The year 2019 will decide whether Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP gets to finish the job of getting more oil to market or become the first party in provincial history to be one and done.
“I know that the opposition wants to sort of revel in what they insist on hoping is defeat, but we’ve made more progress on getting a pipeline to tidewater than any other government has in the last 70 years,” Notley told The Canadian Press in a year-end interview.
Notley will take voters to the polls in the spring after a 2018 that saw her tightly wrapped in the Gordian knot of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. It received a green light two years ago and would triple the amount of oil moving to the B.C. coast and from there overseas where it could fetch a better price.
Notley, while fighting court challenges and the B.C. government over the project, pulled it back from the abyss after the pipeline’s owner started questioning whether it would ever get built. She got the federal government to buy it for $4.5 billion
No sooner had the champagne corks popped than the Federal Court of Appeal ruled in the fall that Ottawa hadn’t properly consulted with First Nation or examined the impact on marine life.
The project is in limbo until those failings are addressed.
“(The court ruling) means it has slowed down, but it is still alive and I think it is going to get done,” said Notley.
The line has come to symbolize not only Alberta’s struggles to get resources to market but also frustration over a stubbornly slow rebound in the oil-based economy.
There have been pro-pipeline demonstrations in recent weeks along with renewed fringe commentary for Alberta to leave Confederation.
Notley has taken to sniping at Quebec for criticizing Alberta’s “dirty energy” and has joined critics who say Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal government has failed — offering sympathy but little else — to sustain one of the core drivers of the national economy.
Political analysts and recent opinion polls suggest Notley remains popular. But Jason Kenney and his United Conservatives will pick up the fight when the election is held, by law, sometime in March, April or May.
Kenney suggests Notley is the author of her own misfortune by bringing in a carbon tax and working with Trudeau, who is making it harder to get approval for energy megaprojects.
“I can understand perhaps why they tried to make it (work with Trudeau) but it has been a complete failure,” said Kenney in an interview. “Even the premier now seems to acknowledge that through the change in her tone. Too little, too late.”
Kenney has a more combative approach and has promised to take the federal government to court over its carbon tax plan.
Polls and political observers say the dominant election issues will be the economy, jobs, and who can help put food on the table.
“If we had an election today, we’d have an overwhelming UCP majority,” said Calgary-based pollster Janet Brown.
“Albertans are singularly focused on the economy and what’s necessary to get the economy moving. At this moment in time, they think Jason Kenney and the UCP would be more competent at managing those things.”
