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Commentary: No neutral ground in battleground Alberta

Either you are for him or he is against you
MV stockFrank-Dabbs-mug
Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author. File photo/MVP Staff

There is no neutral ground in Premier Jason Kenney’s political Alberta.

Either you are for him or he is against you.

If you are a union representative or member, he is especially vitriolic in his condemnation of you and your presence in Alberta’s economy.

Kenney drew a line before the election that separated those who oppose oilsands production and those who support Alberta’s traditional oil and gas economy.

He has extended it since the election to define as his enemies, the big cities, public service unions, and post-secondary education institutions – all hotbeds of opposition to him.

And they have been most affected by the spending cuts in the UCP’s budget.

By contrast, UCP tax cuts benefit corporate Alberta – his strongest source of political finance.

In his speech Nov. 30 at the UCP annual meeting Premier Kenney said the 55 per cent majority vote that elected the party to govern in April was an historically large margin.

His personal popular support has slipped since the election to a post-honeymoon level of 42 per cent. That is still a commanding number, but the slippage is a storm warning that his power has limits.

At that meeting, UCP members voted almost unanimously for legislation that would create Alberta control of immigration, income tax collection, pensions and policing.

Meanwhile, Kenney has aggressively taken advantage of popular support, 230 days into the United Conservative government, to legislate a broad range of changes, including an austerity budget, that are sweeping away the changes the NDP made and creating a new definition of fiscal conservatism in education, health care, taxation and intergovernmental relations.

His attempts to revive the oil and gas and oilsands economy are so far unsuccessful and the UCP’s missions to Texas and London to bring back energy investment and corporate presence have not overcome the strong corporate reasons to invest elsewhere, such as poorer profitability in Alberta.

The fractures in Alberta politics are as old as the rivalries between the First Nations before European contact. The first years of the Liberal, United Farmers and Lougheed’s Progressive Conservative governments were comparatively placid.

William Aberhart, Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney – the first Social Credit, NDP and United Conservative premiers had well-established political enemies before they governed and their first months in government were turbulent.

In spite of Premier Kenney’s national campaign against it, the October federal election saw the return of Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberals as a minority government.

Kenney treats Trudeau with well-deserved suspicion and the showdown over interprovincial oil pipelines and the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline will not be resolved until the expansion is commissioned.

The narrative of Alberta oilsands against the rest of Canada reinforces Kenney’s conviction that there is no neutral ground in Alberta politics.

In the weeks ahead, the implacable division of Alberta politics into rival camps for or against the Kenney government will play out primarily in the public service unions.

It won’t be about who loves Alberta oil.

It will be about whether public policy is made by an implacable premier or after a process that listens to opposing voices.

Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.

 

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