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.
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.
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.
MPs push through Carney’s major projects bill before summer break
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.
More to come.
