Mass Immigration Experiment Gives Canada an Edge in Global Race for Labor

Randy Thanthong-Knight
Sun, June 18, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- At a time industrialized countries around the world are confronting declining birth rates and aging workforces, Canada is at the forefront of betting on immigration to stave off economic decline.

A country about as populous as California has added more than all the residents in San
Francisco in a year. Last week, Canada surpassed 40 million people for the first time ever — with growth only expected to continue at a rapid pace as it welcomes more immigrant workers, refugees and foreign students across its borders.

For Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration, the massive immigration experiment is a way to broaden the labor market as global competition for skilled workers intensifies. It also reflects a longer-term ambition for Canada to expand its international presence and emerge from the shadow of the neighboring US — similar in size by land, but home to about eight times the population and almost 12 times the gross domestic product.

“We have lots of space for people to come and occupy,” said Usha George, a professor in Canadian immigration policy at Toronto Metropolitan University. “In order to expand our agricultural, industrial and technological base, we need more people to come here.”

Now, as people flow into the country like never before, Canada has an immediate challenge: how to propel growth in rural regions in dire need of newcomers while minimizing the strains to urban centers already bulging with people.

The rewards are apparent. Population gains have boosted hiring and consumption, helping the economy withstand a rate-hike campaign by the Bank of Canada — so much so that the central bank this month had to resume tightening after a pause. Yet in a country that’s long been home to one of the world’s hottest housing markets, the government’s plan has drawn criticism that increasing immigration targets merely boosts economic output without raising living standards for individuals.

Real GDP per capita has been little changed over the past decade, and is expected to fall from its 2022 peak, based on Bank of Canada output forecasts. Productivity growth has been stagnant, and disposable income hasn't kept up with home prices.

Even some prominent, pro-immigration economists are now saying Canada is going too far, too fast.

“It doesn’t make sense in this very short period of time to make such a rapid increase,” said David Dodge, a former Bank of Canada governor who decades ago worked on a system that’s a genesis of the current immigration program. “The speed of that adjustment exacerbates the costs and reduces the additional productivity because there’s less time for people to get adjusted.”

Fastest Growth

The Trudeau administration has set a target of adding about half a million permanent residents each year. Last year, foreign students, temporary workers and refugees made up another group that’s even larger, bringing total arrivals to a record one million. The inflow pushed Canada’s annual population growth rate to 2.7%, the fastest pace among advanced economies and rivaling developing nations Burkina Faso, Burundi and Sudan.

“You have to realize that if you don’t embrace immigration, there are whole hosts of social and economic consequences that will impact your community negatively,” Sean Fraser, Canada’s immigration minister, said in an interview. “The ability to successfully integrate people in large numbers doesn’t demand that you welcome fewer people, it demands that you advance smart immigration policies.”

Nearly one in four people in Canada are now immigrants, the largest proportion among the Group of Seven nations. At the current pace of growth, the smallest G-7 country by population would double its residents in about 26 years, and surpass Italy, France, the UK and Germany by 2050.

The looming threats of an aging population — leading to dwindling tax revenue and shrinking budgets — are playing out in different ways around the world. France’s plan to raise the retirement age by two years to 64 led to nationwide protests. Germany risks having 5 million fewer workers by the end of the decade, and already is struggling with strains in its industrial-heavy economy. Japan, where the government has long resisted immigration, is facing acute labor shortages, a rapid population decline, and dying rural towns.

In the US, immigration is a divisive political issue that’s becoming even more polarizing as thousands of migrants traverse the Mexican border daily.

By contrast, Canada’s residents have long been welcoming of newcomers, thanks to the country’s framing of immigration as an economic policy and a relatively isolated geography that limits illegal crossings. Since 1967, it has relied on a system where immigrants are assigned points based on their age, education, employment opportunities and English or French abilities, allowing the country to target skilled workers.

But immigration has largely tilted toward Canada’s larger cities, which have developed strong ethnic communities that have in turn attracted more newcomers seeking a sense of belonging. Over a one-year period to July 1, the largest population centers had a net gain of more than 600,000 people from international migration, compared with just 21,000 settling in smaller communities.

That’s only strengthened real estate demand in cities where housing was already in short supply, raising homeownership barriers and pricing millions out of the market — hurting both international migrants and current residents, especially younger generations.

“We’re a free country. We’re not going to direct migration patterns to say you have to move to remote places,” said Bob Dhillon, founder and chief executive officer of Calgary-based real estate company Mainstreet Equity Corp., who’s a Sikh immigrant. “But we can encourage new immigrants and give them incentives to go to different parts of Canada other than big cities.”

His city exemplifies some of the strains. Even after a rise in interest rates last year, a benchmark measure of Calgary home values climbed almost 3% in May from a year earlier to a record. Prices are up almost 28% from just five years ago.

That’s in part because of a sudden surge in residents in Calgary’s home province of Alberta: Last year’s 3.7% jump in population — matching the pace of Niger, the world’s fastest-growing country — was unexpected even for a region known for its oil boomtowns.

Mortgage broker Matt Leggett said he has never seen this much housing demand since moving to Calgary nearly two decades ago. Leslie Echino, owner of Annabelle’s Kitchen, has spent months looking to add a third location in one of the city’s fast-growing suburbs, but newly empty commercial spaces are usually snapped up within days.

Rental-property builder Bucci Developments went from offering a month of free rent two years ago to now having a wait list for its units. The company is trying to catch up with soaring demand, doubling its construction target with plans to add four more towers near downtown.

“It’s these unexpected surges that force us to retool,” said Mike Bucci, the company’s vice president. “I want boring predictability. If you’re consistent, the industry can catch up. But it’s going to take us at least three years to do so,” he said, referring to the time it takes his firm to build an apartment building.

Those type of real estate shocks risk eroding support among Canadians for immigrants, said David Green, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics.

“We’re opening the door to the same kind of problems that we see in other countries,” Green said. “The hard-right wing is going to pick this up and run with it, and at least a modicum of what they’re going to say on the housing market strains is going to be true. That’s going to give credence to the rest of their narrative. This is a very dangerous game.”

A Canadian Value

Fraser, the immigration minister, said the government is trying to address the strains with measures such as regionalizing immigration programs to allocate people to areas that have more capacity, and a program to bring in more people who have skills that are in great demand, such as health-care workers and homebuilders.

“This is going to help us bring the skills that we need into the economy to help alleviate some of the social pressures rather than exacerbate them,” he said.

Public support also is holding strong. Canadians look at immigration “as a value and not a policy,” said Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute for Survey Research, which conducts an annual survey on the subject. In the most recent one, almost 70% of respondents said they disagree with the statement “overall, there is too much immigration to Canada,” the highest since the poll began in 1977.

Among the 27% of survey respondents who agreed there’s too much immigration, the most common reason they gave was a threat to culture.

Concerns about the changing demographic are playing out in Quebec, Canada’s second-most populous province. The French-speaking region has resisted raising its permanent resident targets, keeping the pace at just half that of the federal government on a per capita basis. Premier François Legault has said that the province wouldn’t accept large increases of newcomers like the rest of the country on concern it would lead to a decline in French language, even though that could mean further losing its demographic weight within Canada.

At the same time, industry groups have repeatedly called for higher immigration to add more permanent workers to the economy. Quebec businesses are increasingly turning to temporary staff to fill jobs, with the number of temporary foreign workers jumping 65% in just three years.

Across all provinces, many accreditation and job processes can’t expand fast enough to cope with or take advantage of the rapid increases in newcomers. That has resulted in many skilled immigrants being forced to work at entry levels or wait around for their foreign qualifications to be recognized.

More than half of recent immigrants were admitted under the economic category — meaning skilled workers and entrepreneurs who are “selected on the basis of their ability to become economically established in Canada.” While these people are a key focus of the policy, alongside refugee resettlement, the number of temporary workers has soared in recent years, leading to criticism that they will hurt wage growth and increase income inequality.

But both high- and low-skilled jobs are needed throughout Canada, where the job market remains tight. The “vast majority” of immigrants are contributing to the economy, said Kevin McNichol, CEO of Prospect Human Services, which helps Albertans and newcomers get jobs.

“This isn’t a deficit game,” he said. “They’re not taking stuff away. They’re adding, and in adding then our economy grows for everybody, which means more work, more jobs, more money.”

Embracing Change

Those types of benefits are becoming clear in Nova Scotia, which knows the pains of a shrinking population. Up until about a decade ago, communities were slowly dying after key industries like steelmaking and coal mining shut down, taking working-age people with them. They left behind an older population and towns that struggled to support themselves.

The biggest Atlantic province now wants to double its residents to 2 million by 2060 — an ambitious target considering it took more than 150 years for Nova Scotia to reach a million people, in 2021.

In Pictou County, where Fraser is from, the influx of foreign business owners, health-care professionals and factory workers have changed the area dramatically. In less than a decade, the county added a mosque, Syrian restaurants and an Asian grocery store. It's also getting a Mexican restaurant later this year, to be run by former temporary worker Anabel Cameron.

“We as Canadians have a very wealthy neighbor to the south of us, and we want all the things that they want, but their population and tax base allow them to have really good roads, really good services and all these wonderful things,” said Jim Fitt, founder and CEO of Velsoft, an e-learning and training software company based in the county, which relies on immigrants to help serve its clients worldwide. “The only way we’re going to be able to achieve that is if we have a bigger tax base.”

Nova Scotia also is at the forefront of breaking down barriers for newcomers to work in jobs that match their potential. When Bahati Maganjo arrived in Pictou County from Kenya in 2021, she could only work as a continuing care assistant at a retirement home despite having been trained as a nurse. She is now part of the pilot fast-track program to integrate internationally-educated nurses, and is expected to start working in her profession by July.

“With my colleagues and patients, I see the appreciation for what I’m bringing to the table,” said Maganjo, who was born in Rwanda. “I can’t imagine having to wait years before I could make a contribution here.”

The provincial capital of Halifax, with a population of about 480,000, has set a target to increase its residents by 10% in 2027 and by 35% in 2037. Its expanded talent pool was key in attracting companies like Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., HuMetis Technologies Inc., Avanade Inc., and Wattpad Corp. in recent years.

The population gains contributed to a 9.3% annual jump in Halifax’s rents for a two-bedroom apartment as of October, the largest increase of any major Canadian city. But to Mayor Mike Savage, the strains are worth it.

As he put it: “Problems of growth are easier to manage than problems of stagnancy.”

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Canada Wildfires Heat Up Climate Change Pressure on Trudeau


Laura Dhillon Kane, Kendra Pierre-Louis and Kevin Orland
Sat, June 17, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Canada’s enormous wildfires and the acrid haze they’ve spread across North America have widened a schism in the country’s politics.

While politicians in Alberta and Saskatchewan — Canada’s oil-producing heartland — and Conservatives in Ottawa can no longer deny climate change, they continue to stand in the way of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambitions. That could leave one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers without a credible pathway to reduce carbon emissions at the same time that the impacts of climate change send its forests up in smoke.

