How do we explain Danielle Smith’s out-of-the-blue promise last week her government will cost out separation by August?

A former Finance Ministry official estimates the start-up cost of an independent Alberta at $299.4 billion and $67.3 billion a year after that

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith – what prompted her sudden willingness to talk about the real start-up cost of a separate Alberta? (Photo: Alberta Government/Flickr).

The folks who control the big bucks in Alberta must finally have realized what Danielle Smith’s separation referendum is about to do to their profit potential.

How else can we explain Premier Smith’s out-of-the-blue promise last week that her government would fully cost out separation by August and her observation at a news conference she was pretty sure the start-up costs would run into the “hundreds of billions of dollars”?

Who would be surprised to learn there have been more than a few strongly worded calls to the Premier’s Office from Albertans with enough clout to ensure someone picks up the phone when it displays their number?

In addition, as Alberta-based investigative journalist Charles Rusnell pointed out in The Tyee last week, it’s probably not a complete coincidence that Premier Smith’s “whiplash inducing” about face came after a former senior manager in Alberta’s Finance Ministry told journalists he’s been asking for records of any cost-benefit analyses of Alberta separation and getting no joy.

“They claim nothing has been prepared,” Lennie Kaplan said in a note to AlbertaPolitics.ca in late May. “I believe they (the UCP government) have not prepared anything because they don’t want to risk riling up the UCP base.”

But if you wanted someone who could make the UCP Government sit up and take notice, Mr. Kaplan is probably as good a candidate as any. After all, he served as executive director of former UCP premier Jason Kenney’s 2019 “Blue Ribbon Panel” on Alberta’s finances that was chaired by Janice MacKinnon. And he appears in the pages of the market-fundamentalist Fraser Institute’s website as author of several commentaries on Alberta fiscal policies, and contributed articles to Mr. Kenney’s now-defunct Energy War Room.

This blog may not serve as a fanzine for the work of the MacKinnon Panel or the Fraser Institute, but people in the UCP government take them seriously, and they are far more likely to pay attention to Mr. Kaplan’s “initial analysis” published yesterday that estimates the start-up cost of an Alberta Republic at $299.4 billion and the ongoing annual costs at $67.3 billion.

The separatist Alberta Prosperity Project – the group behind the original campaign for a separation referendum on this fall’s ballot and many warnings to the premier that her leadership is in danger if she does not toe their line – estimates the cost at a mere $38 billion.

As for the prognosis for uncertainty, that is not an upbeat one either, and growing worse with estimates like Mr. Kaplan’s.

Just the prospect of Ms. Smith’s Oct. 19 Frankenstein question – cobbled together from pro- and anti-separation groups’ referendum petitions to get around court rulings declaring the separation-friendly question that the premier has championed to be unconstitutional – is enough to give your average Alberta billionaire or Chamber of Commerce president the yips.

The unstraightforward question will say: “Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

Thanks, Premier! Economic uncertainty is now guaranteed at least until Oct. 19. And uncertainty, as we’ve all had drilled into our heads for decades by business lobbyists and their political allies, is poison to investment. These days, even liberal economists seem to admit there may be something to this.

But if voters say yes on Oct. 19 to another, constitutional separation vote, the result will be more of the same for years, possibly decades.

First there’d be the wait for the binding referendum – a year later? two years? who knows? In the same time frame there’ll have to be another election, unless the UCP decides to do away with democracy – so what happens if another party wins?

Then, about those negotiations with Canada, how long are they supposed to take? Don’t forget that a legal separation would require approval of the Government of Canada, the House of Commons, and other provincial legislatures, as well as meaningful consultation with First Nations.

Plus, of course, chances are high some of the more intemperate nuts in the separatist movement who are already calling for a unilateral declaration of independence will start threatening violence, and what’s that going to do to the investment climate?

And then there’s the not insignificant matter of the what the United States thinks, keeping in mind the fact that no matter what you think of the man, Donald Trump isn’t going to be president forever, or necessarily even much longer.

By the time we Canadians get around to talking about this particular issue with them, the U.S. will most likely be considerably less in favour of a major disruption on its northern border than it seems right now, which is a way of saying that sooner or later the adults will be back in charge Stateside.

Whatever we would talk about with them is a whole other can of worms, and a time-consuming one. For now, let’s just say that Congress’s Reapportionment Act of 1929 guarantees that U.S. statehood for Alberta is never likely to happen.