A photo of Alberta Opposition Leader Rachel Notley, the former premier of Alberta.
Alberta Opposition Leader Rachel Notley, the former premier of Alberta.

With Alberta enjoying another rather unexpected oil boom, Rachel Notley has promised that an NDP government won’t piss it all away. 

That’s exactly what she said. 

“I spend a lot of hours on Alberta highways and I often see that bumper sticker — you know the one — that says ‘Please God, give me one more oil boom. I promise not to piss it all away next time,’” Notley said in a statement emailed to media yesterday. 

“Well, we’ve got one more oil boom and it is bringing extraordinary revenue into the provincial treasury,” the leader of Alberta’s Opposition New Democrats and the former premier of Alberta continued. “My commitment here today is that should Alberta’s NDP form the next government, we will not piss away this boom.”

This is an important statement. Let me explain why. 

There may be Albertans who don’t approve of rough language in political discourse. I expect some of them will criticize Notley for expressing this sentiment in this particular way before jumping into their pickup trucks, slamming the doors, and screeching off in the direction of Sundre, red, black and white “F#&k Trudeau” flags snapping in the petroleum-generated breeze.

But it got your attention, didn’t it? 

When it appears in a news story, you may even be tempted to read the rest of what Notley had to say, even if it’s only to make sure she didn’t slip a “F#&k Kenney” or a “Danielle is Bats#!t” into the release. (She didn’t, of course.) 

And there’s the thing. A wily old Alberta New Democrat of my acquaintance, who has retreated to a mountaintop in Tibet or some such alpine jurisdiction whence he imparts the Meaning of Life and other secrets to supplicants, keeps reminding me the Alberta NDP needs to find a way to assure Albertans they’ll will be prudent with their taxes.

After all, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, most Albertans have been brought up to believe the fantasy that New Democrats are wild-eyed spendthrifts and Conservatives are good money managers. 

If you want to talk health care, the NDP will come to that discussion with far more credibility than Kenney or any of his possible successors. All the more so with a seventh wave of COVID-19 now breaking across North America.

Ditto if the topic of discussion turns to public education, especially with Kenney hangin’ in there so he can force his pet project, the UCP’s garbage school curriculum, on an unwilling province. 

But the fiscal responsibility piece historically plays to the Conservatives’ advantage, even though in bad times they act like vandals and in good times they spend like drunken sailors. (Nowadays, I expect, sailors are more temperate thanks to the Royal Navy putting a stop to their daily rum tot in 1970.)

So perhaps Notley’s not-quite-mild language is what it’ll take to get Albertans to wake up and notice there’s coffee brewing. 

If it works, readers may see that she committed to five principles to finally help get Alberta off the fiscal roller coaster before the next plunge:

–       Recognizing oil revenue is unreliable and shouldn’t be used for ordinary operational spending

–       Focusing on getting the best return on investment

–       Recognizing Alberta will not get off the revenue rollercoaster without real progress on diversifying the economy and creating long-term jobs

–       Acting now to help Albertans facing a cost-of-living crisis not seen in decades

–       Fixing the damage done to the public health care and education systems

Readers will note that the last point leads back to the NDP’s key strengths in the important election fight that is coming soon. 

I have one small quibble: I have my doubts anyone, including Notley, has ever actually seen that bumper sticker, although the story’s been around so long a lot of Albertans, perhaps including the Opposition leader, are starting to think they did. 

I’ve been driving Alberta’s highways and byways for decades, through booms and busts alike, and I’ve never seen it, even with my surgically corrected hawk-eyes. 

There are very few photos. Which is not to say the bumper sticker yarn is a fib, exactly, just that it represents a profound truth so universally understood it doesn’t require actual sightings.  

This will almost certainly be Alberta’s last oil boom, and we have a Conservative government poised to piss it all away again. 

The only point of debate among Kenney’s would-be United Conservative Party successors is what to piss it all away on. 

Notley is offering something a little different.

Be nice, Alberta! Calgary Stampede starts with a $10-million-plus boost from feds

July 8 marked the opening of the Calgary Stampede, that 10-day annual festival of intoxicated bankers and oil company executives dressed up like cowboys saying nasty things about Justin Trudeau.

Conservative Alberta politicians inclined to use the annual Cowtown bean-fest as a platform for intemperate commentary about the prime minister and his Liberal Government need to remember that Ottawa has just sunk more than $10 million into the Stampede to help it “make a full-scale come-back” from the effects of the pandemic and the 21st Century. 

This was announced last month by Ottawa’s Prairies Economic Development Canada agency to not much attention from media. 

I asked Rohit Sandhu, the PEDC’s communications manager, if there were any strings attached to the cash. Not many, by the sound of it. 

“The bulk of the $10 million in funding (up to $8 million) is directly provided to support continued operations of the Calgary Stampede festival during a period where its revenues were reduced due to the impacts of the pandemic,” he said. “The remaining funding is being used for adaptation measures and enhancement activities to meet public health and safety guidelines, as well as to improve the quality of the event.”

Were there any concerns about spending federal money on an event notorious with animal rights activists for ill treatment of chuckwagon horses and other beasts? 

“As a major recurring festival and event with annual revenues exceeding $10 million, the Calgary Stampede met the eligibility criteria to apply for and receive funding” through the Government of Canada’s Major Festivals and Events Support Initiative, he responded.

Which is a nice way, I suppose, of saying, we’d rather not talk about that. 

As for the usual suspects from Calgary, gratitude, not churlishness, would be in order this week. 

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...