The fires have burned through more than 13 million acres, an area twice the size of Massachusetts, putting this year on track to be the worst on record. As the blazes force tens of thousands from their homes and cloud the air with toxic smoke, Canada’s opposition leader has called for an end to the country’s carbon tax. Trudeau’s chief rival, the populist Conservative Pierre Poilievre, spoke for hours in Parliament last week in an attempt to stall the ruling Liberal Party’s budget. During his speech, he reiterated one of his signature promises should the Tories regain power: “Technology, not taxes.”

The pledge, which resonates deeply with Poilievre’s base in the Prairie provinces, illustrates the challenges ahead for Trudeau as he attempts to neutralize the country's carbon emissions by mid-century. Canada has the world’s third-largest nationally proven crude reserves, and oil and gas represent as much as 7% of the country’s GDP and a fifth of its goods exports. While the record-breaking wildfires have driven home the costs of climate inaction, politicians are still seizing upon the fears of Canadians about the short-term costs of action.

Because Canada has a very carbon-intensive economy, many voters, carbon-producing industries and the politicians who are allied with them have been resistant to climate policy, said Kathryn Harrison, a political science professor who studies environmental policy at the University of British Columbia.

Trudeau has pledged to cut emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by the end of this decade and reach net zero by 2050, but Harrison sees two major political barriers to reaching those goals. The first is that she doesn’t see how the targets can plausibly be achieved without a cap on oil and gas production. Trudeau’s government, under intense industry and political pressure, has refused to entertain a production cap. Instead, it has pledged C$12.4 billion ($9.4 billion) in tax credits for building carbon capture systems, even though most efforts to scale up the technology to date have not been successful.

The second challenge is Trudeau’s carbon price. The system imposes fees on major polluters and fossil fuel sales. The federal government then returns 90% of the revenue from the fuel levy to Canadians through rebate checks.

Harrison said that she expects Canadians to become accustomed to the rebate checks and eventually bristle at Poilievre or a future Conservative leader threatening to axe the tax. A recent report from Parliament’s spending watchdog found that most households will get back more than they pay in 2030 even though the levy is slated to rise. But in the meantime, the policy is not well-understood, and many Canadians who are already struggling with inflation recoil at anything that increases the already high cost of gas.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in an interview that Canadians want his government to take action on climate change in a way that is mindful of affordability while creating jobs and economic opportunities for the future.

“It certainly can’t all be about sacrifice,” he said. “But I think Canadians also are cognizant of the fact that the costs associated with climate change are becoming more apparent every day — the costs of the wildfires, the costs of the floods, the emerging costs as we see the glaciers recede. We must address climate change or the costs of climate are going to be enormous and at some point they're going to be undefeatable.”

The Canadian Climate Institute, an environmental policy nonprofit that receives federal funding but does independent research, released a report last year chronicling the economic impact of climate change. It found that GDP could fall by 12% and incomes could drop 18% by century’s end if emissions continue to rapidly rise, among a slew of other dire economic impacts.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been reluctant to tie the fires to climate change. When asked at an event last week whether she accepted that climate change is driving the worse wildfire season, she largely deflected the question and instead spoke about how human carelessness — such as cigarette butts tossed from car windows — has caused many of the province’s fires.

She said she’d work with Trudeau on reducing emissions, but that his current plans, including the goal of a net-zero electrical grid by 2035, are “unachievable.” Alberta’s oil sands represent about 97% of Canada’s oil reserves, producing about 3.25 million barrels of crude a day, more than the output of Kuwait. Current oil-sands production is up about 40% from a decade ago, and though it has fallen from a peak in 2020, it may begin increasing again next year after the completion of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Smith’s office didn’t respond to a request from Bloomberg to discuss the matter further. Conservative politicians at the federal level declined requests for comment. Yet even some of Smith’s cabinet ministers have acknowledged the role that climate change is playing in the worsening fire season.

“We look at the number and intensity of the fires this year and the widespread fires that we have — it’s something that we haven’t seen before,” Forestry Minister Todd Loewen said in response to a reporter’s question at a briefing in May. When pressed on what’s causing those changes, he added: “Definitely man has had an effect on our environment.”

Lynn Johnston, a forest fire research specialist with Natural Resources Canada, was even more blunt: “This is climate change action.”

Beyond the scope of the fires, perhaps the most shocking hallmark of this year's fire season has been the sheer number of fires happening simultaneously. A study published earlier this year links the expansion of fires in Western Canada, including in British Columbia, to greenhouse gas emissions.

“In the case of Alberta and Nova Scotia, they do typically have a spring fire season,” said Johnston. “However, that fire season is slowly creeping earlier and earlier. And under human-caused climate change, we're predicting that there's going to be a couple more weeks to a month, longer fire seasons in a lot of these areas.”

The blazes have hit during a crucial year for the trajectory of the country’s emissions targets, said Anna Kanduth, a research lead at the Canadian Climate Institute. The country is expected to unveil draft regulations for a number of policies that are a major part of its climate plans, including ones aimed at reducing oil and gas emissions, increasing access to clean electricity and stronger methane rules.

While the wildfires have pushed climate to the top of the agenda right now, momentum could dissipate when the smoke recedes. The University of British Columbia’s Harrison noted that 600 people in her province died during an extreme heat wave in 2021, which also saw wildfires consume the town of Lytton, B.C. But two years later, the national debate about climate policy remains largely where it was.

“Everybody said, ‘This will be the wake-up call.’ And maybe this one will be,” she said. But there's no way to slow climate change without some sacrifice, she added. “I think voters have to have an honest conversation that there is no magic here.”

Bloomberg Businessweek

Canada’s fires are getting fiercer – and rebuilding is becoming a challenge

Leyland Cecco in Toronto

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, June 18, 2023

Mona Crowston had only minutes to gather her belongings before the wildfire which had been burning for days at the edge of her town swept down towards her house. The 84-year-old already had a suitcase packed, just in case.

Related: Burned to the Ground: the Canadian village incinerated by record temperatures

“I made sure to tidy up what I could before we left. The last thing I wanted was to return home and have a messy room,” she said.

She and her husband left on June 30, 2021. Months later, when they finally returned to the site of their home of 47 years, all they found was charred and crumbled foundation.


Most of the Canadian town of Lytton had also been destroyed.

This year’s spring wildfire season has been the worst on record in Canada, with more than 5m hectares of land burned – a figure higher than the entire 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022 seasons combined.

Already this year, more than 200 homes have been destroyed. And with warmer and drier months are still to come, the experiences of those who saw their lives destroyed in previous wildfires raise larger questions about both Canada’s ability to rebuild after disaster, and its commitment to victims in the months and years after the flames are extinguished.

A wildfire seen from a Canadian forces helicopter surveying the area near Mistissini, Quebec, on 12 June. 

Photograph: Canadian Forces/Reuters

In the days leading up to the Lytton fire, the surrounding region of British Columbia had broken heat records – at one point nearly reaching 50C (122F) – and the arid land was more parched than normal.

“The wind that day was all just tremendous,” said Crowston. “And then there was the heat. Everything was so dry.”

When winds finally whipped the fire into Lytton, it only took 30 minutes for most of it to be destroyed. When residents returned briefly to tour the damage, they found the main commercial strip had been turned to dust. Homes and vehicles had seemingly vaporized.

Nearly two years after the fire, similar conditions have set in across Canada, with typically damp regions left bone-dry. Unseasonably hot weather has shattered records in dozens of communities And areas that typically don’t experience roaring blazes – from Vancouver Island in the West and Quebec in the west – and have been left charred.

JR Adams, a member of the Lytton First Nation, bore witness to the destruction of his own community.

And when he saw the recent news coverage of wildfires in Nova Scotia, painful memories came flooding back.

“My heart dropped. I knew there was nothing I could do at that moment, except just feel for the people who lost their homes. I was there. I know. I know how they’re feeling. And to see it on the news again, oh God.”

Crowston, Adams and scores of others were displaced and homeless for months.

Flight, loss and homelessness exerted a heavy toll on Adas’s mental health.

“For months, I’d wake up in a room that wasn’t my home. It took a lot of time to accept this. It made facing every day difficult. I didn’t know how to sleep. Even today, I’m scared to sleep,” said Adams.

Earlier this year, the Fraser Valley Current reported on the slow efforts to rebuild Lytton. The village “remains a flattened heap of dirt and concrete”, it reported, with much of the space fenced off. Residents complained of bureaucratic delays and a feeling among they had been forgotten. Work crews have found Indigenous artifacts at excavation sites, further slowing the process. As a result, next to nothing has been rebuilt yet.

With hotter and larger fires projected to sweep across the Canada in the coming years, the collective failure to rebuild in Lytton raises questions about the preparedness of governments to respond to large crises.

“I spent 62 years in Lytton. And I was hoping to rebuild. I just wanted to get home and get on with my life. I miss it terribly,” said Crowston.

Related: ‘Like Nagasaki’: devastating wildfires will only get worse, new book warns

A few months before the fire struck, the couple had replaced their bathroom – part of a bigger plan to renovate the property. Just days before the blaze, they had installed a new stained glass front door. “At least we got to enjoy that door for a few days,” she said.

But as the months in temporary accommodation dragged on – one elderly resident died still hoping to return home – Crowston and her husband eventually came to the sad conclusion that there was no going back.

In November, they bought a home in the town of Ashcroft, an hour north of Lytton in a region still within the range of wildfires.

“I’m trying to get settled. But you build your life somewhere. You have community, memories,” said Crowston. “When I looked out the windows of my home in Lytton, you saw mountains. Here, all I see are hedges.”

Glenn McGillivray, the managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, said that Canada no longer had systems in place to help speed up rebuilding efforts after natural disasters.

“That’s not happening anymore. We’re getting really big events, costly events, and they’re coming really, really close together. And in some cases, they’re overlapping,” he said.

Canada’s climate means that the country’s construction season is relatively short, and reconstruction is often complicated by the logistical challenges of bringing large crews to isolated communities. Wildfires also pose unique challenges, such as the way vinyl siding and plastics melt into the ground, turning the soil toxic.

In Halifax, where 200 buildings were recently destroyed by wildfires, contractors warn it could take three years to rebuild.

“We just cannot keep this up. Disasters are getting larger and more costly. We’re hitting a point where we’re going to spend more on recovery than we are on building new construction in Canada. That’s the trend and we just can’t keep it up. Something has to happen,” McGillivray said.

While the community of Lytton is under the jurisdiction of the province, the Lytton First Nations reserve is under federal oversight, speeding up elements of the rebuilding process. In September, Adams got word that the modular homes on the Lytton First Nations reserve were ready.

“The moment I got the key, I instantly packed up everything in my room. I left my hotel that night with my car packed with everything. And coming back, it was a rush. I was able to restart my routine again, to be with my family and after a year and a half, to almost feel home,” said Adams. “We’re finally all together, back on our reserves. And I feel like watching the progress happen. It’s like we’re taking our land back. And it’s exciting to watch.”

