On Smith’s Alberta Sovereignty Act, creating leverage for Alberta, and what that means for the federal Conservative Party

Federal-provincial intergovernmental relations usually boil down to how much leverage one level of government has over the other. Specifically, as it relates to a political party’s ability to win elections within their respective jurisdictions.

In recent weeks, both leadership races taking place within Alberta’s United Conservative Party as well as the federal Conservative Party have shone a light on this. By this, I’m referring to media coverage of UCP leadership candidate Danielle Smith’s proposal to legislate something called the Alberta Sovereignty Act.

But to dive into this, understanding the federal electoral calculus that drives provincial leverage over the federal government is important.

To win a federal election in Canada, a political party needs to win a plurality of seats among several distinct regional voting blocs. Roughly, these are Atlantic Canada (32 seats), Quebec (78 seats), Ontario (121 seats), the Prairies (62 seats), British Columbia (42 seats), and the North (3 seats).

While there are some pockets of differentiation within these blocs (e.g., rural vs. urban), Canada’s seat distribution formula generally tends to ensure that on the aggregate, statistically significant chunks of each region tend to vote along similar lines. For the last several elections, the Liberals have formed government because the left-of-centre vote has solidified around the Liberals in most of Atlantic Canada, and big parts of seat-rich Quebec and Ontario, as well as in British Columbia. At the same time, an overwhelming majority of seats on the Prairies went to the Conservatives.

Given this, the federal Liberals and the caucus are motivated to not do anything that causes electoral problems for them in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario and to a lesser extent, British Columbia. This includes not picking fights over things with provincial governments - who have political machinery and other means by which to make life difficult for federal politicians  - from those regions. Conversely, they don’t have to tread as softly with provincial governments from the Prairies, because under their current voter coalition, they don’t need the Prairies to win.

Such has been the case for so long that, even when the Liberals do occasionally pick up a seat on the Prairies, their members from that area usually have little sway over any decisions that affect their region. A perfect example of this was the sad trombone noise that was Kent Hehr’s tenure in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet.

Put another way, the provincial governments of Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada usually manage to get what they want from the federal Liberals, while provincial governments from the Prairies are more frequently told to go pound sand over federal laws and regulations that they disagree with.

For federal Conservatives, the math is similar but slightly different. Much of the party’s fundraising base, membership, and core caucus (ie. the seats that get re-elected even in elections when the party isn’t in government) is from the Prairies. But to form a government, the Party must pick up seats in other parts of the country. This means that the Conservatives are politically motivated to be friendlier to provincial governments in every part of the country while thinking more carefully about antagonizing Premiers from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba than their federal Liberal counterparts do.

In any event, the most powerful leverage provincial governments have over their federal counterparts is whether their provinces affect the fortunes of the governing party. In the case of Alberta, that leverage has been off the table since the province joined Confederation. So, other measures need to be considered to create leverage with a federal Liberal government.

With that in mind, back to Smith’s Sovereignty Act. Will it actually provide leverage for Alberta to use against the federal Liberals at the table?

Both outgoing Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, and former British Columbia Premier Christy Clark are all firmly in the “no” camp on that question. They have respectively called the Act “nuts” and “batshit crazy”. Both former leaders interpreted the proposal as a thinly-veiled call to arms for the Alberta separatist movement, and cited concerns about how rather than improving Alberta’s lot in Confederation, it might destabilize the political climate in Alberta to the point where business investment in the province is chased away.

Unfortunately, by initially providing few specifics on how the Act would function, Smith left room for negative interpretation on intent. This was likely the impetus for a subsequent email to the UCP membership which provided more details on the Act, but was criticized for further opening the door to it becoming an instrument that could be used to facilitate secession. 

Point #3 of Smith’s explainer gives room for speculation that the Act could be used to suggest secession as a remedy when the Act is triggered. This could be more so the case if there was no practical enforcement mechanism the province could enact on federal law that falls within federal jurisdiction in a matter considered by the Act. While Smith has stated that the failsafe on the Act would be a debate and vote in the Alberta legislature, Kenney’s criticism argues that the entrenchment of this mechanism would in itself be enough to scare away investment and destabilize many other functions of the province.

