Alberta Premier Danielle Smith yesterday sent a letter to Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek chattering excitedly about plans to expand Calgary’s light rail transit system to Calgary International Airport.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Jake Wright/Manning Centre/Creative Commons).

She made sure it was posted to social media for all to see, along with a news release on the government’s web site. 

Efficient public transit from a city’s downtown to its airport, especially when the airport is right inside the city as Calgary’s is, is not a bad idea.

Premier Smith’s epistolary pitch, however, looks upon closer examination like it’s mostly hot air.

First, the airport LRT idea a promise, not a plan, by a premier who’s dug herself into a deep hole in her first month on the job and doesn’t really want to stop digging. This has the sound of a “good news story” intended to distract. 

Second, it’s an aspirational scheme that doesn’t serve the city’s most immediate transportation needs and appears tied to a dubious proposed boondoggle, the scheme to run a tourist train to the Rockies that never seems to die no matter how many times it’s killed.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek (Photo: Bittabola/Creative Commons).

“Calgary is a world-class city; it should be connected to our province’s world-class parks,” Ms. Smith’s letter chirped, not mentioning that the highway goes right there. 

Third, it seems to come with strings attached, in the form Premier Smith’s obvious fondness for the oil industry’s dubious proposition it can pivot to creating “clean” hydrogen fuel using energy from natural gas, thereby squeezing a few more years of profit from fossil fuels and converting surplus petroleum refining infrastructure to other profitable activities.

Premier touts hydrogen-powered locomotives 

“I would also note the potential of utilizing hydrogen-powered locomotives in this endeavour, which would both reduce emissions and is aligned with our government’s vision to make Alberta a world leader in hydrogen technology research, development and manufacturing,” said Premier Smith.

“The idea of having a link from the airport to downtown and perhaps to Banff, really interesting idea,” Mayor Gondek told reporters, an answer portrayed by UCP friendly columnists as praise, but more likely a polite suggestion she was mildly underwhelmed. 

Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel Garner (Photo: MichelleStaff/Creative Commons).

“These conversations have gone on for a long time, so to think that our provincial government is able to support us is absolutely very good news for Calgary,” she reminded her listeners.

Meanwhile, Calgary Nose Hill Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, who has a reputation for liking both guns and roses, picked up on this, complaining in a news release that not enough attention was being paid to the needs of residents of her federal riding on Calgary’s north side.

Noting that it’s been nearly a decade since $1.5 billion was allocated by Ottawa for an LRT line from the city’s northern suburbs to downtown but that the plan is no longer even on the table, she said: “I encourage my colleagues at all levels of government to ensure that the residents of north central Calgary are prioritized for public transit before projects that might have a tourism bent.”

Just last spring, Ms. Rempel Garner – who apparently divides her time among Calgary, Ottawa and Oklahoma – publicly mused about seeking the leadership of the United Conservative Party.

By late June, though, she had changed her mind, portraying the UCP in a remarkable Substack post as a disunited hot mess, rife with meltdowns, near punch-ups, smears, harassment and public bullying.

Michelle Rempel Garner … eyeing premier’s job?

It’s easy to wonder, though, if she might be anticipating that Ms. Smith’s recent political comeback will end sooner than later and give her another chance at pursing her political career in more congenial circumstances.

In a less competitive world, perhaps the two of them could co-operate to build a zeppelin field in north Calgary, with a lightning fast LRT connection to the towers of downtown, finding synergies in hydrogen and steel rails.

Finance Minister Travis Toews (Photo : David J. Climenhaga).

Meanwhile, Ms. Smith’s mandate letter to her new finance minister – the same as Jason Kenney’s old finance minister – instructed Travis Toews to work with Energy Minister Peter Guthrie “to advance LNG and hydrogen initiatives in the province.”

In case you were hoping that was all, after complaining about the “Liberal-NDP caused inflation crisis,” the premier went on to tell Mr. Toews to keep planning to take over the Canada Pension Plan and create an Alberta version that “will increase pension benefits for seniors and reduce premiums for workers.”

I regret to inform readers that while that may be how Ms. Smith tries to sell the UCP’s pension scheme, it’s not how it’s likely to play out if they ever get their paws on our pensions, at least as long as there are tempting investment opportunities in cryptocurrency, alternative COVID treatments, and U.S. pipelines to nowhere.

The premier also instructed her finance minister to “provide recommendations regarding an Alberta Revenue Agency to collect all Alberta taxes including personal income taxes” – another expensive and pointless scheme intended only to advance the UCP’s sovereignist agenda. 