But widespread news coverage of fires blazing across the country means the looming threat of future wildfires is never far from Adams’ mind.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize how quickly things can change and how it can change your life,” said Adams. “People need to understand how fast Mother Nature can take control.”

Europe and Asia Remain Oceans Apart – At Least on Security

European officials came to the SLD with two goals: to garner regional support for Ukraine and portray Europe as a reliable security partner in the Indo-Pacific. One was notably more successful.

By Dominique Fraser
June 13, 2023

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, June 4, 2023.

Credit: Flickr/ IISS

This year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security conference, featured the most high-level European delegation in the conference’s 20-year history. In addition to Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, six European defense ministers were in attendance.

European participation was driven by two objectives: to garner regional support for Ukraine and portray Europe as a reliable security partner in the Indo-Pacific.

On the first, the Europeans hoped for increased condemnation of Russia’s invasion and buy-in to Ukraine’s peace plan, which boils down to a full Russian retreat to pre-2014 borders and retributive justice. They also hoped to convince South Korea and Japan to send lethal equipment to Ukraine, and perhaps even to broaden the number of countries in the region willing to implement sanctions – although chances of that have always been slim.

The message they tried to impart was clear: What happens in Europe has security implications in Asia. Kallas warned that “aggression by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council against its neighbor is a threat that has global implications. That is why Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is not only a European issue or a regional conflict.”

The reality remains that many in the region – particularly in Southeast Asia – simply do not agree. When they look at Ukraine, they see a regional European war without wider security implications and wish Europeans would stop trying to sell their internal issues as the world’s problems. Japan, which has long stated that Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow and which has expanded its cooperation with NATO, is the exception rather than the rule.

Indonesian Defense Minister and presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto’s peace plan for Ukraine could not be further from what Europe supports: neither a ceasefire and the start of negotiations, nor a demilitarized zone and formal U.N. referendum are on the table. While the under-consulted proposal raised more than one amused eyebrow, it nonetheless shows that Europe and much of the region remain oceans apart on the issue. While Europe frames the conflict as a global fight against tyranny and promises support for Ukraine “as long as it takes,” the transatlantic partners’ refusal to encourage peace negotiations is seen by many in the region as unrealistic and stubborn.

The second objective of the European delegation to Shangri-La was to sell Europe as a reliable security partner, to “build strategic trust.” This was favorably received even if Europe remains peripheral to the larger regional security debate. At the conference, the European message was one of multipolarity, offering to be an additional prong to avoid a bipolar region dominated by great power competition: “We are not a classic military alliance; we are not a traditional great power throwing its weight around,” Borrell said.

But Europe wants to expand its security footprint in the region. Germany, France, and the Netherlands have pledged to send vessels to the Indo-Pacific next year. Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius used his speech to sell Germany’s Zeitenwende, which he said includes taking more responsibility for the security of Germany’s partners. Heading from Singapore straight to New Delhi, Germany is close to sealing a deal to build six submarines for the Indian Navy in a bid to lessen the country’s military reliance on Russia.

These actions demonstrate just how uneven Europe’s twin goals in the region are. While Asian governments largely do not buy the argument that they have a direct stake in European security, a free and open Indo-Pacific is in Europe’s self-interest. In its 2022 Strategic Compass, the EU affirms that the bloc “has a crucial geopolitical and economic interest in stability and security in the region.”

This reflects a world whose center of gravity has shifted from the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. For those based in the region, this has been self-evident for a while. For Europe, used to being the geostrategic focal point and embroiled in security issues from Ukraine to Kosovo, it’s worth experiencing in forums such as the Shangri-La Dialogue.

To be sure, for all the increased military ties, Europe’s stake in the region remains more about economics than security. Outside of its relationship with Russia, China simply isn’t seen as a direct military threat. But for countries in the Indo-Pacific, the fact that the world’s third largest economic power is looking for greater engagement is positive, especially as the EU wants to deepen and diversify its partnerships as part of a “de-risking” strategy away from China.

While the EU’s Global Gateway is seen as little more than a paper tiger, Europe’s interests are in part driving progress on a number of free trade agreements with Australia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, and recently relaunched talks with Thailand. Another upside is that a part of the transatlantic alliance can still talk to China, including on security issues: while snubbing U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu was willing to meet bilaterally with Borrell, Pistorius, and U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, reflecting Europe’s balancing act between its major security guarantor, the United States, and important economic partner China.AUTHORS

GUEST AUTHOR
Dominique Fraser is a research associate at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) in Australia. Her work focuses on the geopolitical relationship between Europe and Asia. She has published extensively in Nikkei Asia, The Diplomat, The Straits Times, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and elsewhere.

Regina woman, 34, questions age criteria for federal subsidy after being passed over for jobs

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Positions funded by Canada Summer Jobs wage subsidy 

only open to people aged 15 to 30

Nicholas Frew · CBC News · Posted: May 30, 2023 

Janette Harrison, 34, is questioning why federally funded summer jobs are only eligible for people in a certain age range. (Kirk Fraser/CBC)

Janette Harrison often feels dread and anxiety over how she'll afford life for herself and her toddler son.

Harrison, 34, said she returned to school to turn her life around. She recently finished her first year of the mental health and wellness program at the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies. Now, she's hunting for a summer job.

A few interested employers have called back, she said, but ultimately they had to hire someone else because of her age.

"I was totally shocked," Harrison told CBC News in her Regina home.

"They said [it's] because they're funded by the federal government and they've put [an age] cap on it."

The Canada Summer Jobs wage subsidy allows non-profit organizations, the public sector and private companies with no more than 50 full-time employees to create jobs for people aged 15 to 30.

Jobs funded by the Canada Summer Jobs wage subsidy are only for people aged 15 to 30. (Kirk Fraser/CBC)

The age range for the summer job subsidy was chosen because 15 is the minimum employment age for most provinces and territories, and the gap makes jobs accessible to more people, said Saskia Rodenburg, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Employment and Social Development.

The subsidy falls under the federal Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, which aims to help young Canadians — particularly those facing barriers, such as poverty, high-school dropouts and youth with disabilities, among others — enter the workforce and gain experience.

Many students end up filling jobs funded through the subsidy. But Rodenburg said targeting youth employment, instead of student employment, was an effort to make the job market more equitable for "youth furthest from opportunity and youth who face financial limitations with school."

The federal government is targeting youth employment overall because, historically, youth have higher unemployment rates than the general labour force, Rodenburg added.

About one in 20 Canadians were unemployed last fiscal year, Statistics Canada data shows.

Meanwhile, about 12.1 per cent of Canadian teenagers, aged 15 to 19, were unemployed last year — more than double that of the general labour force, data shows.

Canadians in their early 20s also experienced higher unemployment rates, averaging about 8.5 per cent last fiscal year, data shows. The unemployment rate for Canadians aged 25 to 29 nearly mimicked that of the general labour force.

Data shows unemployment rates in Saskatchewan are lower — and sometimes more volatile month-to-month, depending on the demographic — than Canada as a whole, but the same trends emerge.

Harrison had applied for jobs in line with her training, such as office administrative work and summer recreational planning for children.

Harrison, who co-parents her two-year-old son, budgeted how much income she would need to afford to attend post-secondary, including the summer months. But she's becoming desperate and she's considering applying for construction labourer jobs.

Janette Harrison has been applying for jobs in line with her training, but she's considering applying for labour jobs as well. (Kirk Fraser/CBC)

The anxiety wakes her at night, she said.

"I get this pit in my stomach," she said.

"I'm just panicked. I have to keep a roof over our heads, food in the fridge. Daycare is a huge thing for [my son's] social skills and his routine — and for my routine, for me to get things done throughout the day."

Harrison added that multiple classmates are also in the same boat, applying for jobs but finding their age disqualifies them.

Post-secondary students of all ages can gain paid work experience relevant to their field through the Student Work Placement Program, Rodenburg said.

Through the program, the ministry works with "employer delivery partners," a group of recognized associations and organizations that advocate for industry employers, according to the ministry's website.

Those partners work with businesses and post-secondary institutions to create placements, such as practicums and internships, the website says.

Alberta’s dangerous lurch to the far-right

How the politics of anger and fear came to dominate Alberta’s conservative movement

Trevor Harrison / March 23, 2023 


LONG READ


The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, Anger and Angst: Jason Kenney’s Legacy and Alberta’s Right, edited by Trevor Harrison and Ricardo Acuña. At this book’s heart lies an account of how the United Conservative Party has governed; and the ideas, personalities, and social forces that have driven its agenda. The editors argue that an entrenched elite, based largely in the oil and gas sector, is increasingly fearful of losing its power; fearful, more broadly, of the province that Alberta is struggling to become. 

For more information, visit www.blackrosebooks.com.

Election night in Alberta April 16, 2019. Jason Kenney looked out on the gathering crowd of United Conservative Party supporters, and it was good. His supporters were loud, even ecstatic, if still angry, despite the party’s overwhelming victory: 63 of 87 seats and nearly 55 percent of the popular vote.

Kenney smiled broadly, basking in the belligerent energy. And why shouldn’t he? More than anyone else, this victory was his. Over the two previous years, he had knit together Alberta’s disparate conservative elements to defeat Rachel Notley’s New Democrats. Four years earlier, Notley’s “outsiders” had stolen the crown, a crown—as Kenney repeatedly implied—properly worn by conservatives. The NDP was, in the dismissive words used by its opponents, “an accidental government.”

Fomenting a fortress mentality in Alberta has long served conservative’s political interests. But the degree of anger directed at the province’s perceived enemies rose to new heights in the years after 2015, surging throughout the 2019 campaign, and finally consuming the party itself in the years after taking office.

Kenney stoked feelings of grievance, victimhood, and alienation, while offering himself up as a strong and decisive leader who would take on and win against the demonic forces attacking the province. Righteous vengeance would soon be visited upon Alberta’s enemies, within and without: teachers, labour unions, academics, environmentalists, Québec and British Columbia, the big city mayors—but especially, the federal Liberals led by Justin Trudeau, son of the long dead, but still despised, Pierre Trudeau.

The grievous accident of the NDP’s victory had now been redressed. For the moment, at least, the universe seemed once more to spin on its natural axis. Yet, three years later, Jason Kenney resigned as premier, rejected not only by the wider public but also half of UCP members. The leadership race that followed laid bare for all the public to see the party’s internal divisions. The election of Danielle Smith as party leader and premier in October 2022 papers over these divisions, while opening up even larger fault-lines in the province. The crisis grows.

This book examines critically the extraordinary years of the UCP’s time in office, 2019-2023; a period arguably the most chaotic in Alberta’s political history, challenged only perhaps by William Aberhart’s Social Credit during the immediate years after 1935. Inevitably, Jason Kenney and COVID-19 cast a large shadow over the story and are recounted in the chapters that follow, whether as foreground or background. But they are not the entire story, and then only a surface one. We argue the UCP’s problems of governance are a symptom of a long-term illness afflicting Alberta’s body politic, one nurtured by a political elite. Kenney, Smith, and the UCP could not have arrived on Alberta’s scene separate from a set of historical and material conditions.

