Tag: danielle-smith

Alberta’s enemies are oil olig­archs

During the socalled decade of federal “attacks on oil,” Alberta oil giants set records for production and profits, writes Jim Stanford. So why is the average Albertan not getting their cut?

This article was written by Jim Stanford and was published in the Toronto Star on May 24, 2025.

JIM STANFORD IS ECONOMIST AND DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRE FOR FUTURE WORK, A LABOUR ECONOMICS RESEARCH INSTITUTE WITH OPERATIONS IN CANADA AND AUSTRALIA.

“ Oil extrac­tion and ser­vice firms shed more than 30,000 jobs in (Alberta) over the last 10 years, even as pro­duc­tion boomed. — Jim Stan­ford

Trig­ger warn­ing: The author was born, bred and edu­cated in Alberta. Reader dis­cre­tion is advised.

Because the Lib­eral party won the most seats in a national elec­tion (the fourth time in a row), but most Alberta rid­ings went Con­ser­vat­ive (for the ump­teenth time in a row), Canada is now said to be facing a national unity crisis.

Premier Dani­elle Smith facil­it­ates sep­ar­at­ism (while claim­ing she doesn’t sup­port it).

Alberta busi­ness lead­ers play the national unity card in demand­ing fast approval of more pipelines: unless the oil industry (assumed to proxy Alberta’s gen­eral interests) gets what it wants, national unity is in jeop­ardy.

Fed­eral Con­ser­vat­ives, while dis­avow­ing expli­cit sep­ar­at­ism, rein­force the claim Alberta has been mis­treated by the coun­try. Interim leader Andrew Scheer, on X, com­plains Ott­awa has “attacked Canada’s oil and gas industry for 10 years.”

An aspir­ing Alberta MP ­in­ wait­ing, Pierre Poil­ievre, echoes that view. While say­ing he per­son­ally opposes sep­ar­a­tion, Poil­ievre com­plains “Alber­tans have a lot of legit­im­ate griev­ances,” the res­ult he says of a dec­ade of attacks on oil. This rhet­oric will excite the voters of Battle River—Crow­foot. Whether it helps Mr. Poil­ievre con­test a future fed­eral elec­tion, however, is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion.

Many Alber­tans are indeed frus­trated and angry — and with reason.

There is no province where real incomes and liv­ing stand­ards have deteri­or­ated more in the past dec­ade than Alberta. Accord­ing to Stat­ist­ics Canada, Alberta has exper­i­enced the second­ biggest increase in incid­ence of low income of any province since 2015.

Work­ers have endured a 10 per cent decline in real wages (adjus­ted for infla­tion) over the last dec­ade, worse than any other province. Min­imum wages haven’t budged in seven years.

Des­pite fall­ing real wages, liv­ing costs remain among the highest in Canada, and Alberta suffered the highest infla­tion of any province last year. Elec­tri­city prices, auto insur­ance and tuition fees — all gov­erned by pro­vin­cial rules — have soared faster than any­where else in Canada.

But can any of these prob­lems be blamed on the rest of Canada, or the fed­eral gov­ern­ment? In par­tic­u­lar, does Alberta’s hard­ship stem from sup­pres­sion of Alberta’s oil industry, as Mr. Poil­ievre claims?

This is an obvi­ous attempt at diver­sion that Alber­tans should dis­miss.

Dur­ing this dec­ade of relent­less fed­eral “attacks,” Alberta’s oil pro­duc­tion grew by 52 per cent. Pro­duc­tion records are being broken again in 2025, track­ing more than 4.4 mil­lion bar­rels a day so far. The expan­ded TMX pipeline — bought and com­pleted at fed­eral expense — has boos­ted both out­put and prices, mod­estly redu­cing the long­stand­ing dis­count on Cana­dian oil sales in the U.S Mid­w­est.

Oil industry profits have also never been higher, thanks to record volumes, cost­ cut­ting and the 2022 oil price spike.

Pet­ro­leum pro­du­cers and refiners pock­eted after­tax profit of $192 bil­lion over the last four years alone — four times more than in the entire 2010s. Cor­por­ate profits gobble up a huge slice of Alberta’s GDP: about 40 per cent of total out­put over the last five years, twice as much as the rest of Canada.

