Hi everyone, Mark Iype in Edmonton today.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith might get an even warmer-than-expected reception at this weekend’s annual meeting of her United Conservative Party after the province got its first sliver of good news about its proposal to leave the Canada Pension Plan and start its own retirement plan.
On Friday, Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland held a meeting with her provincial counterparts to discuss the Alberta pitch, which has thus far been met with skepticism by many, including Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. But after emerging from the virtual get together, Freeland said Ottawa would provide Alberta with an estimate of how much money the province could expect if it went ahead with an exit from the national retirement system.
That has been a major sticking point since Alberta released a third-party analysis this fall that said the province would be entitled to more than half of the CPP’s $575-billion in assets. Alberta has been asking the federal government to release its analysis of the figures and to provide what it thinks the province would receive if it went ahead with a stand-alone Alberta Pension Plan.
Freeland told reporters Friday she will ask Canada’s Chief Actuary to calculate an asset transfer “based on a reasonable interpretation of the provisions” in the CPP legislation. And while she said Alberta severing itself from the CPP is realistic, Freeland also said it would be complex.
“This would be a complex and multiyear process,” Freeland said. “It would be taking place at a time of real uncertainty. Geopolitical uncertainty, global economic uncertainty.”
In response, Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner said in a statement that his government is happy that Ottawa will provide an “actuarial analysis of the asset transfer value.”
The Alberta government has said it would not leave the CPP without first having a provincial referendum on the proposal. But faced with doubts about what the province could actually expect to collect from the national coffer, Smith has now said the referendum would not proceed unless Ottawa or the courts gave an estimate of that figure.
The news that Ottawa is willing to provide its own analysis is good news for Smith, who heads into the UCP AGM this weekend in Calgary where she will be greeted by thousands of party members, many of whom come from her rural base.
As Carrie Tait reported this week, political organizer and Take Back Alberta leader David Parker has flooded the meeting with thousands of members of his network. His group, united by an individualistic understanding of rights and freedoms, has been slowly pulling the governing UCP further to the right. And any policy that pits the province against Ottawa is generally popular with that crowd.
So, when the premier steps to the podium on Saturday afternoon, she may actually get to tell the audience about a little good news in her quest to build a provincial retirement plan.
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.