Conventional (conservative) accounts view Alberta as struggling to escape the clutches of a colonialist Confederation bent on holding the province down. Irrespective of any historical truths these accounts might hold—Western Canada was indeed founded as a colonial extension of Central Canada—we argue instead that Alberta’s larger struggle over the past several decades has been an internal one. Central to this struggle has been an entrenched elite, based largely in the oil and gas sector, that is increasingly fearful of losing its power; fearful, more broadly, of the province that Alberta is struggling to become. Since the 1980s, the political coalition underpinning this historic bloc has been rent by a series of economic crises and broad social changes. In an effort to maintain its power, this elite has constructed an elaborate mythology based on a culture of grievance and victimhood. Both Kenney’s electoral victory in 2019 and Smith’s leadership win in 2022 successfully employed appeals to these myths. But while useful as a short-term, cynical, political tactic, it is a major obstacle to dealing with Alberta’s deep economic and social divisions, and to efforts to become a functioning democracy.
The Conservative Party’s long descent into dysfunction

When it was defeated in 2015, Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party had been in office just short of 44 years, surpassing its Social Credit predecessor which had governed for a then-record 36 years. While travelling under the same name, the PCs had changed a great deal over that time in response to internal party dynamics, external pressures, and profound social changes within Alberta itself.

Peter Lougheed’s PCs, elected in 1971, were a collective of young, urban—and urbane—politicians. They heartily disliked Social Credit’s overt religiosity, parochial thinking, and rentier attitude to economic development. The Lougheed government sought to modernize Alberta through state-driven investments. The OPEC crisis of 1973 provided the financial heft necessary to meet these aims.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 at first provided a further boost to Alberta’s Treasury. Lougheed had famously argued that Albertans were the owners of the resource, and deserved a fair share of the revenues, at least 35 percent. The prospect of US$100 per barrel oil made PC politicians and oil producers drool with anticipation.

In a world dominated by oil scarcity and restricted options, higher prices are a good thing for oil producers, oilfield suppliers, and labourers. But they are a decidedly bad thing for consumers and manufacturers faced with rising inflation, and employees not tied to the industry’s fortunes. In order to ward off a potentially massive destabilization of Canada’s economy—boom in one region, bust in another—Pierre Trudeau’s federal Liberal government introduced the National Energy Program which set a ceiling, but also a floor, on the price of energy, while encouraging Canadian ownership of the oil and gas industry, as well as resource exploration and conservation. But the Lougheed government, and those of other oil producing regions, complained the program trod on provincial jurisdiction.

Eventually, the two levels of government came to a revenue-sharing plan, only to see the agreement’s financial underpinnings collapse overnight when the price of oil fell, courtesy of OPEC. While every oil producing region was negatively impacted, Alberta suffered particularly because of oil’s increasingly disproportionate role in its economy. The federal Liberals were blamed for the collapse; Prime Minister Trudeau’s effigy was hung on more than one occasion. But the collapse of oil was a worldwide phenomenon. The oil riggers heading south found no better opportunities in the Texas or Oklahoma fields.

As the economy declined, public anger also increasingly focused on the Alberta government. Amidst eroding support, and growing populist anger, Lougheed stepped down in 1984, and was succeeded by Don Getty. Getty attempted to revive the economy through a combination of public sector austerity, direct investments in diversification, and loans to business. The oil and gas sector remained favoured, however, in the form of subsidies, foregone taxes, and reduced royalty rates. Where the Alberta government had previously operated with a modicum of control over the oil industry, the situation was now reversed. The economy’s dependence upon the oil industry was replicated at the political level by the PC’s growing dependence upon the same industry to remain in office.

The Getty government’s efforts at diversification failed spectacularly, leaving Alberta taxpayers on the hook, and putting to an end—at least for a time—notions of direct government ownership. Getty resigned the fall of 1992, amidst another economic downturn.

On the political ropes, the Progressive Conservative party morphed into a new version of itself. The party anointed a new leader, Ralph Klein. Klein’s populist appeal resuscitated the party’s fortunes. His party rode to victory in 1993 on one of Alberta’s now recurrent waves of anger, and a platform of harsh austerity. The Klein government adopted en masse the emergent neoliberal orthodoxy of privatization, deregulation, low taxes, and small government. The mantra of small government and low taxes was music to the ears of Alberta’s entrenched corporate elite, but also found support among conservative rural voters.

How long Albertans would have tolerated a ratchetting down of provincial services and the wholesale selling off of public assets, we will never know. Within two years, the price of oil and natural gas rebounded. Budget surpluses of $7-10 billion per year became an annual, and anticipated, event, like the coming of Christmas. Flush once more with money, the Klein government was able to assuage discontent while claiming a wholly unearned reputation for fiscal competence. A political catchphrase—“The Alberta Advantage”—was coined alleging the province’s wealth was a product of low tax rates, and not the reverse. The day of reckoning for both the party and Alberta’s finances was thus put off a little longer.

Klein’s disinterested and increasingly desultory performance as premier came to a head in 2006. He resigned after delegates to the party convention gave him a less than overwhelming show of confidence. The search for a successor began. Alberta’s corporate leaders viewed only two candidates as acceptable: Jim Dinning and Ted Morton, both former Alberta finance ministers, both Calgary-based. In a surprise vote, however, the party’s rural constituents threw their support behind Ed Stelmach, an unassuming MLA from the farming community of Vegreville, north-east of Edmonton.

The 2006 PC leadership race happened at the height of one of Alberta’s most significant oil booms. Inflation was running rampant, small and large businesses were having difficulty finding or affording staff, and the gap between the outrageous profits of the oil companies and provincial revenue from royalties was astounding, even for Albertans; so much so, that the issue of reviewing royalty rates became an important part of debates and discussions during the race. Stelmach promised that, should he become premier, he would take steps to ensure Albertans were receiving a fair share of oil wealth in the province. That promise boosted his fortunes, and helped him win the leadership.

Soon after taking office, Premier Stelmach launched a royalty review. That review recommended some significant changes to the structure and amount of provincial royalties. Faced with an aggressive campaign of protests, lobbying, and electoral threats, Stelmach stopped short of fully embracing the panel’s recommendations. He did, however, make some moderate changes that made royalty rates more sensitive to oil prices than they had been in the past. Despite Stelmach’s compromise, the oil industry was apoplectic and decided to send him a message. It found a messenger in the form of the Wildrose Alliance Party of Alberta, a right-wing fringe party founded in early January 2008 from remnants of several other fringe parties. Corporate donations to the Wildrose Alliance surged, especially during the 2008 provincial election.

But for the Great Recession that began in 2008, Stelmach’s PCs might have weathered the discontent. At first, Alberta seemed to escape the worst impacts of the crisis, but the recession caused a downturn in global oil consumption, resulting in a drop in Alberta’s revenues. In the spring of 2009, Stelmach’s government announced it would run a record deficit for the year. Despite the fact the new royalty regime only kicked in on January 1, 2009, at which point, due to low prices, no one in the province was paying higher royalties than they had the day before, Alberta’s petroleum industry blamed the new royalty regime for the deficit. No government since, including the NDP, has seriously attempted to raise royalty rates on oil and gas.

There are two political certainties arising from any economic downturn in Alberta. First, many Albertans will turn their anger against a grab-bag of perceived enemies, mainly the federal government and Central Canada elites, resulting in the rise of populist parties and protest movements. Second, Alberta’s governing coalition will unravel, giving rise to internal protest movements or third parties upset with their own government. Pummeled politically from all sides, Stelmach stepped down in October 2011.

Once again, Alberta’s corporate elite had its choice as successor: Gary Mar, a career politician who had held numerous posts in the Klein government and had strong business connections. But, instead, a newly-minted MLA, Alison Redford, cobbled together a coalition of urban liberals and progressives to win the leadership. The coalition held together long enough to defeat the Danielle Smith-led libertarian-populist Wildrose party in the April 2012 election that followed, but a fault-line had emerged in the broader conservative coalition. While the PCs won, taking 61 seats, the Wildrose party took 17 seats, mainly in rural Alberta. More worrying for the PCs, the party garnered only 44 percent of the vote compared to Wildrose’ 34 percent, a fissure that grew larger over the next year. Redford already had little support within caucus, which had favoured Mar. The knives quickly came out after a series of political blunders saw her poll numbers fall to Stelmach-like levels.

Redford’s resignation in March 2014 sent the PCs once more searching for a saviour. He was found this time in the person of Jim Prentice. Prentice was a prominent Conservative MP who had held several distinguished ministries in Stephen Harper’s government. Prentice exuded something of the aura of Lougheed. He promised a new style of politics, one that would be honest and devoid of scandal. Above all, he promised to heal the split on the right between the PCs, Wildrose, and other fringe elements.

In December 2014, Prentice and Smith made a secret agreement whereby she and eight other Wildrose members crossed the floor to join the PCs. Far from being a brilliant political maneuver, many Albertans—Wildrose supporters in particular—viewed the unprecedented action as an example of cynical and corrupt politics. Both Prentice’s and Smith’s lustre dimmed, while the remainder of the Wildrose faction held firm under a new leader, Brian Jean, a former Conservative MP from Fort McMurray-Athabasca. The subsequent election of May 5, 2015, saw Rachel Notley’s New Democrat’s take 54 of 87 seats (nearly 41 percent of the vote), compared to 21 seats (24 percent) for Wildrose, which had rebuilt itself under a new leader, Brian Jean, and nine seats (28 percent) for the PCs. Prentice immediately resigned as party leader.
The New Democrat Interregnum

To paraphrase Marc Antony (via Shakespeare), the alleged harm that governments do is later repeated ad nauseum by their opponents, while the good they do is later forgotten, erased, or adopted without attribution. Reviewing the NDP’s time in office, Ricardo Acuña termed the NDP the most “activist government in recent Alberta history,” yet far from radical. Among its first acts, the new government banned corporate and union donations to political parties, replaced the 10 percent flat rate tax with a progressive tax featuring four new rates, and approved interim spending in the key areas of health, education, and social services. Though facing an enormous drop in revenue, due to shrunken oil prices, it declined to slash public services, and later increased the minimum wage to $15 per hour—fairly standard Keynesian practices during a recession. The new government also revised the Alberta Labour Relations Code and the Employment Standards Code, created Alberta’s first ministry for the status of women, increased funding for women’s shelters, introduced a pilot project for $25-a-day daycare, and introduced protections for gay-straight alliances in schools.

