Danielle Smith Spends Albertans’ Money to Elect Poilievre

Surely everybody understands that the point of the United Conservative Party government’s $7-million “Scrap the Cap” scare campaign announced Tuesday is to use Alberta taxpayers’ money to campaign against the Trudeau Liberals in the leadup to the yet-to-be-called next federal election?

Why do you think the gloomy grey videos of an unhappy family wheeling backwards and putting faintly East German looking food cans they can no longer afford back on the shelves of a supermarket will be played in British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, all provinces where someone figured out Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservatives could use some traction?

The ads demanding that the federal Liberals place no cap on oil-and-gas sector emissions will also run in Alberta, of course, to keep the home fires burning, as it were, and no doubt the campaign is being announced now instead of next month to bolster Premier Danielle Smith’s chances in her leadership review in Red Deer at the start of November.

A reporter asked at Smith’s news conference Tuesday, why now? She responded with a far-fetched claim the timing was intended to ensure the naughty feds don’t announce something awful at the COP29 United Nations climate conference from Nov. 11 to 22 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Brace yourselves, Alberta taxpayers, for the cost of the doubtless huge Alberta delegation that will make its way to the windy city of the Caucasus.)

“We have to be the most worried that the federal government is going to be preening on the international stage, and trying to win favour with a certain environmental set, and they’re going to try to brag about what they can do back in Canada,” she said, unconvincingly. “That’s the reason why we would do it now. I think there’s a real danger that we’re going to see some ridiculous policies announced in Baku in the coming weeks.”

According to the government’s news release, the cap would result in 115,000 lost jobs and cost the economy billions. It trotted out as evidence some studies by the usual right-wing think tanks and consulting firms, one of them famously commissioned by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Last spring, journalist Max Fawcett, writing in the National Observer, quoted a federal official describing that fanciful S&P Global analysis report commissioned by CAPP as “so deeply flawed, it amounts to disinformation.”

The Calgary-based Pembina Institute called the same report as “another example of economic modelling that assumes the industry takes very little meaningful action in its current operations to reduce emissions and therefore has no choice but to limit production, which is misleading for Canadians.”

But it’s probably too much to ask Smith and the rest of the UCP to scrap the crap when they demand that Ottawa scrap the cap.

Misuse of taxes and sophomoric rhyming slogans are the nature of modern conservatism.

Smith was accompanied to the news conference by Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz (“this production cap means billions in revenues down the drain”) and Energy Minister Brian Jean (“a cap on oil and gas production will kill jobs and investment”). Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf was on set too, looking as grim as the other three, but only as a walk-on, with no scripted lines.

Neudorf, of course, is the minister responsible for last year’s seven-month ban on new renewable energy projects and the UCP’s continuing efforts to smother renewable projects in Alberta, which drew a sharp response from the federal government Tuesday.

“It is pretty clear that Premier Smith is using this to distract from her own anti-energy policies that have put 24,000 Albertan energy jobs, $33 billion in investment, $54 million in local tax revenues, and enough energy to power 98 per cent of Albertans’ homes at risk,” federal Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a joint statement.

“Repeating a lie does not make it true,” the statement said. “Our government’s commitment is to drive down pollution from the oil and gas sector, not to cut production. Canada’s oil and gas industry recognizes this imperative: they know that reducing their pollution is necessary for their own long-term competitiveness.”

“Canadians know that when oil and gas companies are making record profits, they should be doing their fair share and investing back in clean technologies that create good-paying, sustainable jobs for Albertans, all while protecting our environment,” the statement continued.

The federal ministers concluded: “Instead of wasting $7 million in taxpayer dollars to spread thoroughly debunked disinformation to appease her base ahead of her leadership review, Premier Smith should focus on collaborating with us to protect Albertan energy workers — now and for decades to come.”

While Smith wasn’t very convincing about the timing of her announcement, she is probably right when she described the Trudeau government as being on its last legs.

“This is when I would anticipate that if they don’t see a pathway to re-election by being reasonable and working collaboratively, that they’re going to pass all kinds of policy, knowing that it would be complicated and take some time to undo it,” she claimed, an interesting if unintended comment on the UCP’s own modus operandi.

Indeed, that is exactly what the Smith government is doing with its destructive and costly program of breaking up Alberta Health Services and replacing it with four expensive separate bureaucracies, each with its own highly paid leadership.

Thus, also Tuesday, presumably by coincidence, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange announced the appointment of Kim Simmonds, assistant deputy minister of strategic planning and performance at Alberta Health, as chief executive officer of “Primary Care Alberta,” the latest breakaway health care agency.

It will be extremely difficult for a more responsible and competent future government, even if it employs all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, to put Alberta Health Services back together again and get rid of the unneeded bureaucrats and UCP loyalists hired to engineer chaos in health care.