In short, there’s never been more oil wealth gen­er­ated in Alberta, des­pite (or per­haps because of) the Lib­er­als holed up in Ott­awa.

Yet aver­age Alber­tans aren’t get­ting their share of it. The boom in oil pro­duc­tion and profits cer­tainly isn’t trans­lat­ing into jobs.

Oil extrac­tion and ser­vice firms shed more than 30,000 jobs in the province over the last 10 years, even as pro­duc­tion boomed.

In 2014, the industry hired 128 work­ers for every mil­lion bar­rels of oil pro­duced. Last year, thanks to self­driv­ing trucks, auto­mated facil­it­ies and downs­iz­ing, that num­ber halved to just 61.

So it’s no sur­prise res­id­ents of my home province are cranky.

Their eco­nomy pro­duces more GDP per worker than any other. The eco­nomic pie they bake is big­ger than ever. But the aver­age Alber­tan’s stand­ard of liv­ing is lower than a dec­ade ago.

It wasn’t Ott­awa that laid them off, cut their pay, froze the min­imum wage, drove up elec­tri­city and insur­ance costs, and put their health care at risk. It was the enemy within.

Alberta’s olig­archs aren’t speak­ing for the province, they are speak­ing for them­selves.

And the sooner the rest of the pop­u­la­tion can get past the phoney Alberta versus Canada nar­rat­ive, the sooner they’ll start toward a genu­ine solu­tion to their woes: namely, win­ning a fairer share of the abund­ant wealth they already pro­duce.

Many Alber­tans are indeed frus­trated and angry — and with reason. There is no province where real incomes and liv­ing stand­ards have deteri­or­ated more in the past dec­ade

Smith tries to get Trump to back off

This article was written by Gillian Steward and was published in the Toronto Star on January 14, 2025.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith posted photos to X after meeting with U.S. presidentelect Donald Trump at his MaraLago club in Florida.

Ever hopeful, Danielle Smith met Donald Trump at MaraLago over the weekend to try and persuade him not to impose tariffs on the huge amount of oil the U.S imports from Canada.

Accompanying her were Canadian businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary and Jordan Peterson, of all people. O’Leary has already said he is interested in an “economic union” and “erasure” of the border between Canada and the U.S. Peterson, the controversial psychologist and media personality, recently moved from Canada to the U.S.

Smith reported on X that she had a “friendly and constructive” conversation with Trump, during which she reminded him of all the jobs Canadian oil creates in the U.S.

Her visit came within days of announcing that she is embarking on a plan to more than double Alberta’s oil production over the next few years. That’s a lot of oil, mostly from the oilsands. According to Smith, Alberta already supplies 4.3 million barrels a day or 56 per cent of the U.S.’s oil.

Smith was obviously trying to catch Trump’s attention. He has said he wants the U.S. to have world energy dominance and is prepared to “drill, baby, drill” to get there. Does that means opening lands and waters previously offlimits? Who knows with Trump. But Alberta’s oil and gas will boost his chances of success, Smith said, allying herself with the Trump administration: “Alberta will not sit back. We intend to demonstrate our support for the United States.”

But the question still remains; can she avoid the 25 per cent tariffs that Trump has threatened Canada with even before he walks into the Oval Office?

Smith said she plans to attend Trump’s inauguration and lobby senators, lawmakers and other officials while she is in Washington. No doubt Albertans will be receiving minute by minute updates of all her meetings.

But she is up against a determined presidentelect, who just last week told Republican governors at a dinner at MaraLago that tariffs were going to be applied to Canada. The U.S. doesn’t need Canadian “fuel, energy, or oil and gas … we don’t need anything they have,” he said.

Neither does the U.S. need Canada’s car manufacturing or lumber: “We have big forests,” he said. And he reiterated his false argument that Canada’s trade imbalance means the U.S is subsidizing Canada by $200 billion to $250 billion.

To achieve her plan to double oil production Smith is partnering with Enbridge Inc., which moves 30 per cent of the crude oil and 20 per cent of the natural gas around North America. Enbridge would seek out more pipeline expansion opportunities so more oil and gas could be shipped south. Once the pipeline expansions are identified Alberta would use oil it is entitled to through royalties as an investment to get the project moving. Albertans own those oil royalties so it is an investment of our money.

Smith is forging ahead anyway. She sees an opportunity to sell more oil and gas to the U.S; consequences be damned.

