Having already solved the problem of trade and tariffs with the United States simply by being nice to the Trump Administration, Alberta’s United Conservative Government is about to “end the landlocking of Alberta’s oilsands by building new oil pipelines to our nation’s west coast in order to access the largest market on earth” and “become an AI superpower”!
Don’t take my word for this. It was all in the Throne Speech read to the Alberta Legislature yesterday by Lieutenant Governor Salma Lakhani, resplendent in her red embroidered Civil Uniform, which is either a relic of the Victorian era or an homage to it, you be the judge.
Outside, 30,000 or so striking Alberta schoolteachers, mostly clad in red as well, hooted their anger and derision at Premier Danielle Smith’s approach to labour negotiations, which basically add up to refusing to budge and then legislating them back to work.
With 51,000 teachers on strike since Oct. 6, many parents will be relieved to see them forced back to work. As time goes on, they may be less pleased with the fallout from the UCP’s expected blunt force approach to labour relations.
The Smith Government, clearly, doesn’t care about what teachers think any more than it cares about the technical accuracy of the grandiose claims and unlikely predictions in the Throne Speech.
Now, to be fair, throne speeches in all Westminster Parliamentary jurisdictions are to a significant degree exercises in fiction. They are historically always treated with more respect than they deserve by the local press corps because the opening of a Westminster legislature is more than pure politics, it is by tradition a solemn celebration of democracy and constitutional monarchy.
This particular speech, though, had the quality of science fiction at times – stretching the limits of the genre to orbital velocity. That is fitting, one supposes, in an age when the neoliberal leaders of the West are growing tired of democratic niceties and the government of Alberta takes its ideology and policy from that font of demagoguery and authoritarianism immediately to our south.
In that sense, MAGA autocrats indoors politely re-enacting King Charles I and 400 of his goons barging into Parliament in 1642 while 30,000 pissed-off teachers ring cowbells and bang drums outdoors without succumbing to the temptation to storm the place is not a bad snapshot of the Canadian zeitgeist at this moment in 2025.
So the roadmap for the government’s policy in the new session of the Legislature, which a Throne Speech is supposed to be, includes more fights with Ottawa, more demands for pipelines hither and yon never mind the actual market for the stuff that flows through them, and more bright sovereignty-association ideas ginned up at Ms. Smith’s curated Alberta Next town halls.
Alberta’s constant efforts to move into federal jurisdiction will continue, as will its constant complaints about Ottawa trying to do the same thing to Alberta. Projection?
Both tendencies along with the urge to write political science fiction are neatly encapsulated in the speech’s passage on immigration. “Using Alberta’s constitutionally protected provincial rights, the government of Alberta will return to a more stable number of primarily economic migrants, so that newcomers come here to work and contribute as they have historically done, while Canadian citizens living in Alberta are given first priority to the social programs, jobs and opportunities our economy creates.”
As for protection of the environment. Well, forget about it. “This government has driven back the anti-energy movement in our country and helped to turn the tide of national public opinion from anti-oil and gas sentiment into a national consensus that Alberta’s energy resources are a national treasure that can and must be developed aggressively,” the speech crows.
This can be done, it adds, “in the most environmentally responsible manner.” Believe that if you wish.
Moreover, the speech adds a little later, “By using our almost inexhaustible supplies of natural gas to fuel the massive amounts of power required for AI data centres. … Alberta is already an energy superpower. Alberta will now also become an AI superpower, making our province a world leader in arguably the world’s two most important commodities – energy and computing power.”
As for the trade woes afflicting the rest of Canada, don’t worry about ’em. “As a result of this government’s diplomatic victory with the United States, the vast majority of Alberta exports – from energy to agriculture and almost everything else – have remained tariff-free.”
As described in this space yesterday, on health care the government promises more privatization, more user fees and co-pays, more opportunities to jump the public health care queue, and more fragmentation of health care services.
In this fairy tale, the most efficient health care agency in Canada is caricatured as an unaccountable bureaucracy run “at the expense of front-line staff and healing patients.” The government’s controversial and questionable approach to addiction treatment is “the world-renowned Alberta Recovery Model.” The service silos set up for ease of privatization and as sinecures for friends of the government are “four targeted health agencies overseen directly by a dedicated and accountable government ministry.”
“Less is being spent on bureaucracy and more on the front lines,” Ms. Lakhani read. The evidence suggests that is a direct contradiction of the truth.
No need to go on. Read it yourself. You will get the idea.
Assuredly – despite the author of the Throne Speech claiming Alberta is “on the right side of history” – things are unlikely to unfold as promised.
Before that fabulous future arrives, barring an 11th hour agreement over the weekend, on Monday the government will ram legislation through to order the teachers back to work. It will take subtlety and a willingness to compromise for the government to manage that without making things worse in the long term. Neither is a quality generally associated with the UCP.
If the estimate yesterday in The Globe and Mail and elsewhere that the crowd was in the order of 30,000, that will be a new record for the largest public demonstration in Alberta history. This is officially a contest, then, a yardstick against which all other protests must be gauged.
