Juno News - Trudeau and Smith clash over Alberta pension debate

00:00:00.000 Nevertheless, I want to pivot to Alberta here because yesterday we saw a rather unique standoff

00:00:14.620 between the Alberta government and the federal government. Alberta has been in the process of

00:00:20.900 weighing in on whether to get out of Canada pension plan and have an Alberta pension plan.

00:00:27.180 So what the Alberta government wants to do is basically say, we think that we can invest our

00:00:32.900 money better. We think it's our money to invest. We want to, as Albertans, manage this ourselves.

00:00:37.640 Now, the government has not said it's going full steam ahead on this. They've said they'll have

00:00:41.680 consultations and they've also said that they want to have a referendum. They want to put it to the

00:00:46.520 Albertans whose money will be invested in this. Now, this is a right the provinces have. Quebecers

00:00:53.880 already have their own pension plan. A few years back, Ontarians wanted to have their own under

00:00:59.840 Kathleen Wynne. And that was something that Ontario voters rather soundly rejected. And the Ontario

00:01:05.640 government backed off. But this is not unheard of. Yet the federal government is treating it as though

00:01:09.540 it is a capital case or to pardon the pun, treat it as though it's a federal case. The federal

00:01:14.920 government from Justin Trudeau sent a letter to Danielle Smith yesterday saying the government

00:01:20.020 will use all means necessary and available to fight this and to inform Albertans how reckless

00:01:26.180 it is, which makes me wonder if they're going to like start doing the ad campaigns driving around

00:01:30.420 Edmonton and Calgary that like Alberta government officials have been doing in Ottawa. But we'll

00:01:35.140 let you never know. Let's discuss this in a bit of detail with Aaron Woodrick, who is the federal

00:01:39.660 director for or rather the domestic policy director for the Macdonald Laurier Institute. Aaron,

00:01:45.760 good to talk to you. Now, you are not an Albertan yourself, but I think you understand provincial

00:01:50.180 autonomy very well here. I can understand Justin Trudeau saying, listen, we defend CPP, we back it,

00:01:56.960 we don't think you should do this. But saying he's going to fight it seems a little bit odd.

00:02:01.800 I don't know if it's that odd, Andrew. I mean, it's not won't be a surprise to most people that

00:02:06.020 the government of Alberta and the federal government are not getting along on an issue. I mean, they come

00:02:10.540 from completely different worldviews. There's a lot of acrimony, a lot of bad blood there.

00:02:14.720 We obviously just came off that court ruling with the No More Pipelines Act, officially called the

00:02:19.600 Impact Assessment Act, where the Supreme Court, bless it for getting it right this time, basically

00:02:23.860 said, look, it doesn't matter that climate change is important. The Constitution says what it says,

00:02:28.960 and you don't have the power to do this. So, you know, the Trudeau government was quite,

00:02:32.980 should have been chastened on that. I'm worried they weren't as much. But this, I mean, look,

00:02:36.320 I think that this pension plan issue is not really about a pension plan at all. It's about Alberta

00:02:42.000 asserting its authority, which, as you point out, it does have. I mean, it can do this. It has the

00:02:47.280 power to do it. Quebec does it, which is often pointed out as an example. If Quebec can do it,

00:02:52.860 why can't Alberta? I think the real question is whether it's a good idea, whether it serves

00:02:56.760 Alberta well, and whether it does really achieve anything other than to sort of have Alberta assert

00:03:03.620 itself and sort of blow off steam and say, you know what, we're going to do this because we can,

00:03:07.060 and we don't trust Ottawa because of the way you act on all these other things. And so we want to

00:03:11.700 take this and do this ourselves. I think that's what's really going on here is there's, this is

00:03:15.900 just a one front and a much bigger sort of political spat. Yeah, I think you're right about

00:03:20.820 that. And I would love it if the debate were purely an economic one for Canadians and Albertans. I mean,

00:03:25.720 Justin Trudeau could have in his open letter said, well, actually, here's a list of the reasons why

00:03:30.160 Albertans are better served by being in CPP. And to its credit, the Canada pension plan does have very

00:03:35.800 good returns. I mean, it's a relatively well-managed portfolio as far as other public

00:03:41.040 pension plans and private pension plans are concerned. And I think the Alberta government

00:03:45.480 will have to give a stronger argument if they do want to go down this road of here's how we could

00:03:50.320 do it better rather than just Alberta first, which look, I think is a compelling argument on a lot of

