David Staples: The most dangerous response to Alberta’s landslide vote for ax equalization? Ignore it

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Nothing to see here – that’s the attitude toward Alberta’s equalization referendum from those who favor the status quo in Canadian politics.

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This group is against major changes to the Alberta settlement within Canada and is downplaying the significance of the landslide of the 62 percent of Albertans who voted in the referendum to remove the federal equalization program.

The equalization referendum is not legally binding, they say.

Only 38 percent of Albertans voted, they note.

And there is no chance that Alberta will get the seven-province agreement it needs to remove equality from the Canadian constitution, they note.

Then there is a partisan lens that frames the vote as a way for Prime Minister Jason Kenney to save his political future. As former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi told CTV regarding daylight saving time and equalizing voting: “Those referenda were ridiculous in every way. They are purely Prime Minister Kenney’s attempts to save his political hide by focusing on how evil the federal government is. … If I were the Prime Minister, I would just ignore it. “

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All these criticisms of the referendum are fair comments. None of them seem convincing to me, but others may very well, and it is possible that in the next few years this referendum will be completely forgotten.

But I hope the vote is much more meaningful than is currently believed.

Most importantly, it is a fight over the most bitter and divisive issue: money. It is a battle for the many mountains of dollars that are swept up each year from Alberta and spread across the rest of Canada, with Quebec and the Maritimes getting by far the largest share.

Bill Bewick, who led the fight for equalization, estimates that Albertans pay about $ 50 billion in federal taxes each year, but recover only $ 30 billion in federal spending and transfers. This subsidy occurs even as others, notably Quebec’s political leaders, are working feverishly to undermine Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

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He was skeptical that Alberta would hold a referendum during the stressful COVID pandemic, but it turns out the vote will give Alberta’s bargaining position a boost at the right time, just as Justin Trudeau promotes another Quebec politician, Steven Guilbeault, as his new minister of environment.

Guilbeault is a former activist who co-founded Équiterre, one of the green groups identified in the Allan Investigation as anti-Alberta oil and gas. Guilbeault is also one of many dinosaur greens who have advocated against nuclear power, the best solution to climate change.

In his dislike for oil, gas and nuclear power, will Guilbeault pressure Canada to adopt dire policy options for base load power, like too much unreliable solar and wind power, that will threaten our prosperity and not significantly reduce the emissions?

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To counter powerful actors like Guilbeault, Alberta’s leaders will need help. Part of the assistance will now come out of the equalization referendum, which has always aimed to gain us an advantage in this larger national struggle for energy.

Like kenney described last week: “Our expectation is not that there will be a constitutional amendment or the end of equalization, but we are using this to gain influence, basically to take a page out of the Quebec playbook by having successfully dominated the political attention of the last 40 or 50 years “.

The true power of the referendum is that it made Albertans take action to decide and vote. We’ve now bought into this fight on an individual level, which in a busy world will make us much more likely to keep a close eye on how things unfold.

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Essentially, the referendum adopts a rigid and locked status quo and tries to change things.

It’s already working.

The CTV asked former Prime Minister Jean Chretien about the Alberta referendum and he said, “When you’re in Alberta, it’s almost a culture of complaints.”

That’s high praise for us from a Quebec politician, who has done so well complaining that he has approached a sovereign state within Canada while receiving many billions each year in subsidies from other Canadians through of equalization and other programs.

Of course, Quebec had immense negotiating influence because, in the past at least, other Canadians feared that that province might break away.

There isn’t such a significant threat from Alberta right now, but the most dangerous thing for the rest of Canada would be to minimize and ignore this referendum result. I don’t see how a status quo can last if a particular region is treated like a piggy bank and a colony, whose valid concerns don’t matter.