Danielle Smith’s Dance of the Thousand Mandate Letters continues.
Now you see something; now you don’t.
Then again, maybe you just thought you saw something, and really saw nothing at all.
It’s all very confusing. It’s intended to be. And it’s rather clever, giving the impression the government is doing something when it’s doing nothing, and vice-versa.
It’s rather like Kremlinology, back in the bad old days when the Soviet Union was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
Well, no one is going to call the United Conservative Party or Premier Smith enigmatic, I guess. But, to continue channelling Winston Churchill, perhaps there is a key to forecasting the Smith Government’s actions. The key is understanding who benefits.
Consider two of the UCP’s least popular policies, both inspired by the 2001 separatist musings of Stephen Harper and his fraternity brothers at Firewall House: replacing the RCMP with a provincial police force, and seizing Albertans’ contributions to the Canada Pension Plan.
Hello mounties, goodbye CPP
On August 1, Dean Bennett of The Canadian Press reported that the government has all but abandoned its plan to send the Mounties packing and replace them with a provincial police.
There’s nothing about the plan in either the mandate latters for Justice Minister Mickey Amery, nor so-called Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis, beyond a vague request that Ellis support municipalities “with the community policing options they believe will best serve their populations.”
CP quoted Amery casting these pearls of wisdom before the media: “we are going to continue to listen to Albertans, to learn about their needs and their challenges and their concerns, and then bring that back to [cabinet] and to caucus for further contemplation.”
Meanwhile, over at Postmedia’s Calgary Herald, political columnist Don Braid informed us that Smith and the UCP have “fully revived” their plan to create a provincial pension plan.
Using Finance Minister Nate Horner’s mandate letter as his text and quoting anonymous sources, Braid said that the government is planning a full-court press to capture the pension – including a thought they might even ask the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board handle the money.
So the Mounties are in and the CPP is out, then?
Well, maybe. But don’t count on it.
We’ve heard that the federal government is contemplating a transformation of 150-year-old RCMP into “the FBI of the North,” pulling it out of contract provincial and municipal policing entirely.
That might take a few years, but why break into a sweat if you’re going to get what you want anyway? And with much less complaining on the cost or the lost iconography of those red serge tunics, if the change appears to be forced upon Alberta.
Pension plan separatism unlikely
Meanwhile, the UCP would very much like to get its paws on the huge pot of money Albertans’ CPP retirement savings represent, there’s no doubt about that.
But the idea is so scary, and so unpopular right now, it has to be considered a long shot. Braid is just performing to specifications and running the idea up the proverbial flagpole to see who salutes, or floating the proverbial balloon to see who shoots at it – choose your metaphor.
The unlikely idea of letting the CPP Investment Board manage the funds after the takeover is just testing a wild promise to see if there’s anything they can say to persuade a few more nervous seniors to go along with the scheme.
Don’t bet on it working, though. Seniors’ retirement savings will probably turn out to be too tough a nut to crack, even with a crooked referendum campaign.
The smart money, it’s said here, should be on a provincial police force sooner or later, and an Alberta pension plan probably never.
But who really knows? Certainly not us voters.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
