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Tuesday, November 18, 2003

EDMONTON - The end of Alberta alienation may be at hand.

At its core, Alberta alienation has a provincial and a national component. Provincially, alienation is tied to the willingness and ability of the provincial government to assert Alberta's interests. Nationally, alienation is tied to a meaningful and effective role for Alberta's views within a national governing coalition.

In both respects, 1993 was a watershed year.

At the provincial level, eight years of consecutive deficits plus the effects of a national recession had seriously eroded Alberta's energy. Alberta's deficits were larger and growing faster than those in most other provincial capitals, and the provincial government of the day seemed unable to get things back on track.

Albertans wanted their government to get its spending under control. They wanted the deficit eliminated, the debt paid down, and their taxes reduced. Into this breach stepped Ralph Klein. He slashed provincial spending, eliminating its deficit in three years. He then moved to pay down the debt. Having paid down the debt, the province introduced a 10% flat tax on personal income, which worked out to a 20% reduction in personal taxes. And then the province cut its corporate income taxes in half.

The payoff has been impressive. Its population is working hard -- Alberta has the highest proportion of people working of any province in Canada. Its income distribution is fair -- Alberta has the smallest gap in Canada between the market earnings of the top fifth and the bottom fifth of earners. It is an outward looking province -- Alberta's exports have been growing 20% faster than the Canadian average. Finally, it is a rich province -- Alberta's economy produces almost 50% more goods and services per person than the Canadian average.

By the turn of the century Ralph's fiscal revolution restored Alberta's ability to assert its interests.

At the national level, 1993 represented a peak in Alberta's alienation from Ottawa.

The West had considerable representation in the Progressive Conservative government of the early 1990s. Despite this representation, however, a long string of deficits and constitutional approaches of that government increasingly alienated Albertans.

In reaction, Alberta spawned a dynamic political movement that forever changed the nature of our national political debate.

It began when the Reform Party brought Alberta-based leadership that played a significant role in turning public opinion against the Charlottetown Accord. This new voice cemented its place in 1993 with its electoral sweep of Alberta, along with much of British Columbia, Saskatchewan and parts of Manitoba.

Since then the Reform Party, and its successor the Canadian Alliance, has been a critical force in national politics. It played a key role in the return to fiscal sanity in Ottawa. It brought a new and successful approach to national unity by giving birth to what ultimately became the federal Clarity Act. It raised the profile of democratic reforms on the national agenda, and gave a home to social conservatives who were increasingly uneasy with the direction of the federal Liberals.

These parties made Alberta's issues part of the national discourse and they did so in spite of the fact they never did form a part of a national governing coalition in Ottawa.

That is now set to change. Alberta is about to become a key anchor for a new political force in Canada -- the conservative party of Canada. Never again will a national conservative government take the western portion of its coalition for granted. That new party will be a home for fiscal sanity, lower taxes, democratic reform and moderate social conservatism. Indeed, there is a reasonable prospect that the next non-Liberal prime minister will come from the province of Alberta.

The creation of this new party provides an avenue to address Alberta's well-worn expressions of alienation with Ottawa. That list of grievances includes a federal government that fails to fund, yet proclaims to be the saviour of, health care; Western farmers who are forced to sell their wheat through the Canadian Wheat Board; the gun registry; the failure of Ottawa to appoint Alberta's elected senators; and social policy that is out of step with mainstream views in Alberta.

In short, the new conservative party will provide a meaningful and effective role for Alberta's views within a national governing coalition.

Alberta's ability to assert its interest, along with its anticipated role in the conservative party, provide an important backdrop to developments at an Alberta Progressive Conservative policy conference that took place in Edmonton over the weekend.

Delegate Sabine Brasok, a young mother attending her first political convention, captured the tone of many delegates when she urged the Alberta government to "do whatever we can to control our own destiny."

It was an eloquent summary of the object of discussion for the day, namely, a letter sent to the Premier two years ago. Published in the National Post by a group of Calgary activists, the letter urged the province to implement an "Alberta Agenda."

Specifically, the Alberta Agenda urged Ralph Klein to address Alberta alienation by asserting greater provincial control over pensions, police, income tax, Senate reform and health care. It urged the province to opt out of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) to establish its own provincial pension plan (as Quebec has done).

It urged Alberta to establish its own provincial police force (like the Ontario Provincial Police and the Sûreté du Quebec). It suggested Alberta should collect its own provincial income tax (as Quebec does and Ontario has considered doing). It pointed out that Alberta could force Senate reform onto the national agenda by holding a provincial referendum on the topic. Finally, it promoted greater provincial responsibility for health care by urging the province to more aggressively defend its own interpretations of the Canada Health Act.

In short, the Alberta Agenda is a recipe for Alberta to assert its place as a leading province in Confederation by taking full responsibility for policy areas in its own jurisdiction.

Premier Klein was decidedly cool to the Alberta Agenda letter when he first received it in January 2001, and his comments over the weekend continued to express reservations. Many delegates were therefore surprised when the Premier used his policy conference speech to unleash an MLA committee, under the direction of the Minster of Intergovernmental Affairs, to take a closer look at the Alberta Agenda.

The Premier squared this circle by admitting that the Alberta Agenda had captured the imagination of a sizeable chunk of those within his party, as well as many within the broader public. And Ralph rarely misreads the mood of his party or his province.

Within the broader public, there are increasing signs that the Alberta Agenda is not going away any time soon. Town halls are being organized by non-partisan groups, regularly attracting two to three hundred people to meetings held mostly in rural areas and smaller towns -- the heart of Ralph Klein country. There are various publications expanding on the ideas contained in the Alberta Agenda that have circulated widely among political activists in the province.

On a more substantive front, the Alberta office of the Fraser Institute has recently published a series of papers laying out the benefits of some of the ideas in the Alberta Agenda. One shows that if Alberta opted out of the CPP, it could offer the same benefits in a provincial plan with premiums as low as 8.1%, compared to 9.9% for the CPP, saving Albertans well over half a billion dollars per year. Another demonstrates that Alberta could resurrect its own provincial police force at a substantial savings compared to the cost of the current RCMP contract.

As these ideas continue to capture the imagination of the broader public -- and there are admittedly skeptics both within the PC party and among the wider public -- then Alberta will have found a way to redirect its newfound energy towards strengthening Alberta's place in Confederation.

And so, at both the provincial and national level, Albertans are moving beyond alienation. At the provincial level, the Alberta Agenda will be a platform for asserting Alberta's interest. At the national level Albertans will play a meaningful and effective role in a new national governing coalition -- the conservative party of Canada.

The era of alienation is over. Let the era of assertiveness begin.

Ken Boessenkool is senior policy advisor to the Canadian Alliance and one of the co-authors of the Alberta Agenda.
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