Stelmach then aimed his wrath at the French-speaking east. Those behind the report, he said, “want to see another wealth tranfer from this province to the province of the Quebec.” He added: “Albertans are doing their part … we’re going to lead this country out of recession. But no more.”

Confronting critics who wonder why Alberta hasn’t socked away all its nonrenewable natural resource wealth, like Norway has done with an oil fund now valued at over $400 billion, Stelmach said: ”Norway is a country … we’re a sub-state.” Then he quipped: “Someone was saying maybe we should do something about that.”

Judging by Stelmach’s theme music during last night’s speech, he already has some ideas about an anthem.

(N0v. 6, 8:30) May I offer you a bromide?… Stelmach’s pre-vote speech suggests he believes he’s about to win big

It was supposed to be the speech of his life. It had to be.

But at the Capri Hotel, Trade & Convention Centre, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach instead delivered the kind of boilerplate that is only issued in the presence of those in the throes of partisan ecstasy.

He was among friends—nay, family—people who will accept you just the way you are, because you are who you are.

The speech left the impression that the leadership vote tomorrow is a fait accompli. Good news within the party, maybe, but one wonders if the results will be so strong that Albertans will know, unshakably, that the party that governs them does not understand them—or care to.

Same goes for anyone within the Progressive Conservative party who wonders what a future under Stelmach’s leaderships holds.

Indeed, Stelmach’s speech delivered not one lolly for those uncertain of his leadership. After two weeks in which Albertans watched the Tories bungle the H1N1 vaccine rollout and learned of polls that showed the party has slipped to a position almost neck and neck with the upstart Wildrose Alliance Party, Stelmach spoke to his friends and dismissed his critics.

“As your leader,” he intoned, “I’m not afraid of criticism, or to take advice, or to take a stand.” He added, almost combatively: “I’m not going to back away from my principles: honesty, integrity, transparency, and taking on difficult issues.”

Stelmach further encouraged the crowd to remember that, as Albertans, they have gonads. “Taking the lead,” he told them, “as a global energy producer, as Canada’s economic engine” is “bound to attract some criticism.” He started to clear his throat, Stelmach’s signal that he is about to tell a joke. “We’ve seen some of the people hanging from different structures. And that’s okay. We’re Albertans. We’re not shy.”

There was little of substance in the speech that might give the party, or voting delegates, a clue as to how the government will pull the province from the brink of systemic financial malaise. He said new limits will be placed on spending and rejected, yet again, the notion of a sales tax—the latter a surefire way to offset diminishing commodity revenues in a province still addicted to its non-renewable natural resources.

It might all have been deliberate—a gesture of contempt directed toward those who would have the Stelmach Tories change. The constant refrain in Stelmach’s speech was the mandate delivered to the Progressive conservative party in March, 2008, 72 seats strong.

Keep quiet. Take your medicine. Like it.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… The ballots at the Stelmach leadership review are numbered

(Nov. 6, 6:30 p.m.) At the Capri Hotel, Trade & Convention Centre, site of their annual general meeting this weekend and tomorrow’s mandatory leadership review, the Progressive Conservatives are presenting a phalanx of Ed Stelmachs—little black-and-white buttons, extreme close-ups of the premier’s face, pinned to lapels, like broaches on women’s blouses, over the hearts of Tories one and all.

It’s a showy demonstration of support for a premier who, of late, has found little among Alberta’s hoi polloi. “The boss has a lot of support ,” Jonathan Denis, MLA for Calgary Egmont, tells Maclean’s. Still, don’t get too excited, he says (though he projects further happy days for Stelmach). A lot of people wore Klein buttons in 2006, when a leadership review vote gave former premier Ralph Klein 55 per cent, forcing his retirement. “It’s a secret ballot,” says Denis.

Well, maybe. The big news in the Capri lobby tonight is that the “secret” ballots are numbered—a development that doesn’t lend support to the notion that the yeas and nays will be truly untraceable.

Could be that’s why most delegates are predicting a strong result for the premier tomorrow. Ken Allred, MLA for St. Albert, says recent polls showing the Wildrose Alliance Party giving the Tories a run for their money are worse news for the Alberta Liberals and the NDP.

