On the day after celebrating his election win in Calgary, Premier-elect Jason Kenney appeared before the Alberta legislature with a sign declaring that Alberta is open for business.
Although the polls predicted it, a landslide victory by the UCP seems to suggest that this election was indeed about jobs, economy, and pipelines.
The city of Calgary, who voted strongly in favour of the UCP, has the highest unemployment rate of any major city in Canada at 7.6 per cent. Calgarians seem to believe times are tough, and it’s easy to see why the UCP was able to gain so much ground in the city.
The city has experienced significant challenges since 2014, when the oil industry experienced a major price crash. Before the crash, the city’s unemployment rate was the lowest in Canada.
“My guess would be that people are scared, and when you become scared you tend to be more conservative,” said Ron Kneebone, an economist at University of Calgary’s school of public policy.
According to Kneebone, many of the people who voted for Kenney had gone “all in” on the oil and gas industry, an industry which has experienced challenging times in the last five years.
Many of those people Kneebone says, who are now in their 40’s and 50’s, left school early for high paying work in the oil sands, or shaped their post-secondary education with skills specifically catered to the energy industry. They’re far enough into their careers that going back to school now and retraining for a new career is practically impossible.
“For those people this is really a disaster, and they’re scared and frustrated and looking for an answer,” said Kneebone. “I think that’s the basis for why people voted for the UCP, Jason Kenney is offering an answer.”
What’s the Problem?
According to Duncan Webster, policy and government relations manager the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, it’s been a tough few years in Calgary for a variety of reasons.
He thinks all of these challenges are being exacerbated by the layering on of costs by every level of government, with policies like carbon taxes, regulatory barriers preventing major projects from moving forward, and employment code modifications.
“While most of these decisions have been made with the best intention in mind, and on their own, these individual policies probably wouldn’t be a significant issue, it’s when they are layered together and added on businesses in a very short time, that’s when businesses start to feel the impact of all of those policy changes,” said Webster.
Where do we go from here?
What comes next will be interesting; it remains to be seen what can be done for an industry that is not only experiencing regulatory issues at home, but significant competitive price challenges internationally as well.
Webster believes there is still a lot of optimism around the city, and whoever the next government is needs to look at all policy decisions through the lens of business competitiveness.
“Whatever lever the next provincial government decides to pull, we ask they start looking at that through the business competitiveness lens and making sure we’re not putting Alberta and Calgary companies at a disadvantage with the policy decisions they decide to make,” said Webster.
“There is a truth to everything, but the truth is nuanced, vague and not always clear cut,” said Kneebone.
Kneebone believes that while people are hopeful a new government can bring positive change to the oil and gas industry, he doubts that Alberta will be able to go back to the good old days.
“I get frustrated when people talk about a recession, this is not a recession, a recession suggests that you are going come back to where you were,” said Kneebone.
“I think the world is changing and we need to start getting ready for it.”
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Featured image: Mark Wiseman