Which 'next' is Danielle Smith's Ottawa-affairs panel steering Alberta toward?

Before taking their in vogue(p) chance to librate in on the sapience of exiting the Canada pension off contrive, Albertans must first watch a five-minute video, most of which tries to persuade them how great an idea it is.

The promise of lower premiums and higher benefits hasn't sold well in the past. We recently learned that only 10 per cent of respondents favoured the idea in the 2023 round of government consultations on an Alberta pension plan.

But with her Alberta Next feedback project, Premier Danielle Smith is treating this as a new day, full of fresh possibilities to alter the province's place within Canada on finances, constitutional powers, immigration and more.

This video pitch on pensions endeavours to sell the public with suggestions of a "big upfront payout," better paycheques, and a provincially led investment strategy that "steered clear of ideological decision-making."

The voiceover narrator notes some potential downsides. Among them: "The CPP exit rules aren't clear in the federal legislation and Ottawa is notoriously anti-Alberta with its decisions, so the size of the lump sum Alberta is offered could be lower than it should be." (Italics mine; federal officials might dispute that matter-of-fact assertion.)

After that video, respondents get asked three multiple-choice questions, none of which let Albertans say whether they actually like the provincial pension idea. Perhaps they can chime in with that answer at one of the in-person town halls that begin in mid-July.

The premier launched this review into the future of federalism in front of a recreated vintage oil well at Heritage Park in Calgary. Alberta Next is, in a way, a recreation of the Fair Deal Panel that Smith's predecessor Jason Kenney launched, two Liberal federal election victories ago in 2019. 

As separatist sentiments intensified, the then-premier had tasked his panel to study the viability of an Alberta-only pension and police force, an overhaul of federal transfers and more.

That's just what Smith has done, though with some pivotal distinctions.

Kenney tasked long-retired former politician Preston Manning to lead his panel. Smith assigned herself as chair. While this stands to boost the interest in upcoming town halls, some of the Alberta Next event attendees might want to bend the premier's ear on other matters, as this month's fiery meeting on coal mining may have foretold.

The current premier is also specifically soliciting referendum questions to put on a ballot next year. Those would interact in unknown ways with a citizen-initiated plebiscite on separation, one which proposes a vastly more dramatic shakeup in Alberta-Canada relations. Kenney's panel took a slower march to referendums, ultimately recommending that the federal pension and police withdrawals merely be studied.

The loaded language of the videos and surveys also takes Smith's initiative to a different level, says Jared Wesley, a University of Alberta political scientist.

He's uniquely positioned to assess what Smith is doing: in his current role, he routinely conducts  public opinion research. Before academia, he worked in the Alberta government's intergovernmental affairs division under both Tory and NDP premiers.

The government is clearly not attempting to genuinely collect public opinion here, Wesley said in an interview. "What they're trying to do is to direct public opinion."

He sees too many lofty assessments and a "half-hearted" presentation of the downsides of Alberta Next's proposals. The fact the federal government is Liberal (rather than Conservative) gets repeatedly mentioned in these factual background briefings.

The section on fiscal transfers, for example, suggests that the imbalance between the federal taxes Albertans pay and the service grants to the province be solved by getting Ottawa to drastically cut its tax rates and have the provinces raise money on their own.

"That sounds great on the surface for Alberta, but this idea has been floating around for many years, and the challenge is that a lot of other provinces end up far worse off by having those tax point transfers," Wesley said.

On immigration reform, Smith's panel survey suggests that Alberta refuse to fund public services for certain classes of immigrants the provincial government doesn't wish to accept.

Without specifying what type of services would be withheld, and to which immigrants, it could serve to harm newcomers in Alberta and inflame sentiments around them while blaming them for housing affordability and unemployment woes, said immigration lawyer Maureen Silcoff.

"What we don't want is for governments to be putting forward rhetoric that further creates divisions in society," said Silcoff, a law professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Alberta Next's video on immigration points out that denying public services to immigrants could land the province in court. What it doesn't mention is that twice before courts have told governments they cannot deny those services — in 2014 when the federal government cut a refugee health program, and last year when Quebec denied child-care subsidies to asylum seekers.

The scale of all the changes Smith's surveys propose is seemingly massive. Creating a new police force, pension fund or tax-collecting body are pricey endeavours — after up to $1.5 billion in startup costs, an Alberta Revenue Agency would cost up to $750 million more per year and require as many as 5,000 new provincial workers, the video on taxation states.

Other proposals, like constitutional reforms or transfer overhauls, would demand buy-in from not only Ottawa but also other provinces, without any clear trade-offs or upsides for them, Wesley said.

"If the premier holds a series of referendums that end up saying Albertans want this and she's not able to deliver it, it only emboldens her political opponents on both sides — the federalists and the separatists," he said.

Smith has pitched the project as a way to help reduce separatist sentiment, but might pushing these issues and accomplishing nothing make it even worse?

In 2021, Kenney triggered a provincewide referendum proposing that the equalization program be removed from Canada's Constitution. Albertans endorsed the idea, but Ottawa did nothing with the outcome, and the equalization formula has not been altered since.

Wesley's Common Ground opinion project surveyed Albertans and found a minority of them actually understood what the province was asking them on that equalization vote.

"A lot of people thought that a yes there meant that Alberta would withdraw from equalization, which is just not possible," he said.

If the province is serious about asking Albertans what they should do next or demand next, Wesley added, it should be grounded in a reality about what they can or could reasonably expect.

The discussion materials the government provided to Albertans may not accomplish that. So how realistic will the conclusions Albertans inject back into this project be?

Producer and writer

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