UPDATE: Stelmach’s people say numbered ballots are nothing new and help in accurate counting post-vote. But because some delegates see the digits as a problem administrators have agreed to punch them out. How many people have griped about the ballots? Not many. “It’s a bit of mischief by some people with an interest in seeing Ed crash and burn,” says someone in the premier’s office.

(Nov. 6, 12 p.m.) In politics, there are polls and then there are polls. And, as Premier Ed Stelmach prepares to face his party tonight—he’s slated to deliver a speech at 8 p.m. to open the Alberta Progressive Conservative party’s annual general meeting in Red Deer—the comparison with Saskatchewan’s premier, Brad Wall is striking. And it must really sting.

Elected in November, 2007, five months or so before Stelmach won his first real mandate (he first became premier of Alberta after winning the Tory leadership race in 2006), Wall is young, dynamic, full of ideas, and has successfully steered his energy-rich province through some pretty difficult terrain. According to a Sigma Analytics survey conducted for the Regina Leader-Post, his government is more popular now than when first elected two years ago, despite recession and wobbly commodity prices. Almost 60 per cent of decided voters would go ahead and cast another ballot for Wall’s Saskatchewan Party.

And yet, because of declining potash revenues, Wall’s government has had to resort to much the same rainy-day fund shell game in its budgeting as Stelmach’s, which is dipping into its sustainability savings account to compensate for low natural gas and oil revenues. Stelmach takes a hit, Wall doesn’t, and there’s something other than mere management ability that separates the two.

Another scary thing, for Stelmach: Wall’s Saskatchewan Party, an amalgam of disgruntled conservatives and Liberals, didn’t exist in 1991, when the Saskatchewan NDP first took back government after years in the hinterlands. Founded in 1997, it took the Sask Party a decade to wrench the legislature away from a party fatigued by years in power.

The way the polls are going, you wonder whether Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance Party will take as long.

(Nov. 5) It’s been eclipsed for the last couple of weeks by Alberta’s H1N1 debacle, but a poll commissioned by the Calgary Herald showing the Tories barely ahead of the Wildrose Alliance Party focuses the mind wonderfully once more on Ed Stelmach’s leadership review this weekend. Maclean’s will be covering the Progressive Conservative party’s annual general meeting in Red Deer from this perch.

Meghan McCain fights back, Georgia May Jagger models, and Jean Sarkozy gets a boost

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, October 23, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 2 Comments

The thorn in Stelmach’s side
It was a rough week for Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach. A new poll suggests he and his Progressive Conservatives are in free fall. His televised speech, intended to reassure Albertans about his handling of the recession, was widely panned and his attempt to set an austerity example with a 15-per-cent cut in his premier’s allowance fell on deaf ears. The nurses’ and teachers’ unions have rejected his call for voluntary wage freezes. And on Saturday, the Wildrose Alliance chose former journalist Danielle Smith as its new leader—continuing the Alliance’s evolution from cranky protest party to credible conservative alternative.

To ghostbust, you must first believe
Peter Aykroyd, an 87-year-old former federal civil servant who lives in a spirit-infested family homestead north of Kingston, Ont., has penned one of the season’s odder memoirs. A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters tells the multi-generational story of his spiritualist family. The foreword is supplied by his famous son, Dan, Saturday Night Live comedian and co-writer of the hit movie Ghostbusters. Dan writes how his family, from his great-grandfather onwards, were serious and scientific investigators of the paranormal. “Part of Ghostbusters’ appeal derives from the cold, rational, acceptance-of the-fantastic-as-routine tone that Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, director Ivan Reitman, and I were able to sustain in the movie,” he writes. With good reason: the Aykroyds are believers. Dan’s grandfather was a Bell Telephone engineer who considered the possibility of contacting the spirit realm via a crystal radio set. And one of Dan’s daughters, he writes, claims “glops of light and other shapes attend her when pictures are taken in and around the old family farmhouse.”