00:03:55.380 policies. This is the one where I'm not as convinced it is. Yeah. And look, Alberta has a lot of 0.98

00:04:00.300 legitimate grievances when it comes to Ottawa, right? I mean, Ottawa has treated Alberta like a cash

00:04:05.780 cow. Again, there's some confusion on how that is. Things like equalization, I think the way it's

00:04:10.040 structured or prejudiced things, Alberta. Albertans pay more taxes. But part of the reason that is,

00:04:14.480 is that Albertans are just richer. Albertans have the highest per capita income in Canada. So if you

00:04:19.560 were rich in any province, you pay the same level of taxes that a rich Albertan does. So it just

00:04:24.660 happens to be that because Alberta is such a prosperous place, there's more rich people. But all that said,

00:04:29.780 Andrew, I think this government in particular, the federal government,

00:04:33.240 their activity and their sort of relentless attack on anything that they think will help

00:04:38.800 fight climate change has prejudiced Alberta greatly. And it harms Alberta's prosperity.

00:04:43.220 And Alberta's are right to say, you know, you want to have it both ways. You want to benefit from our

00:04:47.820 wealth and prosperity. And yet all your actions are moving to harm us. And so I think the CPP is,

00:04:53.260 in a way, you know, Danielle Smith can make the case that, look, you in Ottawa, you've shown that you

00:04:58.360 care more about things like, you know, getting to net zero than the actual prosperity of families in

00:05:03.760 this country. And so in Alberta, if we're going to take a different approach, we're going to invest

00:05:07.180 in a different way, we're going to have a different focus. I think that may be the sort of the frontline

00:05:11.880 argument is that we're going to make different investment decisions than you are, because we see

00:05:16.080 the world in a very different way than you do.

00:05:18.660 Yeah. And we've talked on the show in the past about a number of these campaigns. I mean,

00:05:22.540 universities are particularly targeted to basically remove their endowments from investments in the

00:05:28.740 oil and gas sector. And we see huge, huge lobbying on this. And I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if

00:05:33.840 the federal government were to at one point, you know, direct CPP to like only invest in companies

00:05:38.760 run by, you know, disabled transgender women that are looking into alternative energies, like,

00:05:43.960 but at this point, that hasn't really happened yet. So I think in Alberta's case, like, yeah,

00:05:47.960 I think they do have a different worldview here. But a lot of people just want their

00:05:52.280 returns to be what they're after. And I don't know if it goes to a referendum,

00:05:56.020 if that's the debate that will really be had.

00:05:58.540 No, I agree. And if we want to talk about better ways to have investment, maybe we shouldn't be

00:06:02.760 talking about these massive pooled funds at all. We could talk about individual, right? There are a

00:06:07.460 lot of countries that have, you have a mandatory sort of individual pension plan that you have to

00:06:12.840 contribute to, but it's portable. You can choose from a bunch of different providers. So, and I think

00:06:17.140 it's a little bit ironic, in fact, that you have a government that ostensibly is more

00:06:20.400 conservative in Alberta, you would think they would be looking at more individualized options,

00:06:24.640 you would look at some of these other countries, like Chile is a good example, a lot of people

00:06:27.500 point to, where you, you know, you are required to make payments, we want, you know, I don't

00:06:32.080 understand it's good public policy for governments to say, we want to encourage, or in some cases,

00:06:36.320 coerce you into saving for your future, but give people more options, then people can shop around,

00:06:40.960 they can pick a pick an investment vehicle that they're comfortable with, has the risk they like,

00:06:44.480 right now, it's sort of like, CPP is all you've got. If we had an APP, well, you'd have,

00:06:49.960 that's a different one, but we're still only talking about a handful of choices. So I think

00:06:53.340 there's actually a more interesting discussion around how to encourage savings in a way that

00:06:58.200 is tailored rather than one size fits all for Canadians.

00:07:02.220 Yeah, and I think that therein lies what Alberta's approach to these things generally is, which is that 0.98

00:07:08.300 when the federal government bullies its way in, whether it's on a carbon tax, or on, I mean,

00:07:13.140 healthcare in a lot of cases, or on this pension plan, it's a very one size fits all solution.