Which is exactly why the Liberal party has never viewed the threat of Alberta secession as legitimate leverage over its federal government. They have seen the same polls Alberta MLAs have seen: while anger at the federal government is pervasive in Alberta, secessionist sentiment is not. 

Secessionist sentiments in Alberta, over the last two years, have moved up and down but appear to have now decreased over the last two years from its polling heights in early 2020. While not a direct measure of a desire to secede, a poll at that time, pre-pandemic and post 2019 federal Liberal election win, showed that nearly 80% of Alberta and Saskatchewan residents think Ottawa was out of touch with the provinces. The same poll saw almost two-thirds of residents declaring the country in the “midst of a national unity crisis”. Fast forward two years into the future and 70% of Albertans now support “staying a part of Canada and the federation” with only 16% favoring independence. 

I believe that the consistently low support for a full on secessionist movement in Alberta is due in part to how the majority of Albertans compartmentalize their anger and feelings of alienation against hostile federal governments. They may be angry at Justin Trudeau’s actions towards the province. But, that is a separate and distinct feeling from how they value their identity as Canadians and their belief that while Confederation may not be entirely fair to Alberta we still benefit from it, and that these issues are solvable with the right amount of political will and the right federal government.

In short, the federal Liberals know that under present conditions a referendum on secession in Alberta would not only be all but certain to fail, but would also serve to divide the right-of-centre political movement in Alberta along separatist and nationalist lines. While a small-ish percentage of die hard Alberta secessionists exist, they are not the majority. The Liberals have seen how this movie plays out before in the 1995 Quebec Referendum, and have politically dined out on the aftermath for almost 30 years now. 

Given that, threats of Alberta secession don’t create leverage over Justin Trudeau; it gives him more room to put the screws to the province.

So if not electoral prospects and if not secession, what would provide real leverage for the province of Alberta over the federal Liberals? 

The answer lies down a path that requires exponentially more political effort, brokerage, and courage as one traverses it. 

The first step should be the easy part for an Alberta politician - publicly acknowledging the multitude of ways that the province is treated unfairly in the context of Confederation, particularly when a federal Liberal government is in power. This is important because if people feel like their concerns aren’t being acknowledged by politicians, it pushes them to more desperate actions - in this case, identifying with the secessionist movement. Without acknowledging that a hostile federal Liberal government and structural inequities in Confederation have resulted in a loss of industry and capital from the province, a provincial government risks losing the argument that the risk of a secessionist movement doing the same thing is greater than reality.

For those of you who might poo-poo this, look at the way the Liberals have sought to curtail investment in the oil and gas industry without any real thought or support for its workers. They never would (and nor should they) have done the same thing to workers who are more essential to maintaining their voter coalition in let’s say, the auto manufacturing sector in southern Ontario or the aerospace industry in Quebec.  The same could be said if Quebec had to fork over billions and billions of dollars to Ottawa every year that would be sent to Alberta, and then be told they needed to increase their provincial sales tax to cover budgetary shortfalls.

But, simply pointing out that the federal Liberals giving Alberta a raw deal has never created leverage over the federal government. The next part is harder for a politician - acknowledging that nothing that’s been tried to create leverage to date has been particularly effective, and then following that through publicly suggesting new ideas to shake things up. On this point, Smith has markedly differentiated herself from the other UCP leadership opponents. 

While her proposal is being criticized, she’s had the gumption to point out that there’s room for improvement when it comes to the Alberta government getting the Trudeau Liberals to step off. An op-ed she penned in the National Post this week points out several earnest attempts to broker a better deal for Alberta that have failed.

Many of Smith’s opponents who served in cabinet under Kenney could establish credibility on this issue by stating what needs to be improved upon from attempts (or lack thereof) made during their tenures. And while Kenney deserves credit for undertaking the Fair Deal panel - an attempt to engage Albertans in creating ways to create leverage over the federal government - his criticism of Smith’s proposal might have landed differently for some if he had discussed how cleaning up after the NDP government and the pandemic likely hindered his ability to follow through on some of the meatier proposals that the Fair Deal panel suggested.

By now, you might be thinking, “hey MRG, you’re a Member of Parliament from Alberta, what have you ever done about this?”. 

Fair enough.

In early 2020, right before COVID hit, on the heels of a fresh federal election loss to the Liberals, at the start of yet another federal Conservative leadership race, I published the Buffalo Declaration with three other federal Members of Parliament.