The NDP’s time in office was not without controversy. Though there were no major scandals, and little discord—Notley ran a tight and focused ship—there were policy mistakes and errors in judgement. An effort to extend occupational health and safety provisions, and WCB coverage, to farm workers failed to adequately consult the farming community. Following a review headed by the former head of ATB Financial, the government did not raise oil and gas royalty rates, a decision that confused and angered many of the party’s supporters. While the party’s climate plan had some bold elements—the accelerated phasing-out of coal-fired plants to 2023, setting an absolute cap on oil sands emissions, and introducing a carbon levy—the energy sector’s usual suspects condemned it as going too far, while some party supporters complained it did not go far enough. Finally, the NDP’s policies on long-term care proved inadequate during the pandemic of 2020-22.

Dealt a difficult hand, Notley’s NDP was a generally moderate and capable government. Arguably, it was similar to the early Lougheed PCs (the latter was more leftwing on economic policy, for example, in enacting public ownership of key sectors, as in the case of Pacific Airline, but less supportive of labour). Both Lougheed and Klein benefited from rapidly rising oil revenues early in their terms, but Notley’s government received no such advantage. The price of Western Canada Select oil remained low throughout her term. Her party received no credit either for holding Alberta steady in the face of the resultant rise in unemployment and provincial debt. Once again, despite the fact that oil and gas markets are global, and that the oil sands in particular are a less attractive long-term financial investment, radio talk shows and Postmedia–which owns all of Alberta’s major newspapers—blamed the province’s difficulties on socialism, an epithet directed not only at the NDP but previous Conservative governments. The anger provoked by social media and politicians found its apogee in physical threats made to Notley and several of her cabinet ministers, especially women MLA’s, requiring the RCMP to provide police protection. As during past economic downturns, conspiracy theories flourished.

In late 2018, a few hundred yellow-vested protestors, drawn primarily from the oil and gas sector, took to Alberta’s streets. The orchestrated protests gained traction just before Christmas when some of the same yellow vests joined a convoy of 1,200 trucks, driven by oil patch workers and their supporters, that had assembled in the town of Nisku, just south of Edmonton. Blocking traffic as they went, the convoy drove slowly to the capital, making known as they did their demand that oil pipelines be built to “free” the resource from its land-locked status. The spectacle gave birth three days later to similar pro-pipeline protests in other Alberta towns and cities, including Calgary, Brooks, Edson, Grande Prairie, and Medicine Hat. Hopping the provincial border, a trucker protest also took place in Estevan, Saskatchewan that same day. The protests were a dry run for the Freedom Convoy occupations of Ottawa and several border crossings in early 2022.

While blocked pipelines were the immediate cause of fear and loathing, the narrative echoed a familiar search for enemies who—so the argument goes—are bent on keeping “the West” in perpetual servitude. Similarly, the NDP’s introduction of a carbon tax, a measure recommended by most economists, including those of a conservative bent, further added to a chorus of theft orchestrated by external enemies. Despite its aggressive and unapologetic cheerleading for pipelines and for the oil industry—a stance much criticized by many of its own supporters—the NDP continued to be blamed for its handling of the economy and for simply being the NDP. For many conservative voters, the NDP was merely one of a host of usual enemies, the federal Liberals, and Quebec, to which some now added Canada’s Supreme Court and the United Nations, attempting to take away Alberta’s economic and political birth-right.

The protesters’ arguments were rarely coherent, and often contradictory; anger, the common glue. The protesters received sympathetic support from some high-profile individuals, like Danielle Smith, Ted Morton, and University of Calgary economist, Jack Mintz. But the rallies also frequently attracted members of far-right hate groups, such as the Proud Boys and the Soldiers of Odin. A whirlwind of anger and angst swept the province.


Yellow vest protesters in Calgary, January 2019. Photo by Gabrielle Pyska.


Re-uniting the right

To say that Alberta conservatives were stunned by the New Democrat win in 2015 is an understatement. Not only was Alberta viewed as a safely conservative place provincially, since the late 1980s it had also been the beachhead for the New Right’s transformation of conservatism federally. Through first the Reform Party and later the Canadian Alliance Party, the New Right in 2003 had orchestrated a hostile takeover of the Progressive Conservatives. With the exception of a few urban ridings, the rebuilt federal Conservatives could count on winning—often without bothering to campaign in the province—nearly every Alberta seat. The 2015 provincial election shook this confidence. If the NDP could win provincially, might the federal party’s hold on the province also be waning?

It was comforting for conservatives to believe the NDP’s victory was the result of vote-splitting between Wild Rose and PC supporters, and not deeper social and political changes occurring within the province. The solution was thus to broker a marriage between the conservative factions, a solution for which there was already a blueprint: the merger/takeover of the federal Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties fourteen years earlier. A prominent federal politician, Jason Kenney, played a major role in that event.

As the party had when it welcomed a prominent federal Conservative, Jim Prentice, in 2014, Alberta’s conservative brain-trust turned to Kenney in its hour of desperation. It had long been thought he harbored ambitions of succeeding Stephen Harper as federal Conservative leader, a belief that grew following the latter’s resignation after the party’s defeat in the fall 2015 election. Instead, Kenney announced in July 2016 that he would run for leadership of Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives. He seemed an inspired choice. He had the kind of background that spelled “winner.”

Like many prominent Alberta conservative politicians, Kenney was actually born elsewhere — Oakville, Ontario in 1968—though raised in nearby Wilcox, Saskatchewan. He graduated from Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a private Catholic High School (he remains a devout Catholic). Kenney later attended St. Michael’s University School in Victoria, BC, and still later the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit-university where he was attracted to the ideas of prominent neo-conservative theorists. He became a noted anti-abortionist and opponent of Gay rights and free speech on campus, but left after one year without completing a degree. Kenney is a “movement conservative,” meaning that he sees the role of government being to radically transform society; in the case of Alberta, following an ideologically-driven agenda of corporatism mixed with social conservatism.

Still in his early twenties, Kenney got a job as executive assistant to Ralph Goodale, the Saskatchewan Liberal party’s leader at the time. He soon left, however, to become the Alberta Taxpayer’s Federation’s first executive director, followed the next year (1989) by being named president and chief executive of the newly minted Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation. In his role with the CTF, Kenney made a name for himself in a shouting match with then Alberta Premier Ralph Klein in 1993 when he confronted Klein over MLA’s “gold-plated pensions.” Facing an election, Klein relented; days later, the pension plan was eliminated. Kenney’s political star was ascendant.

In 1997, at the age of 29, Kenney was elected to the House of Commons as a member of the Reform Party for the riding of Calgary Southeast. Three years later, he became chief advisor and speech-writer for Stockwell Day during Day’s successful bid for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance party. Kenney remained a key Day supporter and alleged speech-writer during the Alliance party’s much less successful federal election campaign that same year.

To a remarkable degree, Kenney’s political trajectory and later problems mirror that of Day’s rise and eventual fall, which paved the way for Stephen Harper taking the Alliance party’s helm in the spring of 2002, and a year-and-a-half later becoming leader of the newly-formed Conservative Party of Canada. By this time, Kenney had established himself as a loyal foot-soldier for the party.

Like Harper, Kenney was a vocal supporter of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and remains an equally staunch supporter of Israel. Known for his dedication and hard work, it was expected that Kenney might be given a cabinet post when the Conservatives won office in 2006, but Harper instead assigned him the task of building party support within the ethnic communities. That community was traditionally viewed as part of the Liberal support base due to its long-established support for immigration, but many conservatives viewed the religious background of many immigrants as fertile ground for recruitment. Kenney took on the task of political conversion with enthusiasm and some success.

Now, in 2016, Kenney—the prototype of a career politician—was called upon to take on another task: to re-unite Alberta’s conservative factions and thus save the party—and the province—from the socialist threat. The task proceeded with military precision. Kenney declared he would run for leadership of the PC party. Given his existing profile, and the fact the demoralized PCs were devoid of any genuine challengers, he easily won the leadership the following March.

Following brief negotiations, Kenney and Brian Jean agreed upon a plan to unite the PC and Wildrose parties. In July 2017, members of both the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties voted overwhelmingly in support of a merger. The leadership race quickly followed.

Despite Kenney’s credentials, it seemed at least possible that Jean might defeat him. A ThinkHQ poll released in May 2017 showed that Jean was heavily preferred over Kenney by Albertans and that Jean held a substantial lead even among likely UCP voters.

The leadership race was bitter. Kenney, like Dinning, Mar, and Prentice before him, was the establishment candidate; Jean was the candidate of the rural populists. Rumours of dirty tricks by the Kenney team abounded, rumours that continued to dog the party in the years that followed. But, on October 28, 2017, Kenney secured an easy first ballot victory over Jean to take the UCP leadership. The final tally showed he took 61 percent of the vote to Jean’s almost 32 percent, with third place finisher Doug Schweitzer taking just seven percent. Kenney’s path to the premiership was set.

Conservative voters in Alberta like a winner, and Kenney seemed best positioned to deliver victory. Besides his political background in federal politics, Kenney—as described by journalist Don Martin—was “brilliantly analytical,” “fiercely articulate,” “flawlessly bilingual,” and “tirelessly energetic,” while keeping “his social conservative beliefs under a kimono that’s never to be lifted.”

Even at that time, however, many UCP party supporters had concerns about Kenney. They viewed him as something of an outsider, even a carpetbagger, insufficiently disposed to grassroots democracy. It was widely believed that he was simply using Alberta as a launching pad for his federal ambitions. In a province, moreover, whose political culture embraces genuineness, Kenney seemed profoundly inauthentic. He was clearly uncomfortable wearing a cowboy hat or sitting in the cab of a Ford F-150. While he talked endlessly about “the people,” he did not seem one of them.

For the moment, however, any such concerns were set aside. Over the next year and a half, Kenney travelled the province polishing his and the party’s profile. In his speeches, Kenney gave no quarter. Alberta was beset with enemies, both within and without, but he would slay them. A vote for the UCP meant a return to prosperity. A majority of Albertans believed Kenney’s promises.

The UCP’s victory came as conservatism in Canada was reaching its high-water mark. Following the spring 2019 election, six of Canada’s ten provinces were led by Conservative governments, including not only Alberta, but Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. Only months earlier, in December 2018, the cover of Maclean’s showed Rob Ford, Brian Palliser, Jason Kenney, and Scott Moe, bracketing federal leader Andrew Scheer, under the title, “The Resistance.” The sunny ways of Justin Trudeau’s victory four years earlier had given way to growing clouds, giving conservatives hopes of having another powerful ally in confronting Ottawa.

