The UCP Hits Propaganda Overdrive with Alberta Next

Social media exploded Wednesday with criticism that the six “surveys” on the so-called Alberta Next Panel’s slick website are an exercise in manufacturing consent, to use Noam Chomsky’s now familiar phrase.

Having read all the survey questions and watched the irritating propaganda videos that anyone wanting to answer their questions must sit through first, I would go further.

These “surveys” are push polls with zero validity as a measure of public opinion and with consent baked in.

If you participate, the only answers you can give will in most cases imply your agreement with Premier Danielle Smith’s plans for getting rid of the Canada Pension Plan, dumping the RCMP, forcing constitutional change on the rest of Canada, ending equalization and federal transfers, ending federal-provincial co-operation on tax collection and refusing to welcome immigrants to Canada that we don’t want, for whatever reason, to move here.

Even if respondents aren’t sucked in by the crude propaganda in the videos — all sweetly delivered in the dulcet tones of a presumably human narrator — they are given no opportunity to express their own views, or say anything negative.

The United Conservative Party brain trust presumably learned that lesson with its 2023 pension plan “engagement” survey, the results of which the Smith government suppressed for nearly two years because two-thirds of the respondents opposed being forced out of the Canada Pension Plan and a lot of them offered their opinions in scathing terms. Only 10 per cent were in favour of an Alberta pension plan.

The results were finally released a week ago thanks to freedom of information requests, but only after an appeal to the Alberta information and privacy commissioner by Postmedia journalists.

Smith and the UCP have never given up on the pension project, though — and they’ve been trying to build consent ever since through constituency meetings organized by their separatist allies and now this Alberta Next push poll. By the sound of several recent legitimate public opinion polls, they may have had some success.

The little Alberta Next pension survey asks only three questions — all framed to produce the government’s desired response.

The first says:

Alberta workers pay roughly $3 billion more per year in CPP premiums than Alberta seniors get back in benefits. Which of the following best captures what you think about this?

A) This is unfair to Alberta workers and seniors, and needs to change.

B) Although Albertans may be subsidizing the pensions of seniors outside of Alberta, I have no issue with doing so.

As Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan pointed out on social media, this question “fails to mention that the discrepancy is due to the fact that we have more workers than retirees. Every Canadian contributes at the same rate and gets the same benefits.”

The second says:

What potential benefit do you like most about Alberta opting to leave the CPP and create its own Pension Plan?

A) It is a way to reduce how much Alberta workers subsidize the rest of Canada.

B) It is a way to potentially improve retirement benefits for Alberta seniors.

C) It is a way to potentially reduce premiums for workers and businesses in Alberta.

D) It is a way to boost our financial sector and diversify our economy.

And what if you see no potential benefit to this scheme whatsoever, and reject the premise of each proffered answer?

Question 3 asks:

Which risk of opting out of CPP to start an Alberta Pension Plan are you most concerned about?

A) That the federal government will significantly shortchange us on Alberta's share of the CPP.

B) That it will be mismanaged by current or future governments.

C) That Alberta's economy and demographics will decline, and that will mean higher premiums for workers.

D) That if I move from Alberta either while working or in retirement, I may not get my full pension benefit if Alberta and Ottawa can’t come to a similar agreement like the one Quebec has.

Go ahead, pick one! We’ve already picked an answer!

Answers to all surveys are multiple choice, as shown in the examples above. In every case, the selections are designed to boost the government’s argument. There is no place to say what you really think.

To participate, you are required to give your name and postal code, though the system appears to be easy to game. But even if it isn’t, that doesn’t really matter as the purpose obviously is to build consent for a plan that is already fully developed.

I would be shocked if the referendum questions these surveys have been designed to justify are not already drafted.

Needless to say, such a questionnaire has zero credibility or validity.

As for the introductory videos, some are better than others, but all are propagandistic and intentionally misleading. In the blithely delivered effort to boost an Alberta pension plan, for example, the CPP is described as suffering from “bloated” management and accused of being increasingly focused on “emissions reductions and DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] concerns,” with investment decisions made by people who live in Ottawa and Toronto. (Actually, as I recall, the previous CEO of the Alberta Investment Management Corp. lived in Toronto as well, but whatever.)

“The CPP exit rules aren’t clear in the federal legislation, and Ottawa is notoriously anti-Alberta with its decisions,” the anonymous narrator complains — in case the DEI reference didn’t rile up the UCP base, presumably.

“So the size of the lump sum Alberta is offered could be lower than it should be.”

Whether this turns out to be an effective propaganda tool, of course, remains to be seen.