As for her new minister of transportation and economic corridors (back in cabinet after a spell in the backbenches for office boozing and tolerating harassment among his staff), Devin Dreeshen’s mandate letter says nothing about hydrogen but instructs him to get cracking on “an LRT and rail link between Calgary International Airport, downtown Calgary and Canmore/Banff.”

Still no mandate letter for health minister

Premier Smith is yet to issue a mandate letter to her health minister, Jason Copping, who was also recycled from Mr. Kenney’s cabinet. 

Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr).

This is probably the single most anticipated cabinet mandate letter, not to mention the one with the greatest political risk to the premier, since she will need to outline in it how extensive her plans are to purge senior Alberta Health Services leadership, restructure the big provincial health-care agency, and privatize publicly delivered health care services.

But then, there’s no 2020-2021 AHS annual report either – despite the fact that for years it’s been released at the end of June or early in the summer. This year, though, it’s still missing in action. 

The delay can’t be attributed to AHS. As in past years, the 2020-2021 annual report was approved by the AHS board at its June meeting and sent on to Alberta Health, as the provincial health department is confusingly known, where it has languished ever since.

More crypto-collapse Alberta fallout 

Dale Nally, off to Bitcoin conference (Photo: Asia-Pacific Hydrogen Summit – I tell you, you can’t make this stuff up!

And speaking of crypto currencies, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX Exchange not surprisingly yesterday called off its plan to have one of its subsidiaries buy Calgary crypto trader Bitvo Inc.

On Remembrance Day, the company not long ago touted by the UCP as proof Alberta is open for business, collapsed into bankruptcy, taking Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices tumbling southward with it. 

Meanwhile, Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally, occupant of what is by tradition the lowest ranked portfolio in Alberta’s cabinet, was off to Austin today to attend the Texas Blockchain Summit, ” which bills itself “North America’s premier policy conference for the Bitcoin, crypto, and blockchain ecosystem.”

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14 Comments

  1. The UCP are in a total state of disarray and delusion, that they don’t even know where they are going anymore. The UCP are wasting all kinds of money on different things, and this is what they were criticizing the NDP for doing, which wasn’t the case at all. There is a provincial election in Alberta, next May (we hope), and the UCP’s popularity is going way down, so they are trying to make amends with the electorate. I hope the electorate is not dumb enough to fall for the UCP’s lies, like they did the last time. Alas, so many in Alberta are gullible, that they will do that. It’s very likely that gullible people voted for Danielle Smith in the by-election, while the rest stayed home, and didn’t even bother to vote. It is really sad to see where Alberta is going with these pseudo conservatives and Reformers, who rob us of our oil and tax wealth, lose jobs, destroy the environment, cut supports to seniors and the needy, increase utility and insurance costs, and destroy public healthcare and public education in Alberta. Peter Lougheed never was this way.

  2. This train to Banff issue is a good example of how Smith works. She is a big ideas person, some bad, some good and often the details are missing or not well thought out when she latches onto them.

    This idea has been kicking around for a while. It isn’t Smith’s initiative. It is a private initiative that has apparently already lined up some other funding. She has just jumped in on it now. Interestingly, just months ago, it was passed up by the Alberta government apparently concerned it was a boondoggle, or did not have a good business case. As far as I know the project proposed hasn’t changed since, so I suppose that was then and this was now. I understand the Alberta government is going to agree to cover some of this trains operating costs, so this project can proceed. Like Toronto’s ambituos Union Pearson line several years ago, if ridership projections are not met, someone (likely some level of government) may have to put in extra.

    Perhaps this is new money, or as Rempel fears, will come at the expense of LRT projects in Calgary. I gather there may also need to be money put in by the city, how much is also unclear, which perhaps explains the mayor’s cautious response.

    So there are a lot of questions here. Smith’s letter hasn’t really answered them. Maybe this is a good project and not the boondoggle the Alberta government seemed to think up until recently, or maybe not. As is often the case, the devil is probably in the details.

    Smith’s willingness now to write a cheque might be what is needed for this project to proceed, but Calgarians and Albertans still have questions and concerns here. The details here will probably be left to others to sort out, or not, as Smith flits off to the next big idea. This is how she works – careful management and attention to details are not really her thing.

    1. Dave, for what its worth, I came across some items of interest while looking up what the Premier makes as a salary ( re the proposed $375 *fund)…which was interesting on it’s own, then found further on other topics and one was on the ” Calgary/ Banff ” line…..
      https://albertaworker.ca >news
      Alberta paid out nearly $20 million to current and former MLAs —
      shout out to AW , thanks for info..

  3. I guess means that the bullet train that is supposed to link all major Alberta cities and other population centres is a go. Maybe it will be a monorail?

    Of course there will be oodles of money once those pension funds are tapped for all the goodies. But don’t worry about how to live in retirement; Smith intends to abolish retirement of any kind, the same way she’s moving to abolish children with biowarfare.