They did it for their families
An extramarital affair with a legislative assembly clerk has damaged the personal life and reputation of Northwest Territories Premier Floyd Roland. Now his political future rests with Ted Hughes, a no-nonsense former judge and one-time B.C. conflict-of-interest commissioner. Hughes conducted a hearing in Yellowknife to determine if Roland breached the public trust by keeping secret his relationship with clerk Patricia Russell. Both were married and have since left their spouses to live together. During the hearing Russell denied allegations she shared confidential caucus discussions with her lover. Roland told Hughes they kept the affair secret out of consideration for their families. Hughes may table his report by the end of October.

Beatles vs. Stones, next generation
The children of two of rock’s biggest names have taken a different approach to fame. James McCartney, son of Paul, has always avoided attention. He recently debuted his band Light to just 30 people in a tiny Oxford pub. McCartney, 32, and his band went to extraordinary attempts to conceal the name and parentage of their lead singer. “James has a way with melody,” wrote an approving gossip columnist for the tabloid Sun, “and a set of pipes which are more than a match for his dad’s.” Meantime, Mick Jagger’s toothy daughter Georgia May Jagger is sprawled topless atop a Union Jack in a new advertising campaign for Hudson Jeans. While crossed arms or strategic camera angles keep the photos just on this side of decency, they have still caused a stir, because, to paraphrase an old Beatles tune, she is just 17.

This little piggy went to Paris
Newsmakers spoke in haste last week when it suggested Paris Hilton was unlikely to acquire a British-bred micro-pig because the extremely intelligent animals aren’t available in the U.S. Hilton has now ordered a bred-in-the-U.S. Royal Dandie Extreme miniature pot-bellied pig from an Oregon breeder. “So excited for my new piglette [sic] to come home to me,” she Tweeted on Friday. The always predictable folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are less than enthused, saying she treats her pets as “disposable.” In fact, the pet-loving Hilton has quite a menagerie; it’s boyfriends that end up in the discard pile.

From hell, straight to Whistler
Skateboarding San Diego chef Dave Levey survived the fire-and-brimstone of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay to win the top prize on his Hell’s Kitchen reality show on Fox TV. Levey wins a job for a year working under executive chef James Walt at Araxi Restaurant in Whistler. He starts Jan. 4, barely a month before the start of the Winter Olympics. Of course, he’s survived greater challenges. Not only did he endure the usual hazing by Ramsay, he spent most of the competition in pain after breaking his wrist. Such grit, combined with the 32-year-old’s skater-boy vibe, should make for a perfect Whistler fit. Levey says the tightly edited reality show was mostly real. “What people saw,” he says, “is very similar to who I am.”

Curves and all
Meghan McCain, daughter of former U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, would like to get something off her chest. “Don’t call me a Slut,” she thundered in her column on the Daily Beast website. The furor erupted after McCain used Twitter to post a picture of herself spilling out of a low-cut tank top. Reaction to a revealing photo of a Republican-values gal generated almost as much Web traffic as a certain Colorado family’s errant balloon. First an abashed McCain Tweeted an apology: “I have clearly made a huge mistake and am sorry 2 those that are offended.” Then she got mad. “Honest, I don’t feel that I have anything to feel ashamed of,” she wrote in her column. “I’ve always embraced my curves and will continue to do so.”

Kids say the darnedest things
Lisa Scott of Paulina, La., promised her son Tyren she’d take him to see U.S. President Barack Obama, so last Thursday they went to the President’s town hall meeting in New Orleans. Tyren raised his hand during a question period and Obama gave him the floor. “I have to say, why do people hate you?” he stammered. “They supposed to love you…. God is love.” The President gave a diplomatic reply about how such anger is politically motivated, and people are worried about their futures. The answer was fine, but the question later gave some commentators pause. Just when and why had the hate and rage so troubling to a young boy become a daily part of American discourse? “It was a pretty good question, I must say,” Tyren’s mother later reflected.

