Alberta Firewall: How the Alberta Agenda went from fringe to mainstream in 25 years

Twenty-five years ago this week, I was one of six Albertans who sent a public letter to Premier Ralph Klein. Called the “Alberta Agenda,” it urged Klein to adopt four reforms to increase Alberta’s political and economic autonomy. The reforms were intended to insulate and protect Alberta from harmful federal interference—thus its better-known title, the “Firewall Letter.” These reforms included: Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan to create an Alberta Pension Plan offering the same benefits at lower costs. Pensions are a provincial responsibility under the Constitution. If Quebec can do it, why not Alberta? Collect our own revenue from personal income tax, as we already do for corporate income tax. Again, like Quebec and Ontario. Let the contract with the RCMP expire and create an Alberta Provincial Police Force. Again, like Quebec and Ontario. Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. Albertans deserve better than the long waiting periods that are rapidly coming to characterize Canadian health care. In one sense, these reforms were quite modest. Most were already being done by Quebec, Ontario, or both. So, no big deal, right? Wrong! The very fact that Quebec was the model for these proposed reforms immediately raised the spectre of a hidden agenda—Alberta separatism. While this was not our intention at that time, it alarmed critics. There has always been a small separatist element on the margins of Alberta politics. But it was largely rural and associated with leaders no one had ever heard of. The Firewall Letter was different. This was the first time in Alberta’s history that reforms of this nature had been publicly endorsed by recognizable public figures. The signatories included, first and foremost, Stephen Harper. Harper was then president of the National Citizens Coalition, but until recently a Reform MP and one of Preston Manning’s most influential advisors. Also signing were Andy Crooks, a Calgary lawyer and president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and Ken Boessenkool, former policy advisor to Stockwell Day. The rest were three members of the so-called Calgary School—Tom Flanagan, Rainer Knopff, and myself. We had all been active in Preston Manning’s Reform Party but were growing skeptical of its prospects for future success. Vote-splitting with the PCs had just given Jean Chretien and the Liberals a third consecutive majority government. Obscure at the time it was published, this political manifesto turned out have a direct impact on the next two decades of conservative politics in Alberta. When Harper went off to Ottawa to lead the new federal Conservative Party, I decided to join the provincial Conservative Party to advance the Alberta Agenda. In 2004, I was elected the MLA for Foothills-Rocky View. Two years later, as a back-bench MLA with no cabinet experience, I entered the PC leadership election to replace Ralph Klein. My 2006 PC leadership campaign was based almost entirely on the Firewall agenda. I lost—but barely. I received over 40,000 votes, almost all from former federal Reformers. After my defeat, many of these same supporters then helped to form the Wildrose Party, adopting my leadership policies and going on to win official Opposition status in the 2012 provincial election. By 2015, the Alberta PCs’ refusal to acknowledge and accommodate Albertans’ growing disillusionment with the federal government (and yet another Liberal majority government) led to vote-splitting with the Wild Rose Party and the end of the 44-year PC dynasty. But only two years later, Jason Kenney came back from Ottawa to unite the two parties and win a majority government in the 2019 Alberta election. A central issue in this election was Kenney’s promise to hold a referendum to abolish the federal equalization program. When the referendum was held in 2020, 62 percent of Albertans voted for abolition. Alarmed by the 2019 re-election of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals’ anti-oil, anti-Alberta policies, Kenney announced the creation of a “Fair Deal” panel to consult with Albertans on their support for the initiatives listed in the Firewall Letter. The panel was chaired by none other than Manning. When the panel released its report in May 2020, its recommendations included cancelling Alberta’s contract with the RCMP and creating our own Alberta Police Force; collecting our own personal income taxes; and withdrawing from the Canada Pension Plan and creating our own provincial pension plan. Kenney’s successor, Premier Danielle Smith, then went one step further by campaigning for and then enacting the Alberta Sovereignty Act. The Sovereignty Act authorizes the Alberta government to challenge and/or block unconstitutional federal policies. It has already been used to challenge the Liberals’ new clean energy regulations and gun regulations. Bottom line: the same Firewall reforms that were on the fringe of Alberta provincial politics 25 years ago are now front and centre. The journey has been