There were several reasons why we put this document out. We wanted to draw attention to the causes of Western alienation, as we heard them expressed to us in our communities. We wanted to point out that even during our time in the Harper government years, not enough lasting structural change to correct inequities in Confederation was achieved. Most importantly, we wanted to suggest solutions to this problem that federal Conservative leadership candidates could adopt. In short, we were looking to use our roles as MPs to create leverage for our province.

That said, the Buffalo Declaration is clearly not an appeal to secession. It even says as much. Rather, it was designed to start a conversation about what actions could fix inequities and make Confederation sustainable for people in Western Canada. It was designed to spur action that would erode the arguments of secession being seen as the only way for Albertans to get a fair shake. 

While written from a federal jurisdictional perspective, the point we also tried to make is that many of the lists of policies and actions we outlined were already in the scope of jurisdiction of the province. In the original version of her oped, Smith acknowledged that other provinces have used the jurisdictional power they already have to prevent incursion of the federal Liberal government, without a similar Act to what she is proposing. 

While there are other criticisms of her Act, I view one key issue with Smith’s proposal as correctable. That is, she provides more clarity on the process she would use as Premier to address perceived unfair rules handed down from the federal government more than about the policies she would trigger by using that process. Essentially all she’s done to date with the Act is say where other Premiers use the cabinet process to execute leverage, Smith would use the Sovereignty Act. Ok, but what would that process actually….do? And, how would the Act do more than the tools already available to the Premier and their government? She’s a smart woman and likely has answers to these questions. But as it stands she’s given room for her opponents to weave a “hidden secessionist agenda” narrative against her.

Having dug into the Act, Smith would be better served to shift communications focus about the proposal to clearly outlining what remedies she would actually trigger in part of point #3 in her explainer (above). In triggering the Act, how far would her government go on remedy, and under what circumstance? For example, what would have to happen to let’s say, use the Act to pull Alberta out of the Canadian Pension Plan, and if so, how would that affect Albertans? If she got into a stalemate with the federal government after using a nuclear option like that, what would be her next play? How are these options better than what her opponents are offering, and why is she better suited to get this work done?

Most importantly to provide clarity against her opponent’s narrative, are there any circumstances under which Smith would use the Act to trigger a secessionist referendum?

The reality is that unless something dramatically changes in the UCP leadership race (which is still possible), there is a significant chance Smith might become Premier of Alberta.  This is an instance where if as an outgoing leader Kenney felt compelled to weigh on a policy presented during the election of his successor, he might have been better served to give some constructive criticism while extending an olive branch. This could help to mitigate actions that would create investment instability, caucus fractures, and help quell frustrations from Albertans over any perceived lack of progress on the Western alienation file on the part of Kenney’s government.

I realize that I myself am weighing in on a leadership race I declined to run in (my reasons for doing so stand) and a level of government I’m not part of. But I’m also a federal Member of Parliament from Alberta - it is in the interest of my constituents for the province of Alberta to have leverage over the federal government. I’m more than happy to provide support to any Premier of Alberta on constructively gaining more leverage for Alberta against a hostile federal Liberal government - as long as that action doesn’t effectively shoot the province in the foot along the way.

On that note, I’m sure the next leader of the federal Conservative Party (read: Pierre Poilievre) will share that particular sentiment. I chortled when I read an article that suggested that Smith’s Act would pose a challenge for Poilievre. Given his current popularity in the province, all Poilievre has to do when asked about the Act is state a fact few Alberta Conservative Party members would disagree with; “as Prime Minister I will help Alberta, not hinder it”. Poilievre would have little political incentive to pick a fight with the province which would necessitate the measures outlined in Smith’s Act. In fact, the opposite would be true. Rather, a Poilievre led federal government would remove Justin Trudeau as a foil upon which to blame future provincial woes.

But that’s the topic for discussion on another day.

The reality is that Alberta does need to create more leverage for itself against the federal Liberal government. It also needs investment certainty while it does so. And, it also needs any future Conservative federal government to enact structural changes that would insulate Western Canada from future hostile governments. This will take collaboration, common sense, and hard work. 

I hope we all can work together to get this right. Doing anything less would simply be nuts and batshit crazy.