Will Alberta’s pipeline proposal help tamp down separatist sentiment?

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Tyler Dawson is an Edmonton-based editor for The Globe and Mail’s Opinion section. He is the author of The Republic of Alberta: An Idea That Won’t Go Away.

So. We’re all going to own another pipeline. Or most of another pipeline. Or at least a chunk of a pipeline. That’s one issue with the announcement, made Thursday evening in Calgary, that Alberta had submitted a West Coast pipeline project to the Major Projects Office for approval.

But the other issue, the one that many people are more liable to be curious about, is what effect this has on separatist sentiment in Alberta as the Prairie province hurtles toward an October referendum on its future in Canada.

There’s the argument, and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith seems to be a believer, that separatist sentiment will shrivel and die if the right policy moves are made by the federal government. There’s some historical evidence for this. In 1980, when Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals introduced the national energy program, it led to a major surge in separatist sentiment. In the 1982 provincial election in Alberta, the separatist Western Canada Concept got nearly 12 per cent of the popular vote.

But by 1986, the sentiment had more or less evaporated. In that year’s provincial election, separatist parties got just one per cent of the popular vote and then they basically fell apart. Why? Well, the story goes, Brian Mulroney had unseated Mr. Trudeau as prime minister, the NEP was dismantled, and Albertans, with major irritants addressed, collectively relaxed. (The other part of the story involves the Reform Party providing a useful outlet for lingering angst.)

The same logic applies now: If the federal government addresses some of the irritants that have nagged at Alberta for the past decade, it can make separatist sentiment go away.

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This is probably true, but perhaps not wholly true. There are those in Alberta who are highly committed to separation, who will vote in October’s referendum to begin taking the steps toward secession no matter what. They’ve been confronted by some of the risks or costs of separation, and hold to their views.

Those people are unlikely to be appeased by the announcement of a new oil pipeline.

But they aren’t particularly the ones who need to be won over in order to deal the separatist movement a crushing blow in October. The people who politicians and activists need to reach are those who fall into what former premier Jason Kenney calls the “frustrated federalist” camp.

These are people who believe in Canada, but feel that Alberta’s getting a raw deal. These are the people who believe Alberta doesn’t get the respect it deserves within Confederation, and that its economic growth is held back, even as Albertans help finance social programs in the rest of the country via equalization. They might not truly, deep down, support secession, but they see it as a way to send Ottawa a message, or to express their discontent. They might be mad about specific federal government policies, or the failure to get several pipeline projects finished in the past decade or so. They might be reassured, given Thursday’s announcement, that Canada can work for Alberta once again.

And yet these may also be the people who might wonder about the wisdom of publicly financing another oil pipeline. Documents that Alberta submitted to the Major Projects Office peg the ultimate cost of the new pipeline at between $35.2-billion and $43.7-billion. It’s unclear just how much of that will be billed to taxpayers. Pembina Pipeline Corp. has signed on for a 10 per cent stake, and there may be Indigenous partnerships that affect the ultimate bill.

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As a gambit to reduce separatist sentiment, the Premier and Prime Minister Mark Carney may, at least partially, get what they want, in convincing some frustrated Albertans that with a rebranded federal government Canada can still deliver the goods. The true separatists are unlikely to be happy with anything short of a full-blown national rupture, and they’ll continue to make noise.

Either way, it seems likely that many Albertans won’t see this as the unambiguous win that politicians are hoping it will be; the costs, and the challenges of getting a major project built in Canada’s fraught regulatory and consultative environment have seen to that. Many Albertans are likely to remain skeptical that the project will ultimately succeed, right up to the moment when the oil begins to flow.