Jen Gerson: The frontrunner's platform features a few solid ideas, but they're overshadowed by cynical, ill-advised and improbable ones
In the end, it will come down to the economy. It always comes down to the economy, and Rachel Notley’s NDP—mired in four years of high unemployment, recession, and then slow growth—was always going to struggle to defeat a rejuvenated United Conservative Party led by Jason Kenney.
The UCP, for example, wants to create a resource corridor that will help to expedite future infrastructure projects. This is a generational project that, with true financial ownership from First Nations groups, could help create meaningful buy-in that would enrich affected communities for decades to come. I see a strategy for natural gas exports, and a push to help recent immigrants find an easier process to gain recognition for foreign credentials.
The top-line promises coming out of the UCP government-in-waiting are the types of things Jason Kenney screams through megaphones to crowds of angry protestors. They’re of an entirely different order, and they’re selling Albertans and entirely different bill of goods.Alberta’s beef with equalization is both longstanding and, for the most part, just.
Changes to the funding formula itself are already reviewed regularly in Parliament—a referendum doesn’t necessarily give Alberta any more leverage to lobby for a change than it currently has. In fact, politicians like Scott Moe are already pitching for serious reform. Further, there is no likely equation that would see Alberta become a recipient of equalization, as incomes are still too high compared to the rest of the country.
Now owners, the federal government re-visited those consultations and expect to have them completed by May. But there’s nothing stopping the Liberals from extending those consultations indefinitely. There’s nothing stopping them from simply rejecting the expansion for the sheer joy of smushing a political pie in Kenney’s face.
If Alberta did begin to curtail supply, thus increasing the price of gas, the residents of B.C. may see the error of its NDP-voting ways—or the scheme could backfire spectacularly, cementing dislike for Alberta generally, and conservatives more specifically. I understand why the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation would take a swipe at the C-suite fat cats who head the major oil and gas companies on behalf of real, everyday, carbon-tax paying Albertans.
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