Alberta Tories foil Conservative government
In the evening of December 18, I received an email from the Alberta Party announcing they’d received the go-ahead from Elections Alberta to change their name to Progressive Tory Party of Alberta. It was an inspired workaround of the Conservative Party’s attempts to keep progressive conservative voters chained to their party.
For Alberta’s Tory supporters, it’s time to get “U” out of the UCP.
The late Hon. Peter Lougheed, Alberta’s first PC Premier, is considered the most successful political visionary our province has ever had and I feel a sense of pride whenever I see leaders who want to further his goal for our province; Rachel Notley was the first in recent memory, and the Hon. Peter Guthrie is the second. I don’t count those who have used his name to further the opposite.
Premier Lougheed was elected before I was even born but he had a huge impact on my life; not that I knew it until many, many, years later. When the global oil glut of the 1980’s hit Alberta, I was still too young to understand what was happening outside of a very small circle of immediate family members. Premier Lougheed and his PC government created a program to get low income families into home ownership. The program was meant to spur housing development and keep Alberta’s tradespeople working but also to open up the buyer’s market to pay for it. My mom, who was a single parent of two, had to get her employer to drop her wage $1.50 per hour for one month, and take two weeks unpaid vacation, to bring her income under the cut-off. Stupid government-made arbitrary numbers.
However, because of that program, I grew up in a single family home in a family-friendly neighbourhood, and my mom was able to start building equity through home-ownership.
I can think of no better example of what “progressive conservative” means than tackling a “progressive” issue and using a “conservative” policy, as in “not funded by government”, to make it happen.
It’s not just politicians who are looking to embrace the Hon. Mr. Lougheed’s vision; I’m seeing more and more people seeking to reignite the optimism, faith, and consideration Premier Lougheed had in, and for, every Albertan. He took his role as leader seriously— not as some prize to legislate others away from gaining access.
Dr. Paul Parks wrote a fantastic op-ed for Postmedia last week after Danielle Smith “mused” about passing public services— legitimately the responsibility of provincial governments— back to private, not-for-profit, and charities to handle.
Hearing our premier openly reject progressive policy, while insisting that the government should get out of the “business” of education and health care, should be a clear wake-up call for all Albertans. Our conservative politicians routinely invoke Peter Lougheed’s legacy in an attempt to cloak themselves in the illusion of following in his footsteps.
But when the current government states its vision is to abdicate responsibility for our social safety net to for-profit, non-profit, and charity organizations, it is the exact opposite of everything Lougheed stood for.
Lougheed was a “Progressive Conservative.” In his time, that wasn’t a contradiction in terms, but was a clear and open promise. It meant being conservative with our money so we could be progressive with our society.
Alberta singer/songwriter Corb Lund also invoked Peter Lougheed that week, specifically with regard to the 1976 coal policy that Jason Kenney repealed, then reinstated, and Danielle Smith has tried to ignore, while saying she isn’t, but actually is; as she does. He is heading a citizen-led petition to stop coal mining in the Rockies. So many of us get our water from those mountains and we need to be able to rely on its purity for ourselves, our children, our animals, and our land.
Once again, Albertans are having to take a stand against our Conservative government and tell them to take “no” for an answer.
Nuked! 1,000 people want what Conservatives keep promising
Communism is a great idea; wrong species. The thing about capitalism is that it leans into what we are; we’re quite self-interested.
Everyone is a communist… with their family. If you’ve got kids, yeah, to each according to their needs— you take care of them. You might be a socialist, with your community; you try and help everyone out. When we get to the level of nation state, we’re like ‘nah, fuck those people.’
Jimmy Carr, 2025
i included the above not just because it represents Albertans’ sentiments so succinctly but as a reminder that it represents many people’s sentiments generally and, yet again, we’re just not that special.
The results from Danielle Smith’s separatist snugglefest were published on December 19th. Not one person would be surprised to learn that the people who have been told for decades that Alberta is not getting a fair deal from Ottawa want all of the things Conservatives have said will get them a fair deal. Not that self-appointed separatist spokespeople want a fair deal; they want out and nothing less than that will make them happy.
Implementing the infamous Firewall Letter mostly means expanding the provincial government to include a provincial police force (which the Premier already started) and more control over who should be offered the same rights and privileges newcomers to Canada receive anywhere else in the country (which the Premier already started). The Alberta Next Panel wasn’t so much a “consultation” with Albertans as it was a meetup for people to emulate their grievance-propelled elected officials by repeating everything they’ve said into a microphone.
They also really want to believe that the Canada Pension Plan would actually hand over $350 billion (53 per cent of the fund, no less) to Alberta to create a provincial pension plan.
I’m going to digress now; grab your popcorn.
Quebec never joined the Canada Pension Plan in the first place, so stop conflating our position with theirs; we are not the same.
First and foremost, the Alberta government should not be able to unilaterally, or even by a majority vote, take our pensions out of the CPP because our pensions belong to us as individual Canadians, and no one else.
