Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party (UCP) are driving Alberta over a cliff, their attention locked on the rear-view mirror as they focus on an ideological commitment to big business and an especially nasty addiction to fossil fuels. They have consistently underestimated COVID-19 and acted too little, too late. They have devastated the province’s finances, cut services, and destroyed thousands of jobs.
Their dangerous inaction on COVID-19 has unnecessarily cost lives and left healthcare workers exhausted as they attempt to deal with hundreds of hospitalizations at any given time. Suffering, uncertainty, and fear has spread across the province along with the virus. While choosing to align themselves with the interests of private capital over the well-being of the vulnerable, and hiding behind pretence of freedom and liberty, the UCP urged Albertans to take “personal responsibility” – responsibility which UCP politicians, big business and the government failed to show. Neither the company, Cargill, or the government shut down the High River meat plant, Canada’s worst super-spreader – infecting 1,500 people and killing two during the initial outbreak last May.
Albertans will not soon forgive the hypocrisy of cabinet ministers who decided to take personal trips out of the country for the holidays, who ignored public health guidelines everyone else was expected to follow. With presently declining case numbers, there is danger that too many restrictions will be lifted too quickly, again, which will only set up the province for a tremendous third wave in the future. As of January 18, hair salons, barbershops, and other personal aesthetic and wellness services were allowed to reopen by appointment only, while up to 10 people are allowed to join outdoor gatherings. There will undoubtedly be pressure to further ease restrictions, but every effort should have been made months ago to help small businesses survive a circuit-breaker lockdown which would have drastically reduced the spread and prevented the huge second wave.
One of the first actions of Premier Kenney was to give a tax cut of $4.7 billion to big business. There is no evidence these tax cuts helped with unemployment – but they did boost profits, CEOs’ pay and shareholders’ dividends. They have also left a gaping hole in the province’s finances. This budgetary black hole has devoured jobs and services, including the jobs of 11,000 healthcare workers – during a pandemic!
On January 26, Calgary-based Cenovus Energy announced their plan to cut more than 2,000 jobs over the next two months – a direct result of the now complete acquisition of Husky Energy, which has been laying off employees all through last year. Didn’t UCP politicians campaign on bringing energy jobs back to Alberta?
Not happy with just one give-away to the rich, Kenney spent $1.5 billion buying into the Keystone XL pipeline and guaranteed another $6 billion in support. The pipeline was always a highly risky prospect, given that the new US President, Biden, has long said he intended to cancel it – and did on his first day in office. All of this money could have been used to help small businesses and the working class get through a circuit-breaker lockdown, but this government isn’t even willing to tap into available federal wage subsidies for frontline workers – $350 million.
Albertans need to chart another path, to get rid of Kenney, Canada’s least popular Premier, and build a society based on reliable, well-paid union jobs in a diverse array of industries. In fact, if we ever wish to solve revolving unemployment in our province, we need to demand a program of diversification and public ownership.
Diversification
Just a little over a decade ago, Albertans were enjoying the benefits of a booming economy; the highest unemployment rate between 2000 and 2008 was 6.1 percent, and at one point in 2006 we enjoyed an impressively low rate of 3.0 percent. At the same time, the price of oil was experiencing a decade-long climb, which reached its peak in June 2008 at $166.46 per barrel. In the context of an economy in which our bread and butter has been the oil industry, to the general neglect of other sectors, the pattern is undeniable; whenever oil prices climbed, the spectre of unemployment was kept at bay.
There were some half-hearted attempts from the NDP at diversification in the following years, with minimal effect. In fact, pathetic attempts have gone on for decades. While Premiers such as Peter Lougheed, Don Getty, and Rachel Notley took the approach of subsidies and investment in different sectors, others such as Ralph Klein and Jason Kenney were more interested in “cutting red tape” and reducing the corporate tax rate to try and attract investment back into oil. It’s unfortunate, but not a surprise, that the present-day workforce has not found gainful employment as a result; if the price of oil is only $40-$50/barrel (or $19.12/barrel), no amount of tax reduction is going to attract enough new employers or create enough new positions in the province’s oil sector to tackle our revolving unemployment problem – that strategy has only reduced provincial revenue, ballooned the deficit, and let the rich get richer.