    It’s not like these things matter. In Smith’s podcast reality, everything works fine. Reality is bent all the time.

  4. Well, with a title like that, I need to add my 2 cents.

    It should be noted that Danielle Smith is sticking her nose into places where it doesn’t belong, namely municipal planning. But that is perhaps something she is only all too willing to blithely ignore, the 2 major cities and other municipalities in the province being a bit of a nuisance in wanting sometimes to do things differently from the provincial government.

    If there was any illusion that the UCP has any resemblance to the fiscal conservatism of the former PC party or the libertarianism of Danielle Smith, that veil has been ripped off by these proposals. Changing plans for an LRT line at its current stage of development will be costly. Who will pick that up? The province? And, a new rail line to Banff from Calgary. This will be extremely costly, not to mention politically fraught. The line will need a right of way through reserve and private land. Would the government expropriate land for this? How does a hydrogen infrastructure get bootstrapped in AB? Aspirational plans indeed. They are also complex undertakings, something that does not lend itself well to the limited skill set of Devin “Shields Up” Dreeshin.

    It is noteworthy that these announcements, along with a prior one about a new arena, are focused on Calgary with nary a nod to Edmonton, the bastion of NDP support. A high-speed rail link between Calgary and Edmonton might make more sense. But, like the rail link between Calgary and Banff, mooted many times before with no success. Nice to have but there isn’t the will to make it happen.

    As for the pension, if the UCP thinks it will not have a real problem on its hands if it makes moves to bring the CPP pensions of Albertans under the control of AIMCo, it is living in a fantasy land. AIMCo has been a disaster. The teachers’ pension lost 30 million dollars by being forced into AIMCo. Had those pension funds been in AIMCo since the beginning, they would have lost a lot more. Just judging by the outrage on Twitter regarding the CPP, one gets the sense that a lot of seniors who have the economic means would move before allowing the UCP to get their hands on their CPP. And those who can’t or are unwilling to move would make a huge noise.

    The pension, not to mention a provincial police force, is not the winning issue the UCP thinks it is. But, as past statements have shown, Danielle Smith is still focused on her base and not most Albertans. Common sense and regard for the general welfare of all Albertans is not her strong suit.

    We have had poor governments in the past. However, the UCP just may be the most corrupt and stupid of them all.

  5. Call this the Hot Mess Winter. In a single day, Danielle Smith has managed to shoot off more missiles — er, I mean missives — than any premier anywhere. From meddling in Calgary’s LRT yet again, to her Alberta Pension Plunder and sending a minister off to Texas to explore more cryptocurrency. Only so many carts can go in front of horses before the whole parade crashes. Throw some hydrogen into that pot and stir.

    The spades aren’t even in the ground for Calgary’s Green Line, which will bring LRT to the unserved SE quadrant, but she’s asking the residents of Calgary to fork out for a tourist train for private profit. Didn’t she say she doesn’t need the cities to win the general election? Maybe it’s not smart to poke a bear with the province’s largest urban population, however little she thinks of city dwellers.

    Yesterday went beyond shock doctrine into “attention span of a fruit fly” territory. How scattered can one premier be? Is she trying to distract from the latest Sean Chu fiasco du jour at city hall, which her government has managed to ignore thus far?

  6. Some UPC wonk told Dozi she will have to railroad Albertans with “the agenda” before the spring election and here we are.

  7. For what its worth, just throwing in my 2 cents , re: rail line from Calgary to Banff , a few casual observations.

    1. Banff ” National ” Park…ie: federal jurisdiction….( oh but she’s just going to ignore them, right?)

    2. Via rail already runs there at least on my last trip through Banff by bus, we were stopped right beside the track, and saw the train come in.

    3.If she’s talking about a “Dayliner” or as we called it back in the day on the farm, the Sputnik, which traveled on the CP or CN line, which I’m also assuming would have to be federally approved.

    4.If she’s talking about putting in a “light rail ” is she talking about a new set of lines….going by the costs of just extending the lines in Vancouver, all I see is those $ signs going ka-ching $$$$$$, cause if they start talking about the time & cost to start tearing down mts, building bridges etc. not even counting private properties, all the Alberta pensions won’t cover it. But hey ,I guess all those crypto coins could be put to use, right??

    5. And just as a sidebar, I’m willing to risk a small wager, that the rail company they are planning to meet with in Texas, is the same one that is having issues with the landowners/ courts …over their proposed line from Houston to Dallas (?) , ….what are the chances?

    6. Conclusion: you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cain’t tell a Heinz pickle nuffin— — and what is the warning they keep putting out about scammers ” if it sounds too good to be true….”
    But I guess if you start doing the hippopotamus thing, you figure something will probably stick…. chances are…????