Free from Evin
Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari was released on bail Saturday after almost four months in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Maziar, who holds dual Iranian- Canadian citizenship, was arrested June 21 after reporting on the demonstrations following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election. “Hopefully this is a sign that other journalists who continue to languish in jail in Iran will also be released in the near future,” said Annie Game, executive director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expres sion. Bahari’s wife, Paola Gourley, is confined to a London hospital where she is due to give birth to their first child on Oct. 26. It’s unclear if Bahari, who still faces charges, can leave Tehran to attend the birth.

Fortunately, only the marriage is dead
Just three years ago they were rockers in love. The musical marriage in 2006 of Avril Lavigne and Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley ended last week with Lavigne filing for divorce. Neither said what caused their “irreconcilable differences.” Lavigne was seen this summer in St. Tropez with oil heir Brandon Davis. Whibley was recently in Las Vegas with model Hanna Beth Merjos. It may simply be they married too young. As Lavigne said on her website, “Deryck and I have been together for 6 years. We have been friends since I was 17, started dating when I was 19, and married when I was 21. I am grateful for our time together, and I am grateful and blessed for our remaining friendship.” And Whibley is grateful to be alive. Internet rumours last weekend had him dead—not a good start to single life. Luckily that was just a hoax.

Spacing out
There’s a bit of a ham in any politician but the Elvis-loving former Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi is uncommonly blessed. He once famously crooned the King’s tunes while on an official tour of Presley’s Graceland mansion. But now Koizumi, 67, is really reaching for the stars. His newest gig is as a voice actor for an extraterrestrial hero who fights aliens from outer space in the movie Mega Monster Ball: Ultra Galaxy. Sure, it was great to be premier of a major world power, but being Ultraman King has its advantages.

Sarko’s son also rises
Jean Sarkozy, all of 23 and repeating his second year at the Sorbonne, has been given a boost into the family business by his father Nicolas. The French president has appointed his son chairman of La Défense, the public agency administering France’s biggest business district, in west Paris. There are predictable cries of nepotism and even some of Sarkozy’s cabinet squirm at claims he is running a presidential monarchy. Sarkozy has denounced the “hysterical manhunt” against his son. Jean maintains a dignified silence, relying on what critics concede are two of his greatest assets: his golden good looks and his very nice hair.

"What this is is a shift in pain"

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 3:43 PM - 4 Comments

Last night, Paul Hinman, the interim leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance Party, surprised many by trouncing Tory Diane Colley-Urquhart, a well-known alderman, in a Calgary by-election. Hinman took 37 per cent of the vote to Liberal Avalon Roberts’s 34 per cent. Colley-Urquhart eked out a mere 26 per cent of the vote.

The Progressive Conservatives had held Calgary-Glenmore, an affluent riding that’s home to many well-heeled oil and gas types, since 1969. The by-election has been widely billed as a referendum on the policies of Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, whose government has wracked up a sizable deficit since projecting, only last August, an enormous surplus, and antagonized Calgary’s business community with unpopular changes to the province’s royalty regime.

Hastily put together just prior to Alberta’s 2008 election, the Wildrose Alliance remains an unknown quantity (Hinman sat in the legislature for four years as leader of the Alberta Alliance Party, but lost the seat last year), though it is decidedly right of the Alberta Tories, their weakest flank. Hinman’s victory last night could signal Alberta politics is changing and adds to the momentum of a party already energized by an ongoing leadership race.

Maclean’s spoke to Hinman the morning after his win. Continue…

We must close the absurdity gap

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, July 20, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 12 Comments

Where did we go wrong, Canada? France gets as a first lady a supermodel who used to pose naked. Italy gets a prime minister in the midst of yet another sex scandal—this one set off by the revelations of a woman who goes by the nickname Long Thighs. And what do we get? We get a summer’s worth of political debate about the mechanics of Employment Insurance administration. If we’re not careful, they’re going to kick us out of the G8 for this.

