Danielle Smith’s Dance of the Thousand Mandate Letters continues.
Now you see something; now you don’t.
Then again maybe you just thought you saw something, and really saw nothing at all.
It’s all very confusing. It’s intended to be. And it’s rather clever, giving the impression the government is doing something when it’s doing nothing, and vice-versa.
It’s rather like Kremlinology, back in the bad old days when the Soviet Union was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
Well, no one is going to call the United Conservative Party or Premier Smith enigmatic, I guess, but to continue channelling Winston Churchill, while it’s very difficult to forecast the action of the Smith Government, perhaps there is a key. The key is understanding who benefits.
Consider two of the UCP’s least popular policies, both inspired by the 2001 separatist musings of Stephen Harper and his fraternity brothers at Firewall House: the related ideas of replacing the RCMP with a provincial police force and grabbing Albertans’ contributions to the Canada Pension Plan.
Yesterday, Dean Bennett of The Canadian Press reported that the government has all but abandoned its plan to send the Mounties and the horses they rode in on packing and replace them with provincial police.
There’s nothing about it in either Justice Minister Mickey Amery’s mandate letter or that of so-called Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis beyond a vague request that Mr. Ellis support municipalities “with the community policing options they believe will best serve their populations.”
CP quoted Mr. Amery casting these pearls of wisdom before the media: “We are going to continue to listen to Albertans, to learn about their needs and their challenges and their concerns, and then bring that back to [cabinet] and to caucus for further contemplation.”
Meanwhile, over at Postmedia’s Calgary Herald, political columnist Don Braid informs us that Ms. Smith and the UCP have “fully revived” their plan to create a provincial pension plan.
Using Finance Minister Nate Horner’s mandate letter as his text and quoting anonymous sources, Mr. Braid says breathlessly that the government is planning a full court press to capture the pension – including a thought they might even ask the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board handle the money.
So the Mounties are in and the CPP is out, then?
Well, maybe. But don’t count on it.
The federal government is known to be contemplating getting the 150-year-old RCMP out of the business of provincial and municipal contract policing and turning it into “the FBI of the North.”
That might take a few years, but why break into a sweat if you’re going to get what you want anyway – with a lot less complaining about either the cost or the lost iconography of those red serge tunics if the change appears to be forced upon Alberta.
Meanwhile, the UCP would very much like to get its paws on the huge pot of money Albertans’ CPP retirement savings represent, there’s no doubt about that.
But the idea is so scary, and so unpopular right now, it has to be considered a long shot. Mr. Braid is just performing to specifications and running the idea up the proverbial flagpole to see who salutes, or floating the proverbial balloon to see who shoots at it – choose your metaphor.
The unlikely idea of letting the CPP Investment Board manage the funds after the takeover is just testing a wild promise to see if there’s anything they can say to persuade a few more nervous seniors to go along with the scheme.
Don’t bet on it working, though. Seniors’ retirement savings will probably turn out to be too tough a nut to crack, even with a crooked referendum campaign.
The smart money, it’s said here, should be on a provincial police force sooner or later, and an Alberta pension plan probably never.
But who really knows? Certainly not us voters.
The telegraphying of the UCP messaging has gone back its usual high-quality ADHD.
Signalling to her base, Danielle Smith, without a doubt still trying to pacify the militia types in her base, continues to beat the drum for a provincial police force. Of course, the Alberta Sheriffs hardly amount to a law enforcement body on the scale of the RCMP; but for those who lust for Alberta to have a paramilitary force of their own, the Sheriffs maybe the next best thing. And they already exist, so no problem.
The other problem is keeping the CPP around. Albertans are, amazingly, not willing to trust the UCP with their pensions. But where does that leave the Oil & Gas industry, who lusts for the near unlimited financing that an Alberta pension plan would offer? Who bought and paid for Premier Danielle Smith anyway?
It seems the UCP can never be trusted to tell the truth, or to do what’s right. The UCP, through AIMCo, gambled $4 billion worth of pension money, and lost it. Retirement isn’t a safe bet with the UCP. In addition, the former leader of the UCP has the R.C.M.P investigating his ascent to power. It’s easy to have that as an excuse to justify removing the R.C.M.P from Alberta, even though the UCP won’t say that, the conclusion leads right to it. Does the UCP care about how many people would end up retiring in a state of poverty, or how many people will be put out of a job? No. Who is going to pick up the costs for a provincial police force? The municipalities will, through increased municipal property taxes, because they don’t have the $1 billion, or so, which is needed to pay for this provincial police force. The second time around, Albertans have proved how foolish they were, by re-electing the UCP. Even prior to 2019, there were Albertans who gave stern warnings about how bad the UCP would be, but these warnings went unheeded. Now, we are stuck with a horrific mess. You can’t get any more foolish than that.