Really, the governing UCP could do the same thing with an Alberta Pension Plan that they did with policing. More than 70 per cent of Albertans didn’t want a provincial police force so Danielle Smith created one anyway and claimed individual municipalities can sign on if they have any support for increasing municipal taxes to pay for it. She can create an Alberta Pension Plan tomorrow and allow all 22 per cent of Albertans who support it to give notarized multi-page permission to the CPIB that they would like their accrued pension funds transferred to AIMCo, the company now steered by Stephen Harper, who was appointed after the UCP reached into the “arm’s length investment management corporation” and removed the previous Chair and half the Board of Directors.
Every single Albertan who currently has their funds going to the CPP should retain the choice, and every person who works for a company whose “home” address is in the province with the bottom-of-the-barrel corporate tax rate should retain the option as well because their pension funds belong to them, not the Alberta government, nor the people who still live in the province, and certainly not to an employer who may have chosen to move their headquarters to the province for tax purposes while their employees remain outside of its jurisdiction and ineligible to participate in a referendum vote.
Revenue Canada knows precisely how much money has been paid into the CPP by and on behalf of each person in Alberta. It should be relatively simple to transfer those funds, and associated interest, to an Alberta plan if the future pensioner requests it.
It’s a line item in a computerized system for payroll deductions as well; like an RRSP. Some employees opt-in to an employer-run RRSP plan and some do not. If Albertans choose to keep their pension with CPP, nothing changes. If they want to choose to push their pension dollars to an Alberta plan, that should be an available option.
It would be easy enough, to me, for the Canada Revenue Agency to determine an exact dollar amount of CPP owed to every Albertan who wants to put their money into an Alberta plan. It’s not a formula, or an estimate, it’s a tangible, verifiable number that the CRA has access to.
Under no circumstances should an individual’s pension funds be based on what those currently living in the province want when so many people who worked in Alberta retired elsewhere and those working for an Alberta headquartered company may not even live in the province and be offered an opportunity to vote on the matter.
There are sound, “common sense” reasons why this question doesn’t deserve to be put to a provincial referendum and would be a violation of the rights of many Canadians if it were.
As with the UCP’s citizen-led referenda (which they changed to be non-binding on the government with Bill 14), the result of a question asking if Albertans want an Alberta Pension Plan should be non-binding on Albertans.
I promise, if the UCP tries to touch a penny of my CPP, I will start a GoFundLawyers campaign for a class action against the governing “United Conservative” party of Alberta, the United Conservative Association which runs the political entity “United Conservative Party”, and the Government of Alberta, so help me (insert deity/deities of choice here).
Appeasement begets the expectation of further appeasement
Not everyone applauded Danielle Smith’s determination to put herself— and, willingly or kicking and screaming, a Canadian province— on the “right side” of Donald Trump; a con man, probable pedophile, serial sexual predator, and reality TV star she respected far more than a teacher-turned Prime Minister with the wrong last name.
I’m not going to suggest the Hon. Prime Minister deserved to be lauded, or revered for any particular skill set (he was certainly no Mark Carney), but the man had infinitely more character in his Blackface than Trump could ever scam out of his cult followers (which is saying something because the former PM had a few of those as well).
Pauses empathetically while everyone adjusts to the front and back-handed compliments.
Danielle Smith claimed that her trip to Mar-a-Lago, and the Republican balls and cocktail parties circuit, her attendance in Florida for a seat on stage with conservative provocateur Ben Shapiro at the U.S. education lobbyist group Prager “university” Foundation, as well as the investment in border patrol (questionable investment at that) were all about “diplomacy”. More flies with honey and all.
Premier Smith touted every potential benefit, including putting Keystone XL back on the table to pour more, ahem, fuel on the fire.
That is, until the Trump Administration specifically called Alberta out for not prioritizing energy out of Montana during electricity scarcity. Easy mark?
You’ll not get any both-sides argument out of me for that. The reason the Alberta government prioritizes natural gas generation over non-royalty-generating green energy production is self-explanatory. It also isn’t about “buying Canadian”. The Alberta government has to favour surge-pricing over accessible alternatives because it allows us to cosplay as a self-sustaining low-tax jurisdiction.
To say otherwise would be to admit that Alberta might not be better off without Canada. Danielle Smith can’t do that and expect not to be hung out to dry by the separatists she relied on to become premier in the first place.
That’s just detailing her own struggle, which affects us to be sure, but isn’t really our problem.
Canadians have stepped up against Trump’s tariffs and political rhetoric by turning his attempt to put “economic pressure” on Canada against him.
Over the past year, a lot of Canadians have made their position on Trump’s policies known with their wallets, their travel plans, and their trademark passive-aggressiveness. We don’t have to loudly claim that we’re pissed off; our actions speak louder than words.
I’m still looking at labels. I’m buying Canadian first, and literally anything from more than 100 countries second. Danielle Smith can put U.S. liquor back on the shelves but I don’t have to buy it. If Mark Carney has to allow more U.S. dairy into the CUSMA, our spending habits will dictate how much retailers are willing to put on their shelves.
We are not powerless in this fight and the pressure is being felt by those who should excersize their own. As we near the end of 2025, Canada remains strong and free.
Final thoughts
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I’ll donate to a legal fund on fighting the withdrawal from CPP. We also need to look at legal action in the UCP abdication of their responsibility to provide public health care and public education.
Her move re CPP is all about getting Alberta out of every federal program to feed her separatist agenda. We have to push back hard but it would be 100% better if no one ever voted UCP again because that is voting against one’s own best interests at every level.