She is obviously ignoring any impact on the climate as Los Angeles burns and Jasper is still fresh in our memories. Even if we could extinguish fossil fuels today there will be more wild fires in our future: the effect of carbon emissions on the climate is already baked in.

But to add to that load by doubling oil and gas exports to the U.S. means deadly fires for decades to come. More Los Angeleses, more Lahainas, more Lyttons. And many of them will happen in Alberta. We only need look at Slave Lake, Fort McMurray and Jasper, not to mention vast fires in our forests, to know what awaits us in the future.

But sure, double our oil production if that suits Trump. And maybe Alberta should contemplate becoming the 51st state. That way there would be no problem with the U.S. getting all the oil it wants. Come to think of it, they can have all the oil they want right now. The only thing standing in their way is Trump himself.

Smith’s base pushes troubling policies

This opinion was written by Gillian Steward and was published in the Toronto Star on October 22, 2024.

The looniest policy resolution at the annual AGM of the United Conservative Party aims to remove the designation of CO2 as a pollutant and abandon net-zero targets. The rationale for this is the false idea that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are at the lowest level in 1,000 years. Wrong. They are at their highest level ever

In less than two weeks Danielle Smith will subject herself to a leadership review at the annual AGM of the United Conservative Party.

She will likely get enough votes to continue on as premier so no danger there.

But just like last year’s AGM there are a lot of policy resolutions to be debated and voted on that match Smith’s agenda. The government is not bound by the outcome of the policy resolutions but they give you a good idea where her support is coming from and where the government might be headed.

About 5,500 delegates are expected to attend the Nov. 1-2 convention in Red Deer — the largest gathering of its kind in Canada. How many are from the extreme right-wing is unknown. My guess is it would be a large chunk of them, likely the majority.

The looniest policy resolution was put forward by two MLAs and it’s definitely anti-science. Actually, it’s anti-truth. It wants to remove the designation of CO2 as a pollutant and abandon net-zero targets. The rationale for this is the false idea that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are at the lowest level in 1,000 years. Wrong. They are at their highest level ever at 422 parts per million.

When two of your MLAs put forward such a resolution there’s a good chance many in your mainly rural caucus believe it too.

So what else are they asking for? Four out of 35 policy resolutions demand that the federal government stay out of Alberta’s business. As one resolution states: Alberta conservatives shouldn’t stand by as the federal government promotes projects such as “blanket rezoning, anti-racism, environmental clean energy, ban on single use plastics and grocery bags, safe drug supply, federal green power mandates and net-zero housing rules — that are offside with Alberta priorities.”

That just about covers everything the federal government does. Those resolutions certainly will get passed and give Smith even more ammunition to establish Alberta as a semi-independent province.

And then there are seven resolutions that have to do with parental rights and gender identity. Parental rights got a long, enthusiastic standing ovation when it was mentioned by the premier at last year’s AGM.

This year, the members actually want a parental rights bill. It’s a “natural/god given right” states one resolution. Another states the “mature minor” doctrine is being used as a “loophole to circumvent parental consent and proceed with treatments that can carry lifelong repercussions.”

Another resolution that could give the premier fuel for thought is one that deals with gender affirming surgery. “Ensure that all medications, treatments and surgeries attributable to health services for sex alteration practices are classified as elective cosmetic procedures costed solely to the requesting patient.”

The Smith government has already followed through on resolutions passed at last year’s convention. This fall it will introduce legislation that requires teachers to notify parents if their child wants to use a different pronoun or name.

It is also going to adopt an opt-in policy; each time a teacher wants to discuss sexuality, same-sex relationships, or gender identity she will have to notify all parents, who must give permission for their child to attend the class. Alberta already had an opt-out policy but now it will be very difficult for students to participate in sex education classes.

The government would also forbid hormone treatment to anyone under 16; top or bottom surgery to anyone under 18. Transgender boys would be forbidden from competing on girls’ school teams.

There are other resolutions that call for the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion rules for the public service; no union donations to political parties (although corporate donations are OK); and the return of the flat tax. These are all ideas that could appeal to the premier.

But let’s go back to that looney resolution about not calling CO2 a pollutant and banning all net-zero targets. Given her resistance to anything that even hints of a slowdown in oil production Smith just might go for that one too.