Canadians have elected a prime minister who promised to pursue energy corridors across Canada, to slash project approval timelines and boosted an oilsands carbon capture project during the English leaders’ debate.
But this wasn’t the Conservative prime minister that most Albertans were hoping for.
They didn’t reject the Liberals with the same ferocity and lopsided results they’d delivered to Justin Trudeau in the last couple of elections; Albertans took more of a shine to Mark Carney than they had any federal Liberal leader in generations.
But that didn’t translate into gains for the party, certainly not the record-busting breach of the Conservatives’ blue wall that Liberals had been gunning for.
The Liberals came into the Carney era with two seats in Alberta, and that’s what they’ve emerged with. And barring some late-breaking seat flips, their minority has remained a minority, where they’ll need opposition party votes to get anything through Parliament.
It’s not clear that anybody wanted a result as status-quo as that. Not Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who spent the last three years running to be prime minister; not Carney, who’d urged voters to deliver him a “strong mandate”; and not Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who’d spoken of hoping the Trump administration would cool it on tariff talk so that Washington didn’t help deliver Canada back into Liberal control.
Yet the returning prime minister was promising the end of status quo when it came to Alberta’s lifeblood oil and gas sector — even if it wasn’t nearly as much of a departure as Poilievre had promised, and likely not enough to satisfy what Smith will demand from Ottawa.
Poilievre had pledged to check off virtually everything on the wish lists of Smith and oil industry backers. In fact, Conservatives were so confident of reaping an energy development bonanza by slashing several Liberal environmental regulations that the party’s costed platform booked more than $16 billion in extra tax revenue from new economic growth.
Carney has pledged to not repeal Trudeau’s widely criticized project approvals system, but would bid to fast-track assessments regardless.
He spoke in Monday’s victory speech about creating “energy corridors” — a plan similar to Poilievre’s — and reiterated plans to “build Canada into an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy.”
Was he ever as pro-pipeline as Poilievre? No. But the Liberal leader had strived to distance himself from Trudeau with his superpower rhetoric — echoes of a Stephen Harper line — and his swift elimination of the consumer carbon tax. He also said during the debate that “we need to move forward” with the oilsands companies’ $16.5-billion Pathways carbon capture and storage project, “so that we have oil and gas that is competitive not just today, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now.”
After broadcasters declared the Liberals’ win, Carney also noted that he’d made late-game campaign stops in Edmonton and Saskatoon, in hopes of electoral breakthroughs that didn’t come through.
“I went because I intend to govern for all Canadians,” he said.
Carney will have a chance to give Albertans a voice or two in cabinet, with Liberal rookie MPs Eleanor Olszewski in Edmonton Centre and Liberal Corey Hogan in Calgary Confederation. And with former Saskatchewan NDP cabinet minister Buckley Belanger voted in as a Liberal in the province’s north, Saskatchewan could have a minister too — its first Liberal front-bencher not named Ralph Goodale in more than a generation.
That’s less Liberal representation in Alberta and Saskatchewan than the party has pushed for, but it’s better than the two-province shutout from 2019 that helped spawn the Wexit movement.
Some Alberta separatist voices had already been making noises in anticipation of a fourth straight Liberal term. Expect those now to grow louder, as they try to build minority support for Alberta to leave Canada into majority clamour.
“Tonight is not the end. Tonight is the beginning,” said the Republican Party of Alberta, a new, rebranded provincial separatist group.
“It’s the beginning of a movement that will not rest until Alberta is free to control its own destiny.”
With so many leaders in that pro-independence and pro-referendum movement within Premier Smith’s UCP base, her next moves will be important.
“As premier, I will not permit the status quo to continue,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday morning. “Albertans are proud Canadians that want this nation to be strong, prosperous, and united, but we will no longer tolerate having our industries threatened and our resources landlocked by Ottawa.”
Before the election, she suggested she’d follow former premier Jason Kenney’s 2019 lead and appoint a second Fair Deal panel. The premier isn’t saying yet what her next steps are, and while she’s not ruling out or pooh-poohing the idea of an independence referendum yet, she’s made it clear she’s hoping for concessions from Carney.
“In the weeks and months ahead, Albertans will have an opportunity to discuss our province’s future, assess various options for strengthening and protecting our province against future hostile acts from Ottawa, and to ultimately choose a path forward,” Smith said.
Will it matter much that the Liberals’ 28 per cent of the popular vote in Alberta is their highest share since the 1968 federal election? The Conservatives had also boosted their vote share to 64 per cent — better than 2021’s score, and the vast majority of Liberal gains in the province appeared to be due to a massive collapse in the NDP vote (along with their loss of one of their Edmonton seats).
Carney had promised some degree of change, but Albertans clearly craved more change with Poilievre.
With that option closed for now, both the prime minister and premier will have to figure out how to reckon with the activists and disaffected residents who are agitating for a much more drastic sort of change for Alberta.