But the UCP’s relatively easy victory in 2019 papered-over some hard realities that Jason Kenney’s self-satisfied smile on election night could not hide. Kenney returned to an Alberta of his imagination; indeed, one that conservative elites, comfortable in their idea of the province’s unchanging nature, had not taken time to recognize or understand. Kenney returned to an Alberta that is largely urban, young, and socially liberal; an Alberta that, if fitfully, is trying to come to terms with the decline of oil and gas dependency; an Alberta in which issues of climate change and Indigenous rights increasingly hold centre stage; an Alberta where even rebounding oil prices are no guarantee of increased employment; and an Alberta that would soon face a pandemic that shook the province’s economy and conservative notions of small government, even as it drove a spike down the centre of definitions of what “is” conservatism.
The United Conservative Party takes the reins

The UCP quickly appointed a cabinet. It consisted of 22 members (seven women and 15 men). A dearth of elected members from Edmonton meant a severe over-representation of Calgary MLAs in cabinet. While the next few years saw the cabinet’s expansion, frequent recycling, and some departures, the key members of that first cabinet—those whom Kenney trusted—remained largely in place throughout. Those key members included Kenney’s former leadership opponent, Schweitzer (Calgary-Elbow), a lawyer, appointed to the ministry of justice and solicitor general; Tyler Shandro (Calgary-Acadia), a lawyer, minister of health; Ric McIver (Calgary-Hays), a former Calgary counsellor, minister of transportation; Adriana LaGrange (Red Deer-North), a Catholic School division trustee and rehab practitioner, minister of education; Travis Toews (Grande-Prairie-Wapiti, an accountant, minister of finance; Jason Nixon (Rimby-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre), non-profit sector, minister of environment and parks; Sonya Savage (Calgary North-West), oil and gas executive, minister of energy; Demetrios Nicolaides (Calgary-Bow), communication background, minister of advanced education; Jason Copping (Calgary Varsity), lawyer, minister of labour and immigration; Rebecca Schulz (Calgary-Shaw), minister of children’s services; and Kaycee Madu (Edmonton-South West), lawyer, minister of municipal affairs. Of these key ministers, LaGrange, Toews, Nixon, Nicolaides, Schulz, and Savage held their posts throughout the UCP mandate. A few played musical ministries; Schweitzer, Shandro, and Copping, in particular. Others, for reasons of scandal (Devin Dreeshen, minister of agriculture and forestry, and Tracy Allard, minister of municipal affairs) or disloyalty to Kenney (Leela Aheer, minister of culture, multiculturalism, and status of women) were dropped.

The UCP’s first hundred days in office saw a whirlwind of legislation designed to polish the government’s activist agenda but also to erase, in policy if not memory, all traces of the NDP; for example, reversing changes to Alberta’s labour laws. Much of the legislation (repealing the carbon tax, declaring Alberta open for business, reducing red tape, restoring the election of senators) was meant to appeal to the UCP’s base. Several other measures were directed at the party’s supporters in the corporate sector; for example, a drop in corporate taxes, later speeded up, from 12 to eight percent. The energy sector, in particular, was assisted by allowing municipalities to give property tax exemptions to energy companies and guaranteeing that no changes to the oil and gas royalty structure would occur for ten years. In a measure directed at its social conservative base, the government amended legislation regarding gay-straight alliances in schools and embarked on a curriculum review. The new government also created a “war room”—later formally named the Canadian Energy Centre—to combat the bad press generated, in the eyes of government supporters, by anti-oil, anti-Alberta environmentalists. In the same vein, the government also launched an investigation into foreign funding received by those anti-oil, anti-Alberta environmentalists for the purpose of “landlocking Alberta’s oil.” Much of its legislation was bathed in symbolism, as was the government’s rhetoric which, when not attacking the former NDP government, was focused on the Liberal government in Ottawa.

Kenney’s own focus on the federal Liberals bordered on an obsession, leading to renewed speculation that he viewed the premiership as a stepping stone to becoming prime minister. His hatred of the Trudeau government precluded giving Ottawa any credit, even when it provided controversial support for the TransMountain pipeline and financial assistance for cleaning up orphan wells; or provided Albertans with more financial support per capita during the COVID-19 pandemic than given to people in any other province—$11,410 per person, compared to Ontario, the second highest, at $9,940. Kenney’s reluctance to engage with the Trudeau Liberals often harmed Albertans, as when his government refused for nine months to participate in a cost-share agreement with Ottawa to provide a one-time payment of $1,200 to frontline workers or to participate in the federal government’s national child care program. Beyond personal animus, ambition, or stubbornness, however, Kenney’s relentless attack on the federal Liberals played well with the UCP’s base, reinforcing the belief they are an isolated and persecuted victim of Confederation.

The political attacks were directed not only at the Trudeau Liberals, however. The UCP also kept focused on a host of perceived enemies at home. It is traditional political practice to attack and hobble one’s real and imagined political enemies. The UCP quickly set its sights on public institutions and public sector workers within them, as well as K-12 teachers and faculty within post-secondary institutions. Remarkably, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government continued its assault on the public health care system and its nurses and doctors whose support was essential to dealing with the crisis.

Kenney’s own pugnacious character found its echo in several ministers. Kaycee Madu, Jason Nixon, Sonya Savage, and Tyler Shandro, in particular, tended to angrily ignore criticisms and view everything through a political lens. In short order, the government made enemies not only of the usual suspects, but also ranchers (over coal development in the Rockies), farmers, municipal politicians (over EMS restructuring and policing), and doctors (cancellation of a contract). As Mueller relates, the government’s actions also increasingly alienated young people who no longer saw a future in the province. The list of organizations angry and distrustful of the government grew steadily, as did the number of pointless issues whose chief appeal was that they were favoured by the UCP’s narrow base. Scarce were the government’s major files that did not rile some group. Former allies—like the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms and conservative journalists Licia Corbella and Rick Bell—increasingly found Jason Kenney’s leadership wanting.

Alberta’s economy remained a key part of the story. The election campaign’s slogan was “jobs, economy, pipelines,” accompanied by a frequent choral background of “build that pipe, build that pipe.” But the price of oil did not immediately recover, nor did the jobs return. As in the past, the harsh realities were brought home of living in a single-resource economy, dependent upon external forces, and—for political reasons—reluctant to examine its finances. As the hopes and dreams of election night began fading, old divisions reemerged. Like topsoil in a Prairie windstorm, the idea that replacing the NDP would return Alberta to prosperity quickly vanished. By the fall of 2019, Kenney’s—and the party’s—appeal was already in decline. Over the course of three years, the party stumbled repeatedly on those areas in which it showed particular interest, such as education, energy, and health, while ignoring other important areas, such as housing and race relations, especially the rise in hate speech during the pandemic that followed. The issues of some specific groups—women and Indigenous peoples—disappeared almost entirely from the government’s agenda.

In the midst of everything, COVID-19 came along. The two years from spring 2020 until spring 2022 saw infection and death rates soar throughout much of the world, its variations remaining still a threat. Though Canada as a whole did better than most countries in dealing with the pandemic waves washing its shores, Alberta’s efforts proved weak, vacillating, and desultory.

From the pandemic’s start, Kenney placed himself squarely at the centre of its handling. More than any Canadian premier or even Prime Minister Trudeau, Kenney chose to dominate the COVID-19 updates, though some noticed he tended to show up only when there was good news. Early on, Kenney often held a pointer to alert viewers to numbers on a graph. Other times, he expounded on the virus’ causes, virality, and lethality. Soon, he acquired the epithet, “Professor Kenney.” Viewers sometimes wondered whether health officials, as they stepped to the podium, were left anything to say except, “What he said.”

The pandemic continued. The UCP’s handling of the pandemic, now centred on Kenney, was increasingly condemned on all sides as slow, weak, uneven, and contradictory. Many Albertans wanted tougher measures; many UCP backbenchers and supporters in rural communities, mistrustful of government and of science, wanted few, if any. The UCP, itself, manifested the split. Worse, several UCP MLA’s, including members of cabinet, were caught flaunting health care restrictions, resulting in accusations of entitlement that had brought down earlier conservative regimes. Kenney, who exuded a sense of righteous authority and resolve when denouncing Alberta’s illusory enemies, proved weak and indecisive when tasked with handling actual problems within his caucus and his own office.

As 2020 turned to 2021, Alberta’s economy still languished, the pandemic still lingered, and Kenney’s leadership leaked support. A palace revolt stirred. By spring 2021, the revolt was in full bloom.
The insurrection grows

In early April 2021, 17 UCP MLAs wrote a public letter denouncing the imposition of new lockdowns. A month later, some members openly called for Kenney to resign. Two rural MLA’s, Todd Loewen and Drew Barnes, were removed from caucus, but the action did not stem the revolt. Calls for Kenney to step down as leader grew throughout the summer and fall of 2021, with the result that the UCP ceased almost entirely to govern during the year that followed, consumed instead by internal conflicts and the premier’s efforts to hold on to his leadership.

Amidst growing internal discontent, the UCP board decided in December to move up a leadership review to the spring of 2022. Party dissidents wanted a provincewide virtual vote open to all UCP members to be held by early March. It was agreed instead that an in-person leadership review would be held at a Special General Meeting in Red Deer on April 9. On March 15, however, Brian Jean—former Wildrose leader, and co-founder of the UCP—won a byelection victory in Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche. Jean immediately called for Kenney to resign, saying that he was prepared to take on the leadership of a renewed party.

As April 9 drew closer, the vote to remove Kenney as leader gained steam. A delegate attendance in Red Deer of perhaps 20,000 people was predicted. Citing logistical problems, UCP President Cynthia Moore announced on March 23 that the in-person leadership vote was changed to a mail-in vote of all party members, the results of which would be announced on May 11.

Kenney was clearly rattled. In a secretly recorded speech to his party’s caucus staff in March 2022, he said he would not let “the mainstream conservative party become an agent for extreme, hateful, intolerant, bigoted and crazy views,” adding that, “The lunatics are trying to take over the asylum. And I’m not going to let them.” The leaked recording solidified opposition to Kenney among those who viewed his leadership as top-down and disrespectful of grassroots members.

On April 9, the original date for the leadership review, Kenney spoke in Red Deer to a small gathering of hand-picked supporters, recounting a litany of “promises made, promises kept” and, as he saw it, the UCP’s successes under his leadership. He warned against division, what would happen if the NDP were ever returned to power, and—by implication—the need to support him in the leadership review.

In the weeks leading up to May 11, some members spoke openly of a culture of fear and intimidation that Kenney and his staff had created within the party. Still, or perhaps because of this, many observers thought Kenney would squeak out a victory; and, in any case, would not step down as leader. But when the final votes were announced on May 11, he received only 51.4 percent support, and immediately said he was quitting as leader. Kenney later blamed his demise on “a small but highly motivated, well-organized and very angry group of people who believe that I and the government have been promoting a part of some globalist agenda, and vaccines are at the heart of that.” In the eyes of many, that explanation left out much. While there was surprise, there were few tears shed; in the backrooms of UCP detractors to his leadership, happiness reined.

The UCP’s executive decided the new leader would be chosen by a vote of party members using a preferential voting system whereby the new leader would have to achieve the support of at least 51 percent plus one of the members. The new leader would be announced on October 6. In the meantime, Kenney remained as party leader and premier. Polls showed a sudden bump in support for the UCP who—even absent a decided leader—would defeat the NDP.

The search began for a new saviour of Alberta’s dis-united right.


Danielle Smith reacts with a smile after she lost a provincial election in High River, Alberta, April 23, 2012. Photo by Mike Sturk/Reuters.


