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Newly re-elected Premier Danielle Smith sure isn’t wasting any time!

During her victory speech, Smith had a stern warning for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the rest of his radical environmentalist team.

Do not proceed with restrictions on electricity generation from natural gas. 

Do not introduce an emissions cap that is, in reality, a de facto oil and gas production cap.

Do not cause our province tens of thousands of job losses.

Do not damage Alberta’s fiscal position.

The Alberta general election is being fought against the backdrop of an affordability crisis.

An affordability crisis that we would argue is primarily being driven by federal government policy.

A whole series of federal laws, regulations, and mandates are pushing prices up and stretching household budgets in Alberta and across Canada.

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At Project Confederation, we regularly talk about the kinds of constitutional changes that Canada needs.

But we’re also aware that often a simple policy change is sufficient, and sometimes a little pressure applied in the right way at the right time is all that’s required to get a result.

Take bail reform, for example, where we made real progress this week.

The 2023 Liberal Party of Canada National Convention was held this past weekend in Ottawa.

Keynote speakers Jean Chretien and Hilary Clinton headlined the affair and the party touted the whole thing as a big success.

“Justin Trudeau and our Liberal team will continue to deliver real results to make life more affordable, grow the middle class and a strong economy, and build a better and fairer future for all Canadians,” read a post-convention press release.

The issue of affordability is dominating the Alberta election, but price hikes are affecting everyone across Canada.

Over the past few months, I’ve written extensively on these very pages about the impact of price hikes on families and specifically about the cost of rising energy prices.

The Alberta election is finally upon us.

Albertans will go to the polls on May 29th in an election that will undoubtedly cause reverberations in Alberta and across Canada. 

For the past four years, the prairies have been united by a common cause - to defend our interests in the face of a federal government driven by ever-increasing centralized control.

We have seen Ottawa reach into provincial jurisdiction over and over again, causing economic harm to our industries and weakening our position in a global marketplace that desperately needs our resources.

The future, not just of Alberta but also of Confederation itself, is very much at stake.

Will Alberta continue to stand up for the jurisdictional division of powers envisaged in the Canadian Constitution and push back when Ottawa tries to usurp them, or will Alberta decide not just to stop fighting back but instead actively help a federal government that wants to legislate our primary industry out of existence?

To answer that question, we should recap how we got here.

After a brief flirtation with nationalizing the West's natural resources, I'm pleased to let you know that the Liberals have now backtracked.

"As prime minister, I'm happy to stand here right now and say we will not be touching the Natural Resources Transfer Agreements," the Prime Minister told a news conference yesterday afternoon.

"Natural resources are constitutionally directed to be the purview of the provinces, and we're not putting that into question," he followed up.

We completely agree, but we certainly won't be handing out any gold stars for ruling the idea out, given it should never have been floated in the first place!

We told you it was coming. 

The Liberals are, once again, thinking about nationalizing the natural resources sector.

How do we know?

They said so themselves!

Are you worried about affordability? 

I am.

Are you worried that the federal government’s policies are going to make it worse?

I am.

As prices rise, each dollar in the household budget gets stretched, making it more difficult to make ends meet.

One might think that the federal government is also worried about how price increases impact Canadians and that they'd be taking concrete steps to give households financial breathing room.

They aren’t.

Earlier this week, Leighton Grey released the latest version of his "Grey Matter Podcast", and I was honoured to be his invited guest.

We talked at length about the "Just Transition", and how it is going to impact the economy across the country, but especially in Alberta.

You can listen to the full podcast episode now, here: