If there’s anything investment firms and wealthy speculators are more wary of than taxes, it must undoubtedly be uncertainty and political instability.
Sort of ironic, considering the so-called Wexiteers lay the blame of Alberta’s woes completely on the shoulders of former premier Rachel Notley, who they accuse of – despite a collapse in global oil prices far beyond any government’s ability to influence – scaring away investors.
The irony lies in the fact that what separatists accuse their political nemesis of is precisely what they are doing: frightening away investors.
Mary Moran, CEO of Calgary Economic Development, recently said during a forum hosted in Lake Louise that Western Canada’s separatist sentiment, rooted largely in Alberta and Saskatchewan, prompted a major tech company to avoid setting roots in Calgary.
“We as an organization just lost a 1,000-person company that didn’t come to Calgary, selected another city, because they’re concerned about Wexit,” she said.
The UCP’s short-sighted and misguided decision to eliminate tech-friendly tax incentives did not help either. So much for making meaningful efforts to diversify. Once again, Alberta’s government lays bare its intentions – the only industry that matters is oil and gas.
And now, further adding to investor angst and wariness of expanding into a province whose government stubbornly digs its heals deeper in the 20th century is Premier Jason Kenney’s attempt to smear Moody’s as another victim of the big bad evil foreign-funded environmental activists.
“The bigger challenge we have is, increasingly, financial institutions – and this apparently includes Moody’s – are buying into the political agenda emanating from Europe, which is trying to stigmatize development of hydrocarbon energy,” Kenney said on failed Wildrose turncoat-gone-right wing-political-pundit Danielle Smith’s radio show.
Of course Kenney offered absolutely no proof for his assertion about Moody’s, conveniently ignoring that such claims should be backed up by at least a shred of evidence.
And his enabling interviewer wasn’t about to ask any remotely critical questions about the subject.
Funny how when Moody’s downgraded the NDP in 2017, just two years ago, that was apparently all of the proof the conservatives needed that the former government was “running Alberta off the fiscal cliff,” the UCP said at the time.
But when Moody’s downgrades the UCP, well, obviously it’s because the agency has been compromised by those pesky environmental activists. This would be gut-busting hilarious if not for the sad, depressing fact his supporters will unquestioningly and without scrutiny buy the snake oil.
Markham Hislop, writing for EnergiMedia, summarized the situation better than I could have in a Dec. 5, 2019 column called “Real question behind Moody’s credit downgrade: Is UCP making Alberta a risky place to invest?”
“What must international investors make of an Alberta premier who openly mocks standard corporate risk management practices and ascribes them to political plots hatched in Europe? A premier who cancelled the provincewide carbon tax, gutted the large emitter carbon tax, and did away with a plethora of other emissions-reducing programs? A premier deeply entrenched in the status quo while the world rapidly changes?” writes Hislop.
“More importantly, at what point will investors view Premier Kenney as a liability to the Alberta oil and gas industry instead of an asset?”
As Hislop also accurately points out, accusing Moody’s of being influenced by Big Green borders on delusional.
“Moody’s, of course, is a venerable member of the New York-based financial community and hardly a wild-eyed radical eco-terrorist,” he wrote.
Kenney ran on promises to kill the carbon tax and restore economic activity as well as create jobs by giving already profitable billion-dollar corporations a massive tax cut that punched a big hole in revenues.
Yet eliminating the carbon tax along with efforts to help people and businesses become more energy efficient has had the reverse effect, making investors more wary than ever before.
Under Kenney’s hyper-partisan leadership, Alberta will instead of joining the rest of the world on a progressive path towards transitioning to a clean energy economy become an international pariah that serious investors will have no interest in touching with a 10-foot pole.
Simon Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up.
