The Thursday Question 1: Alberta’s business leaders host an event

Introducing “The Thursday Question” one day early

On Tuesday, the Business Council of Alberta, a new-ish lobby for the province’s major private sector employers, held its first major public event in Ottawa. 

In some ways it was an ideal show. Held at the end of a parliamentary day when almost every MP was in town to vote for a new Speaker. Set in a large ballroom directly across from West Block. The star attraction - a keynote speech from the Prime Minister, who doesn’t turn up at just any old event. With a tight focus, the event could be described as a success.

But zoom out a bit and questions arise. The Trudeau government has, at best, two years before it returns to the polls. The government is getting old, Mr Trudeau has seemed distracted, and by some measures public opinion is turning against him. It is far too early to write off the Liberals.  After all, two years ago the same opinion polling firms showed the UCP was doomed and the Alberta NDP was set to return to power. But on the major issue of the day, cost of living, Mr Trudeau’s government doesn’t have many ways to make a serious difference before 2025. You can only call grocery CEOs to committee so many times. What can Alberta businesses hope to get from Mr Trudeau at this stage in the parliamentary cycle?

Zoom out a bit more and, as anyone in Alberta can tell you, the Trudeau government has spent eight years showing its indifference if not outright hostility to Alberta and the province’s main engine of economic growth. Or, to be blunter: Mr Trudeau and his team tolerate Alberta’s oil and gas sector only insofar as its profits can be used to finance his dream of a zero-carbon future. Otherwise, it must be phased out as soon as possible. In the face of that federal agenda, why hold an event with Mr Trudeau’s government at all?

Most of Alberta’s Conservative MPs showed up to the BCA event, in good faith, to show the flag and support their business leaders. Over the course of an hour, in ones and twos, they left the event and left humiliated. 

Ottawa types have subtle and not so subtle ways of humiliating you. The BCA seems to have mastered all of them. The event didn’t simply ignore the Conservatives at the event - it actively humiliated them. And they know it.

Start with the warm up speeches. One speaker listed of Alberta’s greatest inventions - the Caesar and so on. But he made no mention of the most valuable Canadian invention of all time - steam assisted gravity drainage, the technology that turns worthless tar into valuable, black gold. SAGD and the other inventions that turned the oil sands into oil unleashed more wealth than any other invention in Canadian history. 

Another speaker listed reasons Canadians have to be grateful for Alberta. Our parks certainly deserved to be highlighted. But no one mentioned the equalization payments made possible by Alberta’s federal taxpayers, or the countless fortunes made in Alberta’s oil and gas. As Europeans, Asians and Africans scramble to prepare for another winter without Russian natural gas, no one mentioned how lucky Canadians are to have an ample supply of clean, affordable, safe gas. 

There was an indigenous cultural performance, and a very good one at that. The Trudeau government loves to talk about Reconciliation and Indigenous dance is a beautiful art form.  But where were the indigenous oil and gas workers who could explain how federal policies threaten their families’ livelihoods? That’s a message the Trudeau government really needs to hear. 

One speaker earnestly hoped the audience had learned something about Alberta at the event, as if nine years of the Harper government has somehow passed Ottawa by.

Then, Mr. Trudeau took the stage. He explained how patient he had been, hoping Alberta would come to the table prepared to do its bit for the climate. No mention of Alberta’s eminently practical plan to get to net-zero emissions by 2050.  He assailed leaders who were being divisive and spreading untruths, a dig at Mr. Poilievre, a Calgary native.  The assembled business leaders saved their loudest cheer for Mr Trudeau’s defence of the Canada Pension Plan - a program that takes hundreds of billions out of Alberta and puts that money in the hands of Toronto asset managers. Doesn’t anyone in Alberta think our asset managers could do just as good a job? Don’t any of them want to want to build out Alberta’s financial institutions?  It seems not. 

Mr Trudeau’s mention of the CPP brings us to the strangest part of the BCA evening. Not a single representative of the newly-reelected Alberta government was invited to the big Alberta bash in the nation’s capital. Some organizers told me they wanted the focus to be on cooperation with the Trudeau government. They felt that inviting the provincial government wouldn’t have contributed to that message 

But the Smith government, like every provincial government in every province for the last 150 years, wants to cooperate with the feds in some areas - building a carbon capture system and establishing an Alberta Pension Plan. In other areas, it sees irreconcilable differences - Ottawa is plastered with Alberta Government ads about the impracticality of the federal net zero electricity plan. Every provincial government has played the same game since Mowat’s Liberals invented “provincial rights” in the 1880s . Goodness knows, Mr. Trudeau’s team knows this. Alberta didn’t invent the strategy. Every province plays it.

Besides which, setting aside the eternal realities of federal-provincial relations, the UCP just won a four-year mandate! It is pressing ahead with an ambitious policy agenda, including that net zero plan. “Cooperation” happens when everyone makes an effort to understand each other’s concerns. How does Alberta cooperate with Mr Trudeau and leave Ms Smith’s government on the outside?

A generation ago, the Business Council of Canada, then operating under a different name, wisely sidestepped the conflict between Mr Trudeau’s father and Peter Lougheed. A certain class of Ontario intellectuals dismissed Mr. Lougheed and his team as “blue eyed sheiks” trying to squeeze the wealth of Central Canada using oil as a weapon. Mr. Lougheed was confrontational and aggressive when the times demanded confrontation and aggression, and knew how to sign a deal when the deal was right for his province. The leadership of the Business Council of Canada embraced him, embraced his support for continental free trade, and kept open lines of communication when the federation was under severe strain. That kind of statesmanship provides a lesson that business groups should heed today.

Today in Question Period, Mr. Trudeau trumpeted his warm support from Alberta’s business leaders. Conservative MPs from Alberta are bracing to see photos and videos of the event used against them in future campaign ads. All courtesy of the Business Council of Alberta.

So, what should Alberta’s Conservative MPs do now?

First, don’t get angry; get organized. Don’t burn bridges to the business community over one event.

Secondly, they should take their case to the CEOs of the BCA members, in person or by telephone call. Ask those CEOs, what they expect to get from the Trudeau government in exchange for holding the event? What was the strategy behind the event? Some of those CEOs, who are all busy people, took the time to travel to Ottawa. Others sent senior executives. What exactly were they thinking?

Then, they should call again every month or so from now until the election and ask - what has Mr Trudeau delivered? Did any projects get permitted? Are new LNG projects going ahead? Did he cut a cheque for carbon capture? Did he shuffle an Alberta MP into the environment portfolio? Is he finally following the international trend and postponing climate goals to ease the cost of living crisis? Businesses don’t make investments without expecting to earn a return.

Eventually, government changes hands. Wise lobby groups hedge their bets and make friends in all parties. Maybe the BCA is too new to have learned this lesson, but they will. Alberta’s Conservative MPs could eventually find themselves in government, and at that point constructive conversations with Alberta’s business CEOs will have to take place. Both sides - the MPs who answer to Albertans and the CEOs who answer to investors in New York and London - will have to reach a mutual understanding. If Alberta’s business leaders want the federal Conservatives to figure out what to do about the business strategies that depend on the carbon tax they plan to repeal, those leaders should press the BCA to rethink its strategy. And soon.