Canada West Foundation: What Alberta Separation Would Actually Mean
By Gary Mar
In my last column, I wrote that there is too much perceived certainty in the separation debate.
Certainty that separation would be catastrophe. Certainty that it would be liberation.
Neither position leaves much room for the harder work of understanding what separation would actually mean.
That is why the Canada West Foundation sought out people with the expertise to ask the right questions and the experience to test the answers against facts and evidence rather than emotion. Knowing which questions to ask is important, but so too is having the insight and experience to understand the answers, weigh the evidence and recognize the broader implications.
Our contributors come from different backgrounds and, importantly, don’t agree on everything. Nor should they.
Ted Morton taught constitutional law and federalism at the University of Calgary for more than 30 years and served as an Alberta cabinet minister. Dwight Newman is a professor of law at the University of Saskatchewan, holds a Canada Research Chair in rights, communities, and constitutional law, and clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada.
Those backgrounds matter because the constitutional questions surrounding separation are neither simple nor settled.
Quebec held referendums in 1980 and 1995. The second was decided by less than one percentage point. But Canada has never negotiated the actual departure of a province. The Supreme Court of Canada’s 1998 Reference re Secession of Quebec established that a clear majority voting on a clear question would create an obligation to negotiate. It also underscored that a referendum result alone would not separate a province. What the negotiations would ultimately produce was left open.
The federal Clarity Act of 2000 identifies some of the issues that would have to be addressed, including the division of assets and liabilities, possible border changes and, importantly, Indigenous rights and territorial claims. Audrey Doerr brings decades of scholarship on Canadian government and public administration and provides perspective on Indigenous rights.
The economic questions are just as important.
Herb Emery holds the Vaughan Chair in regional economics at the University of New Brunswick and has spent years studying regional economic disparities. Paul Boothe has examined fiscal policy from both sides of the desk, as an academic and senior federal public servant. Lennie Kaplan spent more than two decades working on fiscal and energy policy in the Alberta government and served as executive director of the MacKinnon Panel on Alberta’s Finances.
Their expertise helps move the discussion beyond the question of whether Alberta should separate and toward the more difficult question: what would an independent Alberta look like?
What happens to pensions? What currency would be used? How would federal debt and assets be divided? What would a new government need to borrow? What would the fiscal position of an independent Alberta look like on day one, and what would it look like five or 10 years later?
These may sound like questions for an accountant’s spreadsheet. They aren’t. Eventually, the numbers find their way to the kitchen table.
Trade is another area where experience matters.
I spent four years representing Alberta in Washington and another four years as the province’s representative in Asia. One lesson I took from those experiences is that Alberta’s economy depends on markets well beyond our borders.
Greg Anderson knows that world as well. He is a political economist at the University of Alberta who worked on trade policy inside the Office of the United States Trade Representative on files involving Canada, Mexico and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
If Alberta became independent, what would happen to the international trade arrangements Albertans now take for granted? What would happen to the movement of energy, agricultural products, manufactured goods and investment across international borders?
And what about the rest of Canada? We already complain, with good reason, about barriers to trade between provinces even though we are part of the same country. An independent Alberta would still need to buy from and sell to British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the other provinces.
Governments negotiate trade agreements. Businesses must operate under these agreements and get trucks and trains across the border. Jeff McCaig brings a practical perspective to that challenge. He’s led Trimac Transportation, one of North America’s largest bulk trucking companies, for more than 20 years.
What these contributors have in common is the experience to know which questions matter, the expertise to examine the evidence and the willingness to share their assumptions and have them challenged.
Albertans have every right to be frustrated with Confederation. Equalization, pipelines, energy and climate policy, interprovincial trade barriers and Alberta’s influence in national decision-making did not become issues because a referendum was proposed. These grievances have been building for decades, and Adam Legge, president of the Business Council of Alberta, brings more than 20 years of experience in business and economic development to that discussion.
Whatever evidence Albertans use to reach their individual conclusions, it should be able to withstand scrutiny.
That is the purpose of the Canada West Foundation’s work, including our forthcoming report. It does not tell Albertans how to vote. It is intended to give them a clearer understanding of the choices before them: what we know, what we can reasonably estimate, what remains uncertain and what would have to be negotiated.
That distinction matters.
On October 19, Albertans will not vote to separate from Canada. They will choose whether the government should commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether Alberta should separate from Canada. Before making that choice, Albertans deserve more than just confident predictions from either side.
They deserve a clear understanding of some of the questions, the evidence behind the answers, the uncertainties that remain and the choices that would follow.
Source: https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/canada-west-foundation-what-alberta-separation-would-actually-mean