The tedium transcends the federal level. Ed Stelmach was grazed by a handful of pie near the beginning of his term as Alberta premier, and has yet to accomplish anything else quite as interesting. Brad Wall of Saskatchewan keeps talking about how everything in his province is going to be all great and awesome thanks to . . . potash!—the four-eyed nerd of the resource world. Meanwhile, reporters in Prince Edward Island got excited recently when rumours began to fly that one of Robert Ghiz’s hairs had been spotted moving. Continue…

Alberta economic council has no Alberta economists

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 3, 2009 at 4:25 PM - 100 Comments

Via Stephen Gordon, a UofA economist is pretty steamed about a new “Premier’s Council for Economic Strategy,” whose members are listed here. The group — David Emerson, Anne McLellan, Jennifer Welsh — seems to be drawn largely from that exotic species, Canadians Who Sit On Advisory Councils. A council that meets every six months to share vague goodwill and free-floating thoughtfulness probably won’t be much help to anyone, but they seem like nice people and I wish them pleasant deliberations.

Stelmach finds his twin in Texas

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 6:53 PM - 4 Comments

Texas Governor Rick Perry, an articulate former Air Force pilot with Redfordesque good looks, has a few things in common with Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach—no kidding. Both have farming roots, Perry’s in cotton, Stelmach’s in cattle. As a member of the Texas House of Representatives, Perry, a Republican, sat with the “Pit Bulls,” a group of lawmakers committed to no-frills budgets; Stelmach was a “Deep Sixer,” a similarly bellicose band of fiscally conservative MLAs. This week, Perry becomes the longest-serving governor in Texas history; Stelmach leads the Progressive Conservatives, in power since 1971, also a long run. Both preside over energy-rich jurisdictions that can still generate jobs mid-recession, even as they emit a pall of greenhouse gases. Continue…

Will the West revolt?

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 7:01 PM - 51 Comments

Talk about an Alberta nightmare: Ottawa run by a Quebec Liberal with the support of the commies and the separatists. It has certainly got Western Canada all riled up. But what if this three-headed coalition actually gets control of the House? What if a Prime Minister from Alberta, whose Conservative party received 72 of Western Canada’s 92 seats in the recent election gets dumped—at a time when Alberta-B.C.’s economic strength is phenomenally strong and central Canada enters its grim decline? Will the West revolt?

Perhaps. Especially since the mere threat has sparked mass outrage in Alberta and B.C., where political and business leaders warn that it could trigger a whole new wave of discontent. “It’s not Liberals versus Conservatives, or left versus right: They’ve snookered an elected government from Western Canada, with the interests of Western Canada at heart,” says Barry Cooper, a political scientist at the University of Calgary. “This is a fight between central Canada and us.” From Calgary, it “looks like Ottawa and Quebec just want to screw the West—period,” he says. “The only thing these three clowns have in common is that they’re all from the St. Lawrence Valley.”

Last month, the Liberals were reduced to a single MP in Manitoba, a single MP in Saskatchewan and five in B.C., where they held 9 seats prior to the call. Their lack of depth means that the East Vancouver leftist stalwart, Libby Davies is—seriously—up for consideration for senior federal cabinet minister for B.C. That, in itself, is enough to make Vancouver Liberals squirm. Alberta would replace five Conservative cabinet ministers with the only non-Tory member in the entire province, new NDP MP Linda Duncan, who says no new oil sands projects should be approved until Ottawa develops full environmental and health effects policies.

According to a national poll released today by Angus Reid, support for maintaining the Conservative Party over the Liberal-NDP coalition is highest in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. It also showed that distrust of the Bloc Québécois’s role in the federal government is highest in the West, with the largest majorities in Alberta (82 per cent), Manitoba-Saskatchewan (74 per cent) and B.C. (66 per cent).

So what’s a westerner to do? “Take a firm stance against the coming, NDP-led raid on the provincial economy,” says Cooper, who told Maclean’s that he was inundated with calls and emails yesterday from Alberta separatists who see this as a “golden opportunity” to advance the cause. “Tell your premier he cannot cooperate.” On that front, Manitoba’s NDP premier Gary Doer is keeping mum. Alberta premier Ed Stelmach wants the Tories to adjourn until the new year, to allow government the chance to bring forward a budget. So does B.C. premier Gordon Campbell, who believes a coalition government is a risky leap of faith, that, if it fails, will make Canada’s economic crisis significantly worse. And Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall is focusing his criticism on the Liberal and NDP leaders for signing an accord supported by the Bloc.

