If unicorn farts smelled like expensive French perfume, the Alberta Republic as imagined by the so-called “Alberta Prosperity Project” would be the sweetest smelling place on earth!
Alas, there are no unicorns, and the fairy tale published by the separatist group so carefully nurtured by Premier Danielle Smith smells more like the kind of garden-variety agricultural output you’d expect from the hind end of a bog-standard male bovine ungulate.
We all know what folks say about sales pitches that appear to be too good to be true. They usually are. “The Value of Freedom, a draft fully costed fiscal plan for an independent Alberta” qualifies for this traditional folk wisdom.
If you buy the authors’ fantastic claim that by separating from Canada the new “Commonwealth of Alberta” could realize an immediate fiscal surplus closing in of $50 billion, I’m sure they’ve also got a beautiful bridge over the Bow River they’d be delighted sell you.
If you think it’s a great idea to peg your new Alberta pension to a sovereign Bitcoin reserve – I’m not making this up, it’s on Page 22 of the 44 page document – you are a sheep waiting to be sheared.
I know it’s a lot to ask serious economists take the time to debunk drivel based on such preposterous predictions as 100 to 150 per cent increases in oil and gas production over a couple of decades, creating up to 450,000 new jobs in an electrifying world, being able to leverage “Alberta’s vast natural landscapes to mitigate concerns regarding carbon dioxide levels” (say what?), and how getting “free from external climate agendas” will ensure “a sustainable, self-determined future for Alberta.”
But it needs to be done. After all, there’s obviously a sustained, well-financed disinformation campaign under way to persuade Albertans and other Canadians that this nonsense reflects reality. (And just watch the comments section of this post if you doubt plenty of Albertans have downed the Kool Aid.)
And shame on Alberta’s credulous media for treating this as if it were a serious and well-researched proposal.
Once upon a time, University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe would have been the go-to expert to consult. Unfortunately, he has tied himself to the Alberta Next Panel set up by Premier Danielle Smith, the province’s No. 1 enabler of separatist sentiment. Sadly, that exercise is unlikely to end well for the reputation of anyone involved, including the professor.
Consider the Value of Freedom’s treatment of the supposed benefits of an Alberta pension.
Noting Dr. Tombe’s past criticism of the absurd June 2023 Lifeworks estimate that Alberta would be entitled to 53 per cent of the Canada Pension Plan investment fund, and the chief actuary of Canada’s similar critique, Parkland Institute research fellow and former senior civil servant Robert Ascah dismissed the document’s methodology.
“The $334-billion or selectively chosen 50 per cent thereof (we are being cheated but we’ll take $167-billion) is a lazy analysis of how a pension fund would be divided,” Dr. Ascah observed in an email yesterday.
Dr. Ascah noted that the paper’s pension analysis is rife with misleading assumptions about the liability of the imagined plan (“many of the CPP payments are made to non-residents who worked their lives in Alberta but have retired somewhere”), underestimation of the cost of administering an Alberta fund, and overestimation of its likely rate of return.
The strangest and ugliest part of this paper, though, is contained in its final seven pages, where in the authors spin out their creepy fantasy of Trump-style mass deportations to ensure an ideologically and culturally pure Alberta Republic.
In a recent Substack, University of Calgary political science professor Lisa Young called Premier Smith’s use of immigration as a grievance against Ottawa, and the draft of a virtual ethnic cleansing campaign in the APP document, “the ugly underbelly of Alberta separatism.”
Under the heading “Immigration and Deportation Plan,” the paper declares that “natural born Canadians “will be given preference if they want to move here.”
“First of all,” the authors declare, “we want to give our like-minded Canadian brothers and sisters the easiest possible option to be part of an independent Alberta. Secondly, they will fit easily into the Albertan culture. Thirdly, they understand Canada and its winters and have at least a fighting chance of being able to drive acceptably on snow and ice.” (Emphasis added.)
I’m not making this up. It’s on page 29 if you doubt me. (No more immigrants from Vancouver island, I guess, if you need to know how to drive on snow. As for “Albertan culture,” I have no words to define it.)
“The remainder of Canada is required to accept individuals who are ineligible under the new Alberta policies,” the document continues breezily, “whereupon they can deal with them within the Canadian immigration policy.
“This is obviously a point of negotiation with Canada, but it is backstopped by Alberta’s intent to deport ineligible people directly itself,” it adds. Straight to Ottawa Airport, the brainiac authors seem to have decided.
Given this, one has to wonder when the Alberta nation’s new governors would decide to start expelling natural-born Albertans who didn’t support Alberta separation, continued to call themselves Canadians, or chose to resist this kind of MAGA fascism. Not long, one imagines.
I am personally persuaded a lot of the presumed support for Alberta separation in this province would disappear in a flash if some pollster would simply ask respondents if they’d vote for an independent Alberta and remain there if it were guaranteed they’d lose their Canadian passport.
But that’s the thing about the lads at the APP. They’ve got a fantastic story to tell about the benefits of separation – at least if you don’t worry too much about accuracy and happen to meet their definition of a pure laine Albertan if you plan to stick around.
They don’t seem to have thought about the costs of their scheme.