00:07:18.840 And I mean, the backdrop against we're having this discussion, you know, the Senate this week

00:07:23.060 is talking about universal basic income or guaranteed basic income, again, if it were to

00:07:28.300 ever come to fruition, a very dangerous proposition, because federal government takes this one size fits

00:07:32.800 all approach. So do you think this helps or hurts Alberta? Because I think that, you know,

00:07:38.360 the Alberta sort of political environment thrives off of that tension with Ottawa. And when you get a

00:07:42.880 letter like this from Trudeau, I don't think it's the win he thinks it is for him.

00:07:46.760 No, it isn't. But I think we're well past believing that Mr. Trudeau is a uniter in this country. I

00:07:51.900 mean, as much as he spouts off about a division, he's happy to divide if he thinks it serves his

00:07:55.960 purposes. Too often, I think, unfortunately, his tendency is to centralize. This is a federal country,

00:08:02.020 Andrew, it only really operates if we give different regions, you know, maximum sort of leeway to do their

00:08:07.640 own thing. I think that's the only way this country can work. And when you have a centralizing

00:08:11.480 tendency like you do in Mr. Trudeau, it just starts to grate on people because he tries to impose

00:08:17.220 a single vision on the rest of the country, especially in parts that are just completely

00:08:21.080 out of sync with him. So look, I think Albertans are within their rights to explore this. I think,

00:08:26.100 as I said, they've got a lot of legitimate grievances, and I think they're right to push

00:08:29.060 back on things. But I would say the real question they have to ask themselves on this

00:08:33.000 specifically is, will we be better off for it? Don't do this just because you want to stick it to

00:08:37.840 Mr. Trudeau in Ottawa, as tempting as that may be. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

00:08:43.240 You know, look at it in detail. Look at how it will be structured. If it is something where you

00:08:47.100 really think you'd be better off, by all means, pursue it. But don't just do it because of

00:08:50.980 legitimate grievance. I think that might be a mistake.

00:08:55.140 Just to throw one curveball at you, which I'll only do because I learned about it from something

00:08:59.160 you retweeted this morning, Aaron. So I figure you probably know about it more than I do.

00:09:02.680 I understand that the government has once again kicked down the road reforming access to

00:09:08.660 information, which was this big grand promise that the Trudeau government made. They were going

00:09:12.740 to be the most open and transparent government in Canadian history. At one point, they even said

00:09:17.020 cabinet minister's offices and the PMO would be subject to ATIP, which eight years later has never

00:09:22.360 happened. And what do you know? They've also said, again, we'll deal with it. We're not going to deal

00:09:27.320 with this. Yeah. Well, open by default, that I believe was their specific promise. It was going

00:09:32.160 to be this reverse onus. It was just by default. Look, you know, on the one hand, I try not to be

00:09:38.420 cynical. This is a government that, you know, aside from their sort of policy positions, they really

00:09:43.060 presented themselves as a government that was going to do things differently. The style, the way they did

00:09:48.880 business is going to be different. Turns out they're just like the government for them. Mr. Harper's

00:09:53.120 government developed quite a reputation for being secretive, avoiding transparency. I think that was

00:09:57.220 a fair characterization. But the Trudeau government, by almost every measure, including people who are

00:10:02.920 not fans of the Harper government, they're even worse. The Trudeau government is more secretive,

00:10:07.820 more averse to transparency. I think we all know why this is. Transparency sounds great when you're

00:10:12.340 in opposition because it's a tool to beat up on the government. When you get into power, the only

00:10:16.420 thing transparency represents is risk. It's the risk of more problems. It's the risk of people seeing

00:10:21.120 things, seeing how the sausages are made, seeing where you may have lied or embellished the truth.

00:10:25.620 So it's no surprise to me that governments don't want to do this. And in fact, that's why I think

00:10:30.020 the perfect time to do it is this is an opportunity for all the opposition parties to get together and

00:10:35.280 impose the change now, because if they do it now, they're not in government and it only affects it.

00:10:40.020 But that's the only way it's going to happen, because once governments empower Andrew, they just

00:10:43.620 see this as a risk and a danger they'd rather avoid. Yeah, but I'd be very cynical of a government

00:10:49.200 that promised transparency starting whenever the next guys come in, which is I think also part of the

00:10:54.460 problem. But anyway, very well said, as always, Aaron Woodrick with the McDonald Laurier Institute.

00:10:59.520 Thanks for coming on, sir. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

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00:11:09.680 Thank you.

00:11:11.020 Thank you.

00:11:11.540 Take care.

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00:11:14.780 Bye.

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00:11:27.880 Buh.

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Juno News - October 21, 2023

Trudeau and Smith clash over Alberta pension debate

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