For the West—which takes a relatively dim view of an auto-sector bailout—the stakes are high. Unreasonably tough emissions laws, higher equalization payments, carbon taxes, federal development taxes, NEP II—all this and more may lie ahead, says Cooper, who adds that both Layton and Dion threaten the oil sands, at present, the country’s main economic driver. “When there’s money piled up, people are less cantakerous,” says Paul Thomas, a political scientist at the University of Manitoba. “But regional grievances are amplified by economic hard times.” And there are nothing but dark days ahead.

Trouble in Eden

By Nicholas Köhler - Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 12:00 PM - 8 Comments

For years the Alberta government downplayed its surplus forecasts by lowballing the price of oil, permitting an end-of-year bunny-from-the-hat routine—surprise, oodles of cash!—that finance ministers relished. But last August, as oil enjoyed its precipitous summertime climb—it peaked in July at US$148 a barrel, with some anticipating a near future of $200 oil—Finance Minister Iris Evans decided she should play a little fairer. She revised an earlier reckoning (a tidy surplus of $1.5 billion, calculated on $78 oil) to $8.5 billion, based on a less conservative estimate of US$119.25 per barrel. Now, with oil hovering around US$50, Evans likely wishes she’d left the bunny deep inside her hat.

Last week, she had to revise her forecast again, pegging the surplus at just $2 billion, a $6.5-billion tumble in three months. Analysts don’t see oil rebounding soon. Few in Alberta’s government have ever experienced a two-year slump. “The last time that happened was in the early 1980s,” says analyst Martin King, of FirstEnergy Capital Corp.

The province has meanwhile committed to an orgy of spending—$37 billion in last April’s budget, up almost 10 per cent from the previous year. So spooked are Albertans that many want the province to delay the $2 billion it committed to carbon sequestration technology, the backbone of Premier Ed Stelmach’s campaign to clean up Alberta’s “dirty oil” image. The commodities slump also means Alberta won’t this year contribute to the Heritage Fund, a savings plan designed for when its dwindling conventional oil and gas reservoirs run dry. Worth just $15.8 billion today despite having been created in 1976, it’s already lost $1.2 billion in six months due to the global financial meltdown.

Alberta’s current spending habits, combined with waning energy revenues, will put the province into deficit in as little as five years, says a report prepared by a government-appointed commission led by University of Calgary economist Jack Mintz. Released last Wednesday, the report says the province must boost the Heritage Fund to $100 billion by 2030—otherwise it risks having to raise the average tax rate a crippling 40 per cent over the next 15 years to make up the difference in shrinking oil patch kitty. That Mintz submitted his findings back in January suggests how anxious the government has been to make them public.

Still, last week was as odd a time as any. Also on Wednesday, Stelmach boldly lowered the royalties Alberta was to charge oil and gas companies, a move aimed at stimulating economic growth now that drilling has declined. The premier had unveiled new, higher royalties just over a year ago when commodity prices were soaring. Now the framework has been tweaked again, reducing Alberta’s take from some new conventional wells for five years (oil sands and existing wells aren’t affected by the changes). Then, early this week, he fiddled again, moving up the date for the weakened levies from Jan. 1 to Nov. 19 because companies had been madly cancelling rig contracts to wait for the more attractive royalties.

Critics say all this makes Stelmach look erratic. Worse, because the higher royalty rates had never actually taken effect, the province never reaped the rewards of run-up oil. Has Alberta missed the oil tanker entirely, then, with prices off $100 from July? “It was $50 a year ago—come on, man, we were growing like crazy then!” says Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo Coun. Mike Allen, of Fort McMurray. Allen, who runs a musical instrument shop catering to oil sands workers, had one of his best months ever last month, slump or not. Confused? So, very likely, is Stelmach. But steering Alberta through swelling, falling oil is like performing sleight of hand on the high seas. Sooner or later, the rabbit gets sick.

Target: Alberta

By Nicholas Köhler - Friday, November 21, 2008 at 3:00 AM - 6 Comments

Within 24 hours of Barack Obama’s victory speech, the Harper government floated the idea of a North American climate-change pact, with cap-and-trade emerging as the agreement’s most likely shape. On its surface, Harper’s preemptive strategy would seek to smooth trade relations with the Americans and secure concessions on Alberta’s oil sands, which one senior Obama advisor warned last summer could be deemed “dirty” and therefore warrant sanction. But Harper’s announcement may have been directed as much at emissions-heavy, recalcitrant Alberta as it was at the U.S.

Here’s why.

Alberta argues cap and trade would unfairly target the oil sands and drain the province of its constitutionally-protected resource revenues. “We’re not interested in Alberta industries buying emissions credits to save swampland in Florida,” Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner told Maclean’s. If he didn’t altogether dismiss the notion of a U.S.-Canada cap and trade system, Renner did insist that any agreement must recognize the reduction measures Alberta has already adopted, including a $15-a-tonne carbon levy that the province’s large emitters have paid into a technology fund since 2007. Cap and trade may be fine for others, in other words, but leave Alberta to its business. “We’re not asking anyone to give us exemptions,” says Renner. “We’re simply saying there needs to be a recognition that the dollars that are spent for CO2 abatement by Alberta companies need to be reinvested back into actual abatements in Alberta.”

Yet, some question how much leverage Alberta will have now that the U.S. is poised to regulate. According to Alexander Moens, a senior fellow at the conservative Fraser Institute whose report, Canada and Obama: Canada’s Stake in the 2008 US Election, was released just after the U.S. election, an Obama climate-change strategy might checkmate Alberta altogether. “It’s unimaginable that American industry would let Canadian manufacturers simply remain part of our integrated supply chains if they faced the cap-and-trade levy and we did not,” says Moens, who is not a proponent of cap and trade but who believes it will inevitably be adopted by Canada in response to similar measures in the U.S. “They would insist on a level playing field.” That field would be smoothed, he believes, by the U.S. slapping protectionist levies or tariffs on Canadian goods—including Alberta crude.

Still, Renner doesn’t anticipate levies and says the U.S. is so hungry for a secure oil supply that it will grant Alberta special status in whatever climate-change framework its adopts. “The fact that we are right now one of the primary economic drivers within Canada gives us I think reason to believe that we should have some influence at the Canadian government level, at the national level,” he says. “And frankly, I think, as the U.S. moves towards any kind of a strategy for energy security, they’re going to want to recognize that it is not in their best interest to create a regulatory regime that effectively shuts down their safest and most secure source of energy in the future.”

Perhaps. But Renner’s confidence may be misplaced. Observers expect Obama to use the current financial turmoil as an opportunity to push through an ambitious agenda, including green regulations. Harper’s efforts to be part of that conversation could work a whole lot better than Alberta’s seeking to have its oil sands, and eat them too. And his climate-change trial balloon seems like a clear message to Alberta to prepare for a future without icing.

Bring her home to stop the whining

By selley - Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 1:04 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Doug Saunders on “Americanizing” the Afghanistan mission; Christie Blatchford on rescuing child abuse victims; James Travers on the food crisis; John Ivison on the doctor shortage; Don Martin on Brenda Martin.

Departmental briefings
Criticism and advice for the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Citizenship and Immigration, Finance and Defence. And a finger in the eye for the Liberals.

The Calgary Herald‘s Don Martin implores Foreign Affairs to get Brenda Martin (who is clearly of no relation) home from Mexico as soon as is humanly possible—guilty, innocent, whatever; he just wants the whining to end. Continue…

Canada—Stagflating towards the poorhouse since 2008

By selley - Monday, April 28, 2008 at 1:58 PM - 0 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Doug Saunders on “re-Talibanization”; Scott Taylor on Rick Hillier’s successor; James Travers on our crumbling democracy; David Olive and George Jonas on air travel; Greg Weston on the in-and-out.

Law and Order: Canadian Criminal Intent
In which rowdy hockey fans put cops to the test, star chambers impose human rights orthodoxy on unsuspecting Christians and the Supreme Court vows to keep dogs out of our backpacks. Continue…