  8. It really is hard to understand how stupid these Reformers are. Everything they promote is going to be a disaster for Albertans and they don’t care, yet these mindless seniors believe every lie they feed them , just too dumb to understand what they have lost because of them. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. While they hurl sarcastic comments at anyone not as dumb as them, a friend states “these ignorant seniors are all mouth and no brains “ and that’s what they are. People in eastern Canada appear to be getting sick and tired of their pal Reform Party Pierre Poilievre who in typical Reform party fashion continues to blame it all on Trudeau, but never offers any solution to any of his concerns proving just how stupid he really is . As the former MLAs pointed out, not one single one of these Reformers are smart enough to suggest that we should be following Lougheed , Alaska and Norway in collecting proper royalties and taxes proving there is nothing conservative about any of them. Yet these ignorant rural Albertans have once again bought into Smith’s lies. They don’t care that the oil industry has been allowed to pollute their fellow farmers land, or that seniors who want to sell their land can’t because of the pollution. Telling their doctors and nurses that they don’t care how these Reformers have treated them is a huge mistake and could cost some of them their lives. But no one has ever accused Albertans as being too smart. Even Ralph Klein said “Albertans aren’t smart enough to understand our plans for health care reform, so we aren’t going to tell you what they are “. Even Klein knew how easy seniors are to fool, he made a living doing it.

  9. Proponents of this project are overthinking – there are much cheaper, easier means to legally exploit the epistemic disadvantages our society inflicts upon working class people than trains to nowhere. VLTs, sports gambling, multilevel marketing schemes, etc etc etc. They’re working too hard for their free money, they must be new at Capitalism.

    If/when the owning class succeeds in creating a voting public that can be persuaded to purchase trains to nowhere, there might end up being some unintended consequences and collateral damage. I understand that, to a Capitalist, our species going extinct is an “externality.” Many of them (figuratively and literally) have some pretty swanky bomb shelters and think they’re going to be fine and if we wanted to survive we should have “worked hard and made good choices.” You know, like Elon Musk, who has more power than many nations and less accountability than any nation.

    Every day we get out of bed and sleepwalk towards our own extinction, just trying to get through the day to our bottle, and through the week to our paycheque. This is freedom? Whether you are bound by a big iron chain in a dungeon or a trillion silk threads in a gilded cage, bondage is bondage. You have to do the things you have to do instead of the things you want to do so that someone else can profit off your lack of freedom. Multiple someone else’s. I suuuuuure wish I knew how to reach Canadians. I’ve often wondered if normal Canadians feel the same way about Trumpers that I do about them. It is confounding and frustrating how thoroughly complicit in our own destruction we are. Many working class Canadians have chosen to work jobs where they get paid to commit actions that will harm their children while justifying their behaviour by saying “I’ve got kids to feed,” or, “If you had kids you’d understand.” The argument seems to be, “having children allows you to understand that it is allowed and even admirable to knowingly destroy your children’s future in order to provide for your children’s present.” How do I reach these kids? When did “these kids” start having grey hair? How did we end up in a world where I look to my elders less often for role models or guidance or wisdom or experience, than I do for white supremacy, self-righteous, vainglorious delinquency, a complete disavowal of anything resembling “character ethics,” (except when punching down at others, when suddenly they hold others to standards they wouldn’t even try to meet themselves) and willing complicity in causing the Earth’s sixth extinction event?

    One thing I can tell you for sure – asking for the manger has never gotten me results.

  10. DJC, pplease,….Alberta’s CaBlCo/going to Texus ,with the partnership of the Alberta government with AEG….
    So :ques ca c’est : AEG
    Alberta energy group, president Danielle Smith…..
    every turn, new discovery, more questions……que pasa ??

    If you are too busy, no problem, it’s so hard to try and keep up, and lord help us, she’s not back in the office yet, ..oh I forgot.., some paint, a few pillows, …

  11. Government money in crypto???? What were they thinking. If it weren’t for the fact the money belonged to the taxpayers in Alberta, it would be funny. these people clearly don’t know business. Now she wants her hands on the pension money. Alert to any scammers ought there to make a big score, check Alberta. Can just see Smith signing a multi billion dollar deal with some foreign health care corp to handle health care in Albert and have them walk off with the money. Should be a good laugh.

    Building a rapid transit system out to the airport, People going there usually drive. If this really goes ahead taxpayers will be out billions. As to having some sort of system out to Banff, o.k. what is smith smoking?

    This could all be put down to “busy work” and nothing gets done. Smith can make all the promises she wants and perhaps her rural supporters will buy into it, just sounds lijke a lot of dumb pre election announcements

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