September 2001
What Does the West Want from Ottawa?
by Gordon Gibson
Recently I was at a conference in Calgary whereat former Premiers Lougheed, Blakeney, Filmon, and Harcourt were speakers, along with Preston Manning. The meeting was closed and, of course, I will honour that confidence. But a couple of things can be properly said as my own observations.
First, there was no sign of Western whining there. To a person, the speakers and the blue-ribbon Calgary audience were positive. But the data presented showed a huge difference among the provinces. Two are large and two are quite small. Alberta is very rich, BC (take a bow, the NDP) is now below the Canadian average GPP per capita, as are Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The West is not monolithic.
Alberta's wealth will soon become a problem. The province has no sales tax, spending is up hugely to the envy of everyone else, the debt will shortly be gone, and the way is open to completely eliminate provincial income tax.
The oil and gas wealth fueling this happy scene is not a blip in time, as it was in the early '70s with the first OPEC crisis. This time around it is based on long term things like lots of gas, tar sands oil of a Saudi Arabian scale, and the province's status as geographical gateway to the gas of Alaska and the Mackenzie Delta. The dollars will continue to pile up in their billions.
The last time this happened, the government of Peter Lougheed (and Mr. Lougheed did not comment in any way on this matter) cushioned the impact by siphoning off billions of dollars into the Alberta Heritage ("rainy day") Fund, cleverly hiding giant surpluses. Mr. Klein's government will no doubt do the same, but the cash will be too huge and long-lasting to hide this time.
The rest of Canada will look on this with envy. There will be calls for the wealth to be shared, notwithstanding the constitutional fact that resources are provincial. Clever taxation, such as a "carbon tax" (Kyoto obligations, don't you know?) could easily get around this. There are a lot of voters in Ontario and Quebec who will be of the view that God put that stuff in the ground, not Albertans, and God must surely have wanted all Canadians to benefit from it.
One knowledgeable Albertan I spoke to later said that there would be a "revolution" if that happened, and besides, the federal government has said it would never do such a thing. Well on those two points, like all Canadians, Albertans are not really revolutionaries, and they already vote against the Liberals. And would you (or any reasonable person) trust a government's word? So Alberta will be looking for allies in the West.
Data presented to the conference and since released publicly give an intriguing pattern of response to the following questions (asked of 3,200 people across the West): "Which of the following would you primarily identify with?" The "following" were, local (26%), province (27%), the West (12%), Canada (28%), North America (2%) and the world (4%). The "Canada" number is pretty low. That does not indicate any potential for separatism in my view; Westerners appreciate the usefulness of a larger union. But the numbers do indicate a great potential for the formation of a western provincial block in national affairs. The West has a population and economy considerably larger than that of Quebec, the most successful regional pressure group historically. Moreover, whatever the fate of the Alliance, the West has shown a Quebec-like tendency to vote as a block in recent elections.
So what does the West want from Ottawa? My take, based on the audience response, is that it includes mobility within Canada (meaning the federal government accepting its responsibility to ensure interprovincial free trade and end differential UI treatment cross the land). It wants mobility into Canada (constructive immigration was much supported). It wants an acute sensitivity by Ottawa on global trade issues of importance to the West. It wants Ottawa to get out of the way on most other things (health care, everywhere, for example, and in my province—BC— aboriginal issues). But the West also wants a large remaining role in income transfers that underwrite equality of opportunity for Canadians.
All of this is pretty good news from the big, strong new kid on the block.
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