Alberta let your hair hang low
Alberta let your hair hang low
I’ll give you more gold than your apron can hold
If you’ll only let your hair hang low
—Doc Watson, “Alberta”

Good chat on oil royalties with Dr. Keith Brownsey of Mount Royal College over at the Globe’s website today, debating whether or not Ed Stelmach is going to wave his freak flag high, high¹ and stick it to the Oil Man. This is the part I found most interesting:

Jeff Mackenzie from Cochrane, Alta., writes: Will the rest of Canada sit back and accept Alberta getting even richer (assuming the industry doesn’t pull back), or will greed and envy lead other provinces to demand more from Alberta?

Dr. Brownsey: There is growing “Alberta envy”² in some regions. When small centres in Newfoundland migrate to Alberta for jobs, resentment is to be expected. But as far as “taking” Alberta’s wealth and spreading it around, well, the federal government would have to raise personal and corporate taxes, perhaps singling out the oil and gas sector. That won’t happen. Remember, natural resources are under provincial jurisdiction (Constitution Act 1867 sec. 109; provincial control was strengthened in 1982 with an amendment to the Constitution Act 1867, sec. 92a.). Simply put, there is very little chance of Alberta’s oil and gas wealth being spread around the country except through revenues raised by the federal government under the current tax system.

Last week, Ken, a far more robust federalist than I, wrote on his blog that Dion should stand up for federal involvement on the royalty question because the environment is involved. A principled idea (albeit one I disagree with), but as Ken well knows, it won’t happen. Even so much as a comment to that effect from Dion would prompt cranks across the province to accuse him of Trojan Horseplay, of bringing in a new NEP under the guise of Kyoto—a comparison I wasn’t shocked to learn already has currency. With a provincial election looming and the Alberta Liberals already seeking to distance themselves from the national party, the last thing they need is for Dion to tarnish the prospects of anything named Liberal right now. Not to mention that it would damage the inroads Dion himself is making there.⁴

More to the point, any thought of spreading around Alberta’s wealth belies the fact that for all its money, the province is living testament to the wisdom of the Notorious B.I.G.: mo’ money, mo’ problems. Every time I visit, quality of life appears to have declined further. Everything’s more expensive, the roads are constantly jammed with slow-moving trucks, the two major cities are sprawling so fast they’ll osmose Regina and Saskatoon by November, and save for a burgeoning arts scene, you’d be hard-pressed to see much evidence of developing cosmopolitanism. As numerous commentators have pointed out, Alberta has also done a lousy job of developing its infrastructure alongside growth and of adding to its rainy-day fund.

So free yourselves of your envy, Canada. Life’s too short. It’s even shorter when you live next door to a massive toxic waste site⁶, and you can’t get to the hospital in time after that second head begins to sprout from your shoulder because a fleet of pipe-bearing flatbeds driving 30 kph is blocking your ambulance.

Today’s token blogger self-love: I was voted “Most likely to one day write a blog post on the subject of provincial oil royalties” by my high school class.

Next, on the Bironist: I discuss the role of Alberta envy in a young woman’s psychosexual development.

¹My quoting of Jimi Hendrix’s “If 6 Was 9″ should in no way be considered an endorsement of the lurid placement of those two numbers in close proximity to one another. For more, please join my Facebook group 68 Then 70, dedicated to the elimination of sixty-ninth floors everywhere.
²I’ve long felt the sting of “Alberta envy.” (In fact I’m feeling it right now. Cut it out.) Whether at grad school in Vancouver or tramping the streets of Dar Es Salaam, people seemed to know instinctively that I had something they could never have. And it’s true, I did—a ticket stub from Def Leppard’s stop at Northlands Coliseum during the Adrenalized tour. Also, an Alberta birth certificate.^3
3Albertans don’t actually receive birth certificates. Instead, we’re given an engraved microchip containing a recording of the two heralds hired to play “The Birthday Song” the moment each divine Alberta spawn emerges from its mother’s birth canal.
⁴Not made-up quote from an Edmonton Journal editorial last week: “Dion has shown a lot more interest in Edmonton than the southern Alberta prime minister in the last year and a half.”^5
5Our copy editor would disapprove of this sentence, unless the End of Days is indeed upon us. Should be the past year and a half.

⁶In fairness, a 2004 Ipsos-Reid poll found that Albertans rated the environment as the number-one issue facing the province (tied with health care). The 2 percent who rated it as unimportant were immediately drafted to Harper’s Cabinet.

More in The Bironist | Blogs Home | Current Issue | SUBSCRIBE »

Posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 3:36 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.