During the NDP’s brief tenure, there were initially extensive plans to diversify the economy based around renewable energy. Public support of this agenda is part of the reason for their successful election campaign in 2015, when they won 54 of 86 seats – 86 percent of Albertans believed the economy was too dependent on oil and gas. However, due to pressure from the oil industry and a significant portion of the population whose livelihoods were directly dependent on oil-related jobs, very little was accomplished. There are those who have even blamed Rachel Notley and the NDP for the convulsions of the oil industry, believing that the former government’s policies obliterated their jobs. A look at the broader picture demonstrates this is not an accurate viewpoint, and that the primary factor in the recession of the time was the global collapse of oil prices. In fact, the NDP government wound up throwing a fair bit of support behind the oil industry, rallying around further pipeline construction, such as in the case of the Transmountain Pipeline. As the broader economy began to emerge from the recession in 2019, the oil industry limped behind the rest of the pack in terms of job creation – yet companies like Canadian Natural Resource Ltd. paid out $500 million to shareholders between April and June of last year, while 35,000 oil jobs have evaporated since 2014. Much was promised by the NDP with regard to diversification, but very little materialized. If the NDP had legislated a more radical diversification program on behalf of the working class, they might have fared better in the 2019 election.
The tremendous power of the oil lobby in federal and provincial politics must be mentioned. In fact, the government lobbies EU and US officials on behalf of the oil industry, attempting to boost the reputation of Canadian energy and further the economic interests of oil companies. Eight years ago, seventy-five federal environmental officers abandoned their jobs to take on lucrative positions with the newly formed Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). Despite the name, the Alberta Energy Regulator is actually funded and controlled by the private interests of the energy industry and was enabled by the government’s adoption of a hands-off approach to the Water Act, the Public Lands Act, and the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act. All regulatory jurisdiction that previously belonged to the Energy Resources Conservation Board was handed over to AER on June 17, 2013. The chair of the organization is Gerry Protti, the former president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers – a successful oil lobby group. The NDP could have dismantled the AER once they had taken office, but such radical action was never taken.
Last year, while the UCP government worked to stack the deck further in favour of big capital, a dual crisis emerged. The spread of COVID-19 pushed the already slowing world economy into deep recession. Oil prices took a nosedive, plummeting from $52.02 a barrel in January to $19.12 in April. The combination of the new and necessary COVID-19 restrictions with the massive dive in the price of oil sent the Alberta unemployment rate skyrocketing from 7.2 percent in February, to 15.5 percent in May and June – more than doubling it. The most recent unemployment rate has settled down to 11 percent in December, which is still far too high. This moderate improvement follows a rebound in the price of oil back to where it had been before the nosedive. Somehow, after all the turmoil of the last decade and the past year, dependence on oil is still the order of the day with no change in sight. (The UCP did briefly pay lip service to diversification, but we have heard nothing further since last autumn.)
Is Diversification Possible?
With the ongoing failure to diversify Alberta’s economy, one might start to wonder if it’s even a possibility. During the past autumn, the NDP opposition began the process of consulting communities by planning a series of online and in-person discussions; a special request for experts to weigh in was also made. Additionally, a call for emails from everyday Albertans was put out, which welcomed serious proposals that could jumpstart and diversify the economy. Pre-emptively, the NDP released a series of their own diversification proposals for industries that include hydrogen, geothermal, childcare, renewables, technology, creative industries, agriculture, healthcare research, tourism, green energy storage, transportation, manufacturing, affordable housing, and non-combustion uses of bitumen. Strategies such as increasing Indigenous communities’ economic participation, developing post-secondary education, supporting and expanding small businesses, expanding internet coverage across the province, and increasing the participation of women in the economy have also been put forward – although they are thus far a little light on the details. The most fleshed out proposals are on hydrogen, geothermal, and affordable childcare.
Hydrogen fuel and related technologies – which have only just set foot in the market – are a brand-new area of opportunity which the province could take part in. Geothermal energy provides an opportunity to utilize 150,000 abandoned oil wells across the province to help meet our energy needs, immediately providing long-term jobs while providing clean and renewable energy – many companies are already working on related projects. Finally, an affordable childcare program would allow more women to return to work, training, or education, and also create more jobs in and of itself.
Ultimately, the question of diversification will be left up to the steadfastness with which such an agenda is pursued. As the provincial government has shown through the years, it is prone to floundering and general ineffectiveness on this issue. However, if Albertans demand that the government pursue a diversification agenda, the benefit would be a revitalized economy that is no longer condemned to ride the chaotic tides of oil prices. Without bottom-up pressure from the working class, there is danger of diversification being pushed further down the road – under a future NDP government bending once again to pressure from the oil industry – or abandoned altogether under continuation of oil-thirsty UCP governance.
In fact, the UCP has even seized control of the Alberta Teachers’ Retirement Fund under the provisions of omnibus Bill 22, which was implemented in November 2019. The fund is now held under the government-controlled Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo). An order to change the terms of the fund was signed by Finance Minister Travis Toews on December 23 and went into effect on January 1, 2021. The order gives AIMCo unilateral control of the retirement fund, leaving teachers without a say in their pension’s investments. Given the UCP government’s oil-centric economic policies, and given AIMCo’s strategies, which have led to billions of dollars of losses in 2020, we can only assume that the retirement fund will be bled into the ongoing convulsions of the oil industry. Instead of planning to diversify the economy, the Government of Alberta is striding purposefully in the opposite direction, perfidiously securing ever more wads of cash to throw at the oil industry. The UCP government simply cannot seem to stop shredding money for miserable prospects, borrowing $29.96 billion in under two years.