The race and Smith’s coronation

Seven candidates vied for the UCP leadership: five UCP MLA’s (Leela Aheer, Brian Jean, Rajan Sawhney, Rebecca Shulz, and Travis Toews), one independent MLA, Todd Loewan, and one unelected individual, former Wildrose leader, Danielle Smith. Despite the large number of entries, however, most observers quickly viewed the race as likely to come down to a choice of Jean, Smith, or Toews.

Each of the three had notable strengths and weaknesses. Toews had the vast support of sitting MLAs, including—though not formerly announced—Kenney, and had the cachet of being the party’s former finance minister, but was also viewed as dull and unspiring. Smith, after her political self-immolation as Wildrose leader in 2014, had rebuilt her profile as a talk-show host where she garnered a large number of loyal listeners, but also acquired a reputation for taking extremist positions. Jean, the party’s sympathetic everyman, was lauded for having saved the Wildrose party from oblivion in 2015, but like Toews was considered uninspiring. None of the others was viewed as likely to win, though some hoped Aheer, Sawhney, and Shulz might move women’s issues to the centre of debate and also encourage a more civil and collegial form of politics than exercised under Kenney.

Smith quickly seized the high-ground, setting the pace and direction for the others. She singled out Alberta’s traditional enemies, the Liberals and Central Canada (the “Laurentian elites”), but added Alberta Health Services in an appeal to her anti-vaxxer supporters; and, going even farther afield, attacked such organizations as the United Nations, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the World Health Organization (WHO), viewed by conspiracy theorists as part of an alleged globalist agenda to replace capitalism with socialism (the “Great Reset”).

By the week of August 8, Trump-like hysteria was in full-flight. An online message sent by Smith’s team read:
[T]he WEF is an anti-democratic group of woke elites that advocate for dangerous socialist policies that cause high inflation, food shortages and a lack of affordable energy, which in turn, leads to mass poverty, especially in the developing world. There is no question what their agenda is. They want to shut down our energy and agriculture industries as fast as they can.

Conspiracy mongering aside, Smith’s most politically astute move came in the form of the Free Alberta Strategy. The strategy’s centrepiece is the Sovereignty Act, co-authored with former Wildrose MLA, Rob Anderson.

The proposed Act vaguely wavers between greater autonomy and outright secession, and reminds of comedian Yvon Deschamps’ oft quoted joke about Quebec: That all the province wants is to be independent within a strong and united Canada. Many UCP supporters believe that Alberta’s problems would magically melt away if Ottawa would just “butt out.” Encouraged by some conservative politicians, some even suggest the province, like Quebec, constitutes a nation.

Smith’s Sovereignty Act harkens back to Social Credit’s efforts under Premier William Aberhart to enlarge Alberta’s jurisdictional autonomy, efforts later ruled by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. But like so many ideas espoused by Canada’s current conservatives—right to work, charter schools, privatized health care—the Act also echoes state’s-rights arguments in the U.S.; historically, in particular, that individual states could ignore and refuse to enforce within their borders any act passed by Congress or the Federal government which it viewed as transgressing rights reserved to itself.

Howard Anglin—a former adviser to Stephen Harper—termed the Free Alberta Strategy “nuttier than a squirrel’s turd.” Numerous journalists and constitutional experts likewise denounced Smith’s proposal as vague, unworkable, unlawful, and bizarre. Several of her leadership opponents, notably Jean, Toews, and Shultz said Smith’s proposal would create uncertainty and drive away investment.

Nutty or not, Smith’s advocacy of sovereignty separated her from the other candidates and solidified her bona fides with the party’s more extreme and angry supporters; and, further, set down a marker that pulled the party further to the right, even redefining the nature of the party’s position on the political spectrum. Smith’s six leadership opponents criticized the Act. (Jason Kenney described it as a “full-frontal attack on the rule of law,” as well as a step towards separation and a “banana republic”) Quickly, however, several candidates came out with their own proposals for greater Alberta independence. Jean proposed an Autonomy for Albertans Act that would “enhance Alberta’s autonomy within Canada.” Shultz announced her own “100 Day Provincial Rights Action Plan to fight, partner, and strengthen Alberta’s position in Canada.” Loewen called for Alberta to create its own Constitution. Loyalty tests became de rigeur.

Most of the candidates—and all of the leading ones—thus staked out positions as “Alberta Firsters.” In the eyes of many UCP’s supporters, the departing premier had lacked the intestinal fortitude to “take on” Alberta’s enemies. Of all the contenders for the UCP leadership, Smith presented as the street brawler best up for this task.

The other candidates did not go down without a fight: Each sent out repeated warnings to the membership about Smith’s past mistakes. Likewise, Kenney—fearful of what a Smith leadership might mean for the party—became increasingly aggressive in warning against a Smith takeover of the party he had welded together. A Political Action Committee (PAC), Shaping Alberta’s Future, formed originally to promote Kenney and the party, began posting in mid-September a series of ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google questioning Smith’s qualifications and warning that her victory would likely result in an NDP win come next election.

The Sovereignty Act remained her seminal attraction. She told the audience during the party’s final official leadership debate that:
We might be facing mandatory vaccination; we will say we will not enforce that…. If there’s an emergencies act that wants to jail our citizens or freeze their accounts, we will say we will not enforce that. Arbitrary fertilizer cuts, arbitrary phaseout of our natural gas for electricity and power. Arbitrary caps on our energy industry and perhaps even a federal digital ID. [If] we have the Alberta Sovereignty Act, we will not enforce that. We’ll put Alberta first.


In other times and places, Smith’s conjuring of threats that simply did not exist might have disqualified her as a serious candidate. But nothing—neither her opponent’s criticisms nor her own inflammatory rhetoric—derailed Smith’s quest; indeed, it cemented her reputation among UCP members as a “fighter.”

Though it took six ballots, on October 6, Smith claimed the UCP’s leadership prize. The final tally saw her defeat her main rival, Toews, with 42,423 votes (53.77 percent) to his 36,480 votes (46.23 percent), a winning percentage of support only two percent more than Kenney had received in stepping down. The number of votes cast (84,593) represented only 69 percent of the party’s membership (123,915). In turn, the vote for Smith meant that 1.5 percent of Alberta’s electorate (roughly 2.8 million voters) had now put in charge of the province an unelected individual whose political past, in the eyes of many, is checkered. No matter; with Smith’s victory, Alberta’s Wildrose faction had secured the outcome denied it in 2012.

How did Smith win? As Chapman and Epp point out, it is too simplistic to describe Alberta’s electorate as divided between rural and urban constituents. Better than the other candidates, however, Smith succeeded in playing to the feelings of anger, fear, and disempowerment felt by the narrow base of UCP members. A CBC analysis of UCP members, who make up only 3.5 percent of Alberta’s population, showed a large number come from a small number of ridings south of Red Deer, and only 41 percent from the big cities of Edmonton and Calgary. Smith appealed to these members’ fears and anger, particularly around the COVID-19 mandates and resultant protests. Another study shows that, while 61 percent of Albertans disagreed with the Freedom Convoy’s goals, and 67 percent with its methods, 56 percent of UCP respondents supported its goals and 48 percent its methods.

Smith’s victory speech on the evening of October 6 echoed in many ways Kenney’s from election night in 2019. Beginning with an exuberant “I’m back!” she thanked her opponents, as well as Kenney, while encouraging party members to remain united and strong. Alberta was about to write “a new chapter” in its story, she said. “It’s time for Alberta to take its place as a senior partner to build a strong and united Canada.” But, “No longer will Alberta ask for permission from Ottawa to be prosperous and free,” continuing:
We will not have our voices silenced and censored. We will not be told what we must put in our bodies in order to work or to travel. We will not have our resources landlocked or our energy phased out of existence by virtue-signalling prime ministers. Albertans, not Ottawa, will chart our own destiny on our own terms.


Jason Kenney is a proud man. At that moment, he must surely have wondered about his legacy — or, perhaps, competing legacies, neither of them to his liking. In the immediate term, Danielle Smith is a renegade libertarian who could well destroy the party he founded; in the longer term, Rachel Notley and the NDP may return to office, an outcome which he had come to Alberta to prevent. Other conservatives likewise observed warily what had transpired and the future laying ahead. In the words of long-time advisor Ken Boessenkool, “Premier Smith is a kamikaze mission aimed at the UCP, conservatism and Alberta.”

On November 8, Smith won a byelection in Brooks-Medicine Hat, taking 55 percent of the vote, compared to 27 percent for her NDP and 17 percent for her Alberta party opponents. It was not an overwhelming victory, but it was enough for Smith to take a seat in the legislature and to launch her libertarian agenda.
Who is Danielle Smith?

Basic biographical information regarding Smith is readily available. She was born in Calgary on April 1, 1971, the second of five children. Her paternal great-grandfather was Philipus Kolodnicki, a Ukrainian immigrant who changed his name to Philip Smith upon arriving in Canada in 1915. Smith has also claimed Indigenous ancestry, but no evidence exists in support of this contention. Her parents worked in the oil patch. The family lived for a time in subsidized housing.

She completed a B.A. (English) at the University of Calgary, where she met, married, and later divorced Sean McKinsley, and also met such arch-conservatives as Ezra Levant (founder of Rebel News) and Rob Anders (later, a Conservative MP). She subsequently also completed a B.A. in economics, during which time she met political scientist Tom Flanagan who became a kind of mentor to her. He recommended Smith for a one-year internship with the Fraser Institute. By now, she was well on her way to becoming, as she defines herself, a “libertarian populist” whose primary intellectual influences include Friedrich Hayek, Adam Smith, John Locke, and Ayn Rand.

In 1998, Smith was elected a trustee of the Calgary Board of Education. A year later, however, then Minister of Learning Lyle Oberg dismissed the entire board as it had become dysfunctional, of which by her own admission, Smith was a chief cause. Subsequently, Smith worked for the Alberta Property Rights Initiative and the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute, before joining the Calgary Herald as a columnist with the editorial board (where she notoriously did not hesitate to cross the picket line during the 1999-2000 strike at the newspaper). She later succeeded Charles Adler on a Global Television interview show.

She married David Moretta, a former executive with Sun Media, in 2006. That same year, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business hired her as its provincial director for Alberta. Disenchanted with the premiership of Ed Stelmach, she left the PCs and joined the Wildrose Alliance party, becoming its leader in October 2009. The ensuing events—the 2012 election, the floor crossing in 2014—were recounted earlier and are not repeated.

Smith was defeated in her bid for the PC nomination in Highwood on March 28, 2015. Any formal political future for Smith seemed dim. By now, Smith and her husband had moved to High River, a town south of Calgary. They survived the infamous floods of 2013 and in 2018 opened a restaurant, the Dining Car at High River Station (formerly, the Whistle Stop Café). She became a popular talk radio host on Calgary’s QR77 in 2015, a job she held for the next several years, but left in early 2021 citing personal attacks on Twitter.