long and complicated, but the reasons for its success are not. Just follow the money. Since 1960, Quebec has been the net recipient of $497 billion in various federal transfer programs. Quebec now receives two out of every three dollars in the federal equalization program. Where do these federal transfers come from? Alberta. Since 1960, Ottawa has taken a net $630 billion out of Alberta. In just the last 10 years, the average annual net transfer out of Alberta has been $20 billion a year—years in which the Alberta government has had multi-billion-dollar budget deficits. Canada’s Constitution has failed to keep pace with our economy. Canada’s economic reality has changed, but our institutions have not. At the end of the Second World War, the combined populations of British Columbia and Alberta were only half that of Quebec’s. Today, their combined populations—five and four million, respectively—are almost one million greater than Quebec. With Saskatchewan, that number grows to over two million more. Economically, the change has been even more dramatic. As recently as 1961, the combined provincial GDP of Alberta and British Columbia were only half that of Quebec. Today, they are almost half again greater (46 percent) than Quebec’s. The constitutional veto Quebec lost in the 1982 Constitution Act was restored by the Liberals’ 1996 Regional Veto Act. Its preferred status in both the Supreme Court (a guarantee of three justices) and the Senate (one-quarter of all Senators) has been effectively made permanent by questionable Supreme Court decisions. During this same period, Western Canada’s decades-long quest for an elected, equal Senate has been killed by the Supreme Court’s 2014 Senate reform ruling. Peter Lougheed’s greatest achievement—section 92A of the Constitution—enshrining exclusive provincial jurisdiction over natural resource development—has been repeatedly violated by Justin Trudeau’s climate change policies, which in turn have been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada. In effect, the weaker Quebec has become economically, the more powerful it has become politically. Alberta’s fate has been the opposite. The more Alberta has contributed financially, the less we have received politically. These are the facts. They reflect Pierre Trudeau’s infamous 1980 campaign strategy: Screw the West, and we’ll take the Rest. It worked then and continues to work today. The more Albertans learn this, the more they find the status quo unacceptable. If Quebec had been treated like Alberta, it would have separated long ago. If Albertans had the opportunity to renegotiate our political and economic relationship with the rest of Canada, we would never accept the status quo. This is what the Firewall and now the Alberta Sovereignty Act are about: increased autonomy—more Alberta, less Ottawa; increasing Alberta’s ability to be self-governing with greater controls over our own destiny by taking over programs that are currently administered by Ottawa. Decisions made in Edmonton may not always be right. But at least they are made by people who speak the same language, live in our neighbourhoods, share our concerns, and who will have to live with the consequences of their decisions. The mainstream media found the Smith-UCP victory alarming. And they should. The Fair Deal movement is here to stay. Smith has not only the solid backing of her caucus but also support from new allies in the rest of Canada. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is clearly a soulmate. His government has already enacted the Saskatchewan First Act and plans to start collecting personal income taxes. Saskatchewan acted before Alberta to protect parents’ rights, as has New Brunswick, by invoking the Notwithstanding Clause. The Quebec government—always a staunch defender of provincial rights—has recently supported Alberta’s Section 92A constitutional challenges to both Bill C-69 and the federal carbon tax. In politics, the beneficiaries of the status quo never willingly give up their advantages. Change requires push. Twenty-five years ago, that push was the Firewall Letter. Today, it is the Alberta Sovereignty Act. And later this year, the referendums on Firewall issues that Premier Smith has promised. One of those referendum questions will be on whether Alberta should separate from Canada. Smith has made it clear that she opposes this. And separation is unlikely to receive more than 30 percent of the votes. But 30 percent is double what it would have received 25 years ago. Without reforms to the status quo, what will it be in another decade? And if Alberta is collecting its own taxes, doing its own policing and running its own pension plan, the risk of separatism will have to be taken more seriously, How this plays out remains to be seen. But it will depend not just on what happens in Alberta, but on how the rest of Canada responds to Alberta’s and Western Canada’s calls for much-needed reforms. The challenge for the next generation of Alberta leaders will be to persuade the rest of Canada to see that such reforms are preferable to the alternative.