A Step Further
While there are hopeful avenues to pursue diversification and new innovations, failure threatens to drag the province backward kicking and screaming. Kenney’s government gave an Australian coal mining company access to the land near Highway 40 – around Longview south – to the Crowsnest Pass area. Coal is yet another fossil fuel industry that is subject to wild booms and busts, and job insecurity, enduring a slump in prices as recently as June and August of last year. The environmental cost of coal mining should have been yet another nail in the coffin for this plan, but the UCP majority is speeding towards this new agreement. The protections provided by the old coal policy have been thrown out – only approval from the federal government remains the final hurdle. The landscape and ecosystems of the region will be permanently altered – including the removal of mountain tops. The mining will pollute the Livingstone, Oldman, and Crowsnest rivers, which provide water for the nearby municipalities of Fort Macleod and Lethbridge and many towns and much of the farmland of the prairies, further downstream.
On January 18, the Government of Alberta reversed or paused recently issued coal leases to curtail the growing outcry from Albertans and others across the country, bending slightly to the increasing public pressure against the expansion of coal mining. However, eight of the biggest leases that were already sold remain in effect. 840,000 hectares are still leased – the cancellations only account for 0.002 percent of the leased area.
This prompts yet another question for Albertans – though it is not a new question – why accept the stripping of land and the pollution of rivers so that international private capital can turn a profit? For temporary jobs? Will Albertans allow the government, yet again, to sell off the land rights to private interests, so that they can pay employees relatively little in return and then later abscond with all the wealth that they’ve appropriated in this lopsided transaction? This time around, Albertans won’t be left with a bunch of abandoned oil wells that just might be useful for geothermal projects. This time it will be a denuded landscape, further pollution, and once again Albertans will be unemployed.
Trying to solve unemployment while the interests of private profit reign supreme is an absurd impossibility. For instance, the boilermakers of CESSCO Ltd., located in Edmonton, have been locked out (and effectively unemployed) since June of last year. It has recently been discovered that CESSCO has been taking advantage of a loophole in the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program in order to subsidize the lengthy lockout and break the union (Boilermakers Local 146), keeping more than 20 highly-skilled trades people from working. This is illustrative of the conflict between the best interests of the employing class and the best interests of everyone else – totally irreconcilable, with unemployment and all related baggage as an inevitable result. Were CESSCO to be either owned and operated by the workers themselves (a worker co-op) or were this whole industry to be owned publicly and be placed under the control of workers and their communities, we could be assured that such a situation would never have developed. Also note the role that Canada’s bourgeois government plays in facilitating such swindles, whether fully aware and complicit in these injustices or by sheer negligence and happenstance.
The federal government, and the UCP and NDP all have questions to answer with regard to their service to private capital, answers that we are owed; many of us working people also have much we need to seriously reconsider in this regard. The question must be forced – will Albertans continue to allow their government to create economic policy that suits the whims of international private capitalists, or will we seek to take the reins ourselves and defend our right to gainful employment? By demanding public ownership of resource-based industries like mining and energy – with shared control held by government, workers, and their communities, i.e., public control – we can ensure that we all reap the full benefit of these industries and ensure their responsible and sustainable operation. Through public ownership, the focus shifts from providing maximum profits for a few to providing stable livelihoods for many. This dual-strategy of public ownership and diversification would ensure that we do not – as individuals and as a society – suffer the withering effects of revolving unemployment.
I’m reminded of a story from Sioux City, Iowa. On January 5, 1915, an organized delegation of 150 unemployed and hungry people invaded the city’s luxurious Commercial Club demanding that they either be provided with jobs or be provided with unemployment assistance. After helping themselves to bread rolls, they walked out. Four-hundred jobs were created by city council the next day. In the same spirit, Albertans need to get organized and demand their right to have gainful employment; in the context of our provincial economy, this must include diversification and public ownership. We cannot have our livelihoods dependent on the boom-and-bust cycles of fading fossil fuel industries or leave the matter of our employment up to the judgement of capitalists. Let us organize and force the issue.
We must reject the failed policies of Jason Kenney and the UCP, who actively work against the health and well-being of Albertans; they have demonstrated that they are not suited to govern and should be removed from office. For that matter, any government that treats our health as secondary, or that will not prioritize the dual strategy of public ownership and diversification should be kicked out of office. We must take care of public health, reject the capitalist mode of production, refuse dependence on fossil fuels, and balk at servitude to the oil lobby. The struggle for diversification and public ownership is the path to obtaining stable livelihoods – our futures are staked on this struggle, whether we realize it or not.