In 2019, while still a talk show host, she registered as a lobbyist for the Alberta Enterprise Group, an association of which she was also president. The Calgary-based association represents 100 companies involved in such areas as health care, transportation, construction, energy, law and finance. Many of the things Smith has lobbied for in the past—for example, health spending accounts and royalty breaks for energy companies that clean up abandoned wells—she now promotes in her formal political role.

Smith’s occupational career can best be described as that of a serial lobbyist and media personality. Her chief ability seems that of convincing others of her abilities. In politics, however, her ambitions and promise have often fallen short of actual performance. Ideologically, she is a committed right-wing libertarian, for whom freedom trumps equality, markets trump politics, and democracy is little more than an exercise in populist agitation and manipulation. Her actions since becoming premier, in centralizing power within her office, suggests an authoritarian streak.

Smith is a clever wordsmith, and described by many as intelligent, but she has not shown herself to be a critical thinker; instead, she seems wedded to novelty for novelty’s sake. She is generally dismissive of “experts,” except when their ideas validate what she already believes. In the words of journalist Graham Thomson, she is “noted for constructing a world view based on anecdotal evidence, confirmation bias and bad choices.”

Befitting a talk radio host, Smith has a lot of opinions (in an Ask Me Anything broadcast in June 2021, Smith said, “I literally have an opinion on everything”). But her opinions often lack evidence. The examples are multitude. In 2003, while a columnist for the Calgary Herald, she cited tobacco-funded research that “smokers of just three to four cigarettes a day have no increased risk of lung cancer, coronary heart disease, bronchitis or emphysema.” Her particular focus on cancer was repeated during the 2022 leadership race when she implied that everything, up to “stage four and that diagnosis” is completely within an individual’s capacity to control.

In the midst of a massive beef recall due to E. coli contamination in 2012, Smith—at the time, still Wildrose leader—claimed that thoroughly cooking the meat would kill the bacteria, and that it could then be fed to those in need. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she used her radio show, newsletters, and podcasts to criticize health restrictions, and the science behind them, and to promote debunked treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, for which the radio station disciplined her.

Smith’s over-the-top rhetoric continued even after winning the UCP leadership. During a media scrum immediately after her swearing-in ceremony as premier, Smith declared the unvaccinated were “the most discriminated against group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime,” having faced “restrictions on their freedoms” based on having made a “medical choice” (critics noted the statement’s ignoring of a host of other groups historically persecuted, imprisoned, and even murdered, and the absence of any consideration of the rights of individuals to safe working environments).

Smith later said she would amend the Alberta Human Rights Act to protect the rights of those refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and mused about a possible “blanket amnesty” for anyone charged with violating public health restrictions. She also accused Alberta Health Services of “manufacturing” staffing shortages and of being in cahoots with the World Economic Forum.

Smith said during the leadership race and after that she would be a “unifier,” a necessary trait given the party’s difficulties during Kenney’s time as premier. Her track record speaks otherwise, however. While she may succeed, where Kenney failed, in unifying the party, the contrary evidence points to a party and a province facing further division.
Conclusion

And so it is that Alberta has as its premier a right-wing libertarian and conspiracist who, despite lacking a personal mandate from the people, is in position, as we write, to attempt remaking the province according to her own fantasy vision of what Alberta is and should be. Will Danielle Smith achieve that mandate in 2023—or sometime thereafter?

Elections are never entirely predictable. The NDP has held a solid lead in the polls for most of the last two years, repeated in polls conducted by Janet Brown and Associates in the fall of 2022. But the UCP cannot be counted out. Resource revenues have again filled Alberta’s coffers, money with which governments can reward friends, make amends to others, and shore up support in key ridings. The habit of voting for conservatives—whatever that term actually means—remains entrenched in Alberta’s political culture; there remain scores of angry and alienated voters for whom the UCP message resonates, especially during a crisis of inflation and affordability that many Alberta have faced throughout 2022, and which Smith has continuously laid at the feet of the federal Liberals and NDP.

Yet, should Smith win, at least one prediction seems safe: That she will—perhaps sooner, perhaps later—disappoint her followers and face a party revolt that will force her from office. The reason is simple. Like all recent conservative premiers, she has promised more than she can deliver.

Kenney, Smith, and the UCP are the symptom of a failure of Alberta’s entrenched political class to deal with the province’s deeper problems. This failure takes the form of demands that the Alberta state be given more power; that is, that those who have held power in the province going on forty years be given even more power. But nothing ever changes. Their fantasy solutions always crash and burn against the political, environmental, social, and economic realities of our time. The years of UCP government represent the thrashings of this old order; the railing of anger and despair against the light.

What Abraham Rotstein said about Canada in 1964—”Much will have to change in Canada if the country is to stay the same”—could be applied to Alberta. It is a great province; but it could be better—it must be better. Abandoning the politics of anger and fear would be a good start.

Trevor Harrison is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge. He was formerly Director of Parkland Institute (2011-2021), an Alberta-wide research organization, of which he was also a founding member. He is best known for his studies in political sociology, political economy, and public policy. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of nine books, numerous journal articles, chapters, and reports, and a frequent contributor to public media, including radio and television.

 

Anger and Angst
Trevor W. Harrison and Ricardo Acuña, eds.

Regular price

Anger and Angst is about Jason Kenney, Danielle Smith, and the UCP’s Endless Chaos

Alberta is on the verge of a very important election, featuring an extreme right-populist party—the United Conservative Party (UCP)—versus the New Democrats. Anger and Angst: Jason Kenney’s Legacy and Alberta’s Right examines the chaos of the current UCP Alberta government leading up to the election, and asks why it has happened. Answering these questions, this book leaves the reader with a better understanding of politics, ideology, and the New Right.

Anger and Angst has its origins in the aftermath of the 2019 election. In February 2020, a group of academics and other political observers gathered in Edmonton for a free-wheeling discussion of Alberta’s unfolding political scene. Though no one could predict the twists and turns that followed, it was clear to everyone assembled that Alberta was entering a critical, if uncertain, period of political turmoil. Combining 22 essays on politics, the economy & environment, education, housing, childcare, and right-wing populism, this book critically examines the extraordinary years of the UCP’s time in office, 2019-2023, a period arguably the most chaotic in Alberta’s political history.

At this book’s heart lies an account of how the UCP has governed; the ideas, personalities, and social forces that have driven its agenda. The editors argue that an entrenched elite, based largely in the oil and gas sector, is increasingly fearful of losing its power; fearful, more broadly, of the province that Alberta is struggling to become. In an effort to maintain its power, this elite has constructed an elaborate mythology based on a culture of grievance and victimhood. Given the current national discourse around energy transition and provincial autonomy—and the rise of the populist right across Canada—Anger and Angst will provide valuable insights and information to people both inside and outside of Alberta.

“Illuminating and thought-provoking, Anger and Angst reveals the UCP government’s undemocratic and destructive underpinnings, cuts to educational funding to privatised healthcare to the undermining of workers’ rights. Read this book!”

    — Jackie Flanagan (Founder, Alberta Views)

“The United Conservative Party (UCP) is the political vehicle of conservative Albertans who are angry that their worldview and its economic underpinnings in the oil industry are coming apart. If you want to understand “freedom convoys”, anti-lockdown Rodeo rallies, and where their embattled, fortress mentality comes from, read this book. Anger and Angst is a hugely informative, impressive collection, with a very broad reach. The authors have the courage to tell it straight and dig where others accept the surface.”

    — Gordon Laxer (Founding Director of Parkland Institute, Political Economist, and Author)

“If you’re wondering WTF is going on in Alberta politics, and how we got here, you really need to read this book. Anger and Angst expertly serves up the chaos and controversy of the Kenney years in bite-sized chapters from some of Canada’s top political writers who explain how a guy in a blue pickup truck ran over a province.”

    — Graham Thomson (prominent journalist)

About the editors

Trevor W. Harrison is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge. He was formerly Director of Parkland Institute (2011-2021), an Alberta-wide research organization, of which he was also a founding member. He is best known for his studies in political sociology, political economy, and public policy. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of nine books, numerous journal articles, chapters, and reports, and a frequent contributor to public media, including radio and television.

Ricardo Acuña has been executive director of Parkland Institute since 2002. He has a degree in political science and history from the University of Alberta and has over 30 years of experience as a volunteer, staffer, and consultant for various non-government and non-profit organizations locally, nationally and internationally. He has spoken and written extensively on energy policy, democracy, privatization, and the Alberta economy, and is a regular media commentator on public policy issues.

 

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

1. Introduction - Trevor Harrison and Ricardo Acuña

POLITICS

2. Sorry, Not Sorry: The Nasty, Brutish, and Short Premiership of Jason Kenney - Janet Brown and Brooks DeCillia
3. A Window on Jason Kenney’s Fall from Grace - Ricardo Acuña
4. The Religious Roots of Social Conservatism in Alberta - Gillian Steward
5. Decoding the UCP’s Freedom Mantra - Trevor Harrison
6. “We Reject the Premise of Your Question.” The Media and Jason Kenney’s Government - David Climenhaga

ECONOMY AND ENVIRONMENT

7. Extraction First: The Anti-Environmental Policies of the UCP Government - Laurie Adkin
8. The Future is Past: A Political History of the UCP Energy Policy - Kevin Taft
9. Alberta’s Brain Drain Redux: The Migration of Alberta’s Youth Under the UCP - Richard E. Mueller
10. Turning the Screws, Turning Back the Clock: The UCP and Labour - Jason Foster, Susan Cake, and Bob Barnetson
11. Alberta’s Job Creation Tax Credit: A Hidden Gift to Oilsands Producers - Bob Ascah

PUBLIC SECTOR

12. Choice Over Rights: The UCP’s Ultra-Right Vision for Education - Bridget Stirling
13. Alberta is Open for Business: The Renewed Push for Health Care Privatization - John Church
14. Ground Zero in Canada’s Higher Education Shock Doctrine:    UCP Alberta’s Post-Secondary Sector - Marc Spooner    
15. Subsidized Rental Housing and Homelessness Under the UCP - Nick Falvo
16. Early Learning and Child Care: The Role of Government Under the UCP - Susan Cake

SOCIAL ALBERTA

17. Dysfunction in the Family: Provincial-Municipal Relations Under the UCP - Ben Henderson
18. Back to the Future: The UCP’s Indigenous Policies, 2019-2022 - Yale D. Belanger and David R. Newhouse    
19. Simply Conservative? Rethinking the Politics of Rural Alberta - Laticia Chapman and Roger Epp
20. Pepper-Spray for All: The UCP’s Approach to Countering Race-Based Hate in Alberta - Irfan Chaudhry
21. The United Conservative Government, Right-wing Populism, and Women - Lise Gotell
22. Conclusion - Ricardo Acuña and Trevor Harrison

2023; 6x9; 534 pages

Anger & Angst Retail Prices
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978-1-55164-808-8 $74.99
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