Implacable

The federal Cabinet shuffle wasn’t about about Alberta. Rather, it was an attempt by a government in trouble to shake off its midterm doldrums and start getting ready for a difficult election in a couple of years.

But there was an Alberta sub-plot. (There’s always an Alberta sub-plot!)

We know that the Trudeau government will be moving forward with significant measures to mandate a net zero electricity grid by 2035 and a substantial reduction in GHG emissions from the oil sands. And we know Alberta (and Saskatchewan) really don’t like it.

When the PM shuffled his Cabinet, he had to choose between two approaches to Alberta. Placate, or ignore.

The “placate” route would have removed environment Minister Steven Guilbeault from his post and replaced him with, well, just about anyone else. And it would have doubled Alberta’s presence in Cabinet by adding Calgary’s lone Liberal MP George Chahal. Neither of those things happened. To be fair, Edmonton MP Randy Boissonnault got a promotion from Tourism to Employment, so Alberta is represented in Cabinet by a more powerful minister.

The “ignore” route would have left Guilbeault in Environment, Chahal on the backbench and Boissonnault in Tourism.

The choice seems closer to ‘ignore’ than ‘placate’ then.

Folks on the Website Formerly Known as Twitter were quick to point out that from Trudeau’s perspective, Alberta is, well, implacable. Trudeau bought us a pipeline, and we sent him the Freedom Convoy.

It’s hard to argue with this assessment. Trudeau will be in the political fight of his life in 2025, and I suspect he’s gambling that having a huge fight with Alberta and Saskatchewan over climate policy will help him hold seats in Quebec and big cities elsewhere in the country. So, just as Premier Smith played up conflict with Ottawa to help her electoral fortunes, Prime Minister Trudeau will take on Alberta as part of an effort to hold onto power.

I recently went down a rabbit hole reading about the energy politics of the 1970s, and the parallels to today are striking. In Oil, the State and Federalism, John Eric Fossum argued that “the Canadian energy scene became characterized by competitive state and province-building” at the expense of achieving various policy goals.

Fifty years later, and here we are again. Instead of the OPEC oil shocks prompting action, it’s the climate emergency. And instead of talking about climate policy, we’re talking about regional political conflicts. As political scientist Hugh Thorburn wrote at the time, “Each side stands on its 'principles' and therefore does not 'sell out.' This leads to complex negotiations, and often the striking of postures. Instead of elite accommodation, we have much more of a zero sum process. Often considerations of pride and the need to defend the integrity of one's jurisdiction prevent participants from reaching compromise solutions.”

Yes, Alberta is implacable. Yes, it’s rational for Trudeau to use his scarce political resources to shore up support elsewhere. But every action that turns this conflict into a federal-provincial dustup, and lets us talk about it in terms of federal-provincial conflict detracts from the conversation about what the hell we should be doing in the face of this.