Alberta and Quebec find common ground in opposing Ottawa

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Quebec and Alberta may seem like strange bedfellows, with their sharply divergent cultures and political leanings, but when Danielle Smith addresses the Montreal Chamber of Commerce on Monday, she will help cement a relationship between the provinces that has blossomed in the past year.

The dry title of her talk, “From West to East: Strengthening Alberta-Quebec Partnerships for Growth,” belies the politically momentous rapprochement between two enfants terribles of Confederation, who have overcome decades of estrangement to bond over their shared alienation from Ottawa.

This spring, Ms. Smith wrote to Quebec Premier François Legault proposing an “autonomy alliance” between the provinces. His Justice Minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, met with her soon after and expressed openness to the idea.

Just last month, Alberta submitted arguments in defence of Quebec in its coming Supreme Court fight over the use of the notwithstanding clause, while Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon travelled to Calgary and met with leaders of Alberta’s separatist movement.

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An alliance between the provinces is “exciting and necessary,” Mr. Plamondon said in a speech to the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

“Accepting that we might not have the same political orientations, but building a relationship based on respect … We might find that we have several points in common.”

All the warm words may give whiplash to Canadians who can remember Quebeckers sneering at Alberta’s “dirty oil,” while Albertans complained about Quebec holding the rest of the country “hostage.”

But for all their recent disagreements over energy, equalization payments and the size of government, the two provinces are renewing a decades-old relationship stemming from their mutual desire for more constitutional leeway within Canada.

In the early 1980s, Alberta premier Peter Lougheed and Quebec premier René Lévesque exchanged a series of letters about the patriation of the Constitution in which they commiserated about prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s “steamroller tactics” in trying to win the assent of the provinces.

“During the constitutional discussions of the late ’70s [and] early ’80s, Quebec and Alberta were the fastest of friends,” recalled Norman Spector, prime minister Brian Mulroney’s former chief of staff.

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Relations were badly strained by Mr. Trudeau’s imposition of the National Energy Program, which fixed the price of oil to protect industry and consumers elsewhere in the country, perceived in Alberta as a sop to Quebec.

Combined with equalization payments and even seemingly unrelated issues like official bilingualism and the imposition of the metric system, “anti-French” sentiment took hold among some Albertans, added Mr. Spector.

The 1990s saw the rise of two political parties, the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois, which gave voice to the alienation of Western Canadians and Quebeckers respectively, but efforts to collaborate didn’t get far.

Former Reform leader Preston Manning recalled a breakfast he organized between their two newly elected caucuses; the Westerners brought the pancakes and the Quebec delegation brought the maple syrup. Mr. Manning stood and said his members were unhappy with the federation, while Bloc founder Lucien Bouchard stood to say his members wanted to leave the federation outright. Their positions were too far apart, and “so nothing more really came of it,” Mr. Manning recalled.

The hostility of the Alberta right to Quebec’s sovereigntist movement helped prevent further co-operation even as both provinces tried to secure a new deal from the federal government, said Frédéric Boily, professor of political science at the University of Alberta.

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A turning point came with the 2006 election of Stephen Harper, an Alberta conservative who made goodwill gestures toward Quebec such as learning French and recognizing it as a nation, said Prof. Boily.

When the French-speaking former Harper cabinet minister Jason Kenney became Alberta Premier in 2019, after four years of Alberta resentment at the federal government under Justin Trudeau, he was ready to take Quebec as a model rather than a bête noire, said Eric Montigny, professor of political science at Laval University.

His government’s Fair Deal panel on Alberta’s place in the federation recommended Quebec-inspired ideas like withdrawing from the Canada Pension Plan. Quebec is mentioned no fewer than 56 times in the report, far more than any other province, observe the political scientists Daniel Béland and André Lecours in a 2023 paper.

“Quebec is clearly seen as a model of provincial autonomy that Alberta could emulate,” they wrote.

Ms. Smith has an even greater fascination with Quebec’s track record in extracting concessions from Ottawa. She took to openly marveling at the province’s ability to secure federal funding, such as a $900-million housing grant – “I just thought, ‘How did they do that?’ ” she told The Globe and Mail last June.

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After the housing announcement, Ms. Smith learned from Quebec’s Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs that they have a law preventing the federal government from talking directly to municipalities, a law her government promptly emulated. She wrote to Mr. Legault to thank him for the help.

Alberta’s love affair with the Quebec model is still mostly one-sided. Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet minimized Alberta’s separatist ambitions during the federal election campaign this spring, saying the province would first have to develop a culture and adding archly that he was “not certain that oil and gas qualifies.”

Last week, Mr. Blanchet doubled down on his criticism of Alberta’s environmental record, saying that he would denounce any new pipeline from the province for “destroying the environment of the whole planet.”

But the Legault government – like Ms. Smith’s, committed to bolstering provincial power within the federation – has increasingly reciprocated Alberta’s affection.

In April, Mr. Jolin-Barrette told reporters that he found it “very positive that within Canada, there are federation partners that agree with more autonomy and a framework to limit the federal right to spend. It’s very interesting because historically, Quebec and Alberta worked together, and we will continue to work together on autonomy of the different provinces.”