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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says a new panel will hit the road this summer with an eye on devising new measures for Alberta to assert autonomy and shield its economy from what she calls federal overreach.
The “Alberta Next” panel, which was announced in May, will hold a series of in-person town halls over the summer, with exact locations to be announced in the coming weeks. It will also collect feedback through online surveys.
Proposals that come out of those discussions could be put to a vote in a referendum next year.
“The Alberta Next panel will put Albertans in the drivers’ seat,” Smith told reporters at a news conference in Heritage Park in Calgary on Tuesday. “It will give them the rightful opportunity to decide how Alberta can become stronger and more sovereign within a united Canada.”
Smith previously said she would chair the panel. In addition to Smith, the panel will include Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz, economist Trevor Tombe, and Adam Legge of the Business Council of Alberta, among others, with some still to be announced.
Long-running face-off with Ottawa
A government news release issued Tuesday stated that the panel would engage directly with Albertans to “chart a path forward for the province.”
Wherever that path leads will be the latest development in a years-long face-off over energy and economic policy between Alberta and Ottawa.
“You know what Ottawa can’t help but be fixated on? … Punishing our energy sector and layering on policies to keep it in the ground,” Smith said.
As Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announces the members of the Alberta Next panel who will tour the province with her to gather Albertans’ views on their relationship with Ottawa, the CBC’s Jason Markusoff tells Power & Politics the consultations may result in simultaneous referendum questions on issues like removing the province from the Canada Pension Plan and moving forward on a sovereign Alberta.
The government said the panel would consult Albertans on subjects like the possibility of establishing an Alberta pension plan, switching to an Alberta provincial police service from the RCMP and considering potential immigration reform, among other issues.
Some of the subjects echo the UCP’s former Fair Deal Panel, which produced 25 recommendations, including developing a plan to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan and creating a provincial police force.
Asked by reporters Tuesday about how this effort would be different, Smith said that sometimes conversations that emerge out of the panel discussions lead to a “national dialogue.”
“We identified six issues that we know have come up in the previous round of the Fair Deal Panel that we think Albertans now may want to put to a referendum so that we can take some action on them,” Smith said. “But there may be others, and that’s what we want to be able to explore.”
Smith has said that her government doesn’t plan on including a question on Alberta separation as a part of the 2026 referendum ballot. However, she reiterated Tuesday that citizen-initiated petitions could result in questions being added if the petitioners gather 177,000 signatures.
Lori Williams, an associate professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, said the addition of individuals like economist Tombe and Tara Sawyer, MLA-elect for Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills, suggested a balance of voices rather than a panel predisposed to a particular outcome.
However, she questioned the focus on issues such as an Alberta pension plan, which has already been studied at length.
“It raises questions, from a government that says it wants to listen to Albertans, that it keeps asking questions that it has already gotten … clear ‘no’ answers to,” she said.
Talk of new pipeline
On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that Smith told the news agency in an interview that she expected a private company would bring forward a proposal to build a new oil pipeline to the British Columbia coast within weeks. Smith has not named the company and no firm has yet publicly committed to the idea.
Asked by reporters at Tuesday’s news conference about that report, Smith said she had been talking with all of the pipeline companies since she was elected.
“I feel like we’re pretty close to having, either one or a consortium come forward,” she said. “I would hope that that would happen very soon, because we need to send a signal to Albertans very soon and test the new process the prime minister is putting forward.”
Last week, the Liberal government’s major projects legislation passed in the House of Commons. It aims to reduce interprovincial trade barriers and speed up approvals for major projects in the national interest.
Specific projects haven’t yet been identified, however Prime Minister Mark Carney has said decarbonized oil pipelines are “absolutely” in the national interest and would support both trade diversification and new industry development.
Liberal and Conservative MPs teamed up to ram through Prime Minister Mark Carney’s contentious Bill C-5 before Parliament rose for the summer. The legislation allows the fast-tracking of major economic projects but limits the consultation process.
Currently, the federally-owned Trans Mountain pipeline carries crude oil from Alberta to the West Coast. But Smith has been vocal about potentially revisiting a plan to ship oilsands crude to the northern B.C. coast, telling reporters at the Global Energy Show earlier this month that the province was working to entice a private-sector pipeline builder.
Smith has suggested that Prince Rupert, B.C., could work as a potential end point for the pipeline. Plans for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to export crude oil near Kitimat, B.C., were scrapped in 2016 following a court ruling that determined Ottawa failed to properly consult First Nations affected by the pipeline.
With talk of a revival of such plans on the radar, B.C. Premier David Eby said earlier this week that he opposed public funding for an oil pipeline to the north coast, but added he wasn’t against a privately-backed option.
“What I don’t support is tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidy going to build this new pipeline when we already own a pipeline [Trans Mountain] that empties into British Columbia and has significant additional capacity — 200,000 barrels,” Eby said on Sunday.