She has and will continue to talk in circles. When you think the issue is closed it gets reopened and or it’s something she doesn’t want to talk at this time. Another word for this is craziness. No mandates only her personal mandates.
It’s like one of those old fashioned amusement parks. Just not very amusing!
It reminds me of the old schoolyard merry-go-rounds, where some of us kids hung on while others spun the thing as fast as they could. Then trade places, and see who gets dizzy and falls off first!
I suspect Smith et al will try to keep the merry-go-round spinning till all their critics fall off from dizziness and fatigue.
The prospect of a UCP government ditching the RCMP in favour of a provincial police force set up according to its narrow parochial, partisan interests — “Dani’s private army”, if you will — is unsettling to many residents of this province.
That the RCMP might be withdrawn from provincial contract policing in all 7 ½ provinces* that don’t already have provincial police forces is less concerning, as long as it happens in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary manner. Who knows, perhaps the NDP will once again be in power by the time the Alberta Provincial Police will have to be organized.
*The “½” I refer to here is Newfoundland & Labrador, where the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary polices parts of the province, while the RCMP polices the rest. I have made a number of attempts to find out the boundaries & interaction between the two forces without success.
The answer to Canada Pension versus Alberta Pension in my mind is very simple and very clear, NEVER EVER trust any politician regardless of party with your pension. The Canada Pension as far as I am aware has no ties to any political party, which is the way it should be. Ten years ago the Conservatives came up with the Alberta Pension idea. I recall writing a letter to the premier at the time to keep your hands off my pension and that still holds true today.
Contemplative? What’s the phrase they use? “Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” The mirror tells them what they want to hear. We all know how that fairy tale turns out.
For anyone with two brain cells? The UCP and it’s new brand “the Dani er Party” are a joke that’s on us! Thanks to our neighbours, we get the cumulative wise governance of the most ignorant self serving morons ever spawned! https://youtu.be/NNpBLcb15Y8?t=3
Signs of rational thought from the Smith TBA party on the policing file? I’m not gonna hold my breath. Here’s a quote from Dean Bennet’s article:
“However, Justice Minister Mickey Amery said Tuesday the idea is not dead and his department will continue to consult with Albertans on where they want to go with policing…. ‘I would simply say to you that we are going to continue to listen to Albertans, to learn about their needs and their challenges and their concerns, and then bring that back to [cabinet] and to caucus for further contemplation,’ he responded.”
In other words, Smith et al stopped pushing the idea in public but haven’t given up completely.
As for hiving off part of the Canada Pension Plan—don’t even try it. After the well-known fiascos of AIMCo, I presume (I bloody well hope) there’ve been significant changes to AIMCo’s management and mandate. The best change would be abandoning the attempt to act like a huge mutual-fund investment company (pursued by the Old Tories because guv’mints cain’t do it right and busynesses cain’t do it wrong). The move was criticized at the time as risky, expensive (much higher management expenses) and unnecessary. And so, of course, the Old Tories did it anyway.
All that will save us old-timers from being robbed is the fact CPP is almost as hard to change as the Constitution. I believe it takes agreement by a majority of provincial governments, plus the feds, to amend the CPP.
The thing is DJC, we don’t really know what the neo-con plan is for an AB pension plan, except of course to get rid of defined benefit pensions in whatever form and wherever they are. What I mean is what are the details, the plan, the logistics, how they would do it, how would their AB PP work? I don’t know and I haven’t heard from anyone who does.
You say retirees won’t stand for it, but how can we be sure – they re-elected the UCP surely knowing Ms. Smith’s desires. What if the UCP comes up with a plan where current retirees are unaffected? Or maybe a plan where workers who have contributed to CCP keep what they’ve got but from here on in they will be contributing to ABPP instead of CCP? And then give them reduced rates? I don’t know how feasible any of this speculation is but we know that the neo-cons desperately hate the CPP but would love to get their greedy mitts into it.
It might just be a ploy to distract from some other nasty piece of work or maybe a half-hearted attempt will be made to bash the feds with when it fails but I’m wary that Ms. Smith will do something to move against the CPP. The ideology is very strong.