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Can this man defend Alberta?

By Kevin Steel ⋅ November 14, 2005 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Everyone knows Jim Dinning, the Alberta premier’s heir apparent, is a real nice guy. But is he tough enough to stand up to the coming attack on his province’s wealth?

It would be the biggest event so far for the man who for years has had to be careful about being too public about his ambitions. On a sunny September day, in the heart of Calgary’s business district, in the trendy Eau Claire market, in an upscale bar with the downscale name of the Garage, 750 people–MLAs, city politicians, business leaders, party hacks and even a few average voters–were about to file in amongst the jukeboxes and bar stools to hear Jim Dinning explain his vision for Alberta’s future. Looking relaxed in black slacks and a shimmering red shirt open at the collar, the 53-year-old with the salt-and-pepper hair is holding court at the back of the bar–which over the months has become the second campaign office for Dinning’s run for the provincial Tory leadership. About 40 people have gathered around a pool table as Dinning explains why he has, for as long as anyone can remember, been waiting patiently for Alberta Premier Ralph Klein to retire gracefully–and take his place as the CEO of the richest province in the country.

“I’ve always looked at government as an opportunity where things can get done,” Dinning, a father of four, tells them. “That’s what drove me into politics in the first place and that’s what drives me to aspire to this job. I think there are an enormous number of things the provincial government in Alberta can do to improve the lives of Albertans. I can be a partisan, but people who know me from days past–I was not always the most partisan politician. I was more the kind of guy that said let’s get these things done because they make a difference in people’s lives.”

If there’s one take-away Dinning seems anxious to leave with his audience these days, it’s his belief in the power of government to affect change. He repeats it often, clearly convinced it’s a message Albertans will rally around. Some observers might find that a bit surprising. After all, this is the same Dinning who, as provincial treasurer under Klein in the mid-nineties, took a hatchet to Alberta’s public sector. He decreed 20 per cent cuts to all government department spending and slashed public sector wages by five per cent, slaying the $2.76-billion deficit and helping solidify the (slightly apocryphal) legend of Alberta as a small-government kind of place. The pro-government message comes at a time when Albertans have an especially distant relationship with their provincial legislators. Most voters realize that, over the last few years, their premier has been gradually slipping into semi-retirement, and they don’t much seem to mind, having re-elected him just last year, with 77 per cent of the seats in the legislature, though you’d be hard-pressed to locate any of Klein’s campaign issues.

Then again, Dinning has stuck mostly to generalities about his own designs for the province, largely sticking to feel-good, blue-sky rhetoric. In a September op-ed for the Calgary Herald, Dinning wrote a positively dreamy blueprint of the province–with a heavy gloss over the specifics: “Let’s invest in growth-supporting infrastructure, without blemishing our balance sheet with new debt. And let’s be unafraid to tackle social issues, such as homelessness, poverty and illiteracy. Let’s be leaders in Canada,” he wrote.

Of course, thanks to Klein’s cruel teasing about when–or if–he plans to ever retire (his latest is, if he gets a poor show of support for his leadership at the provincial Tory convention this spring, he’ll leave), Dinning, and others, have been forced to keep their leadership campaigns relatively quiet and unofficial. But the heir apparent appears comfortable enough that things are winding up that he’s ramping up his public profile a few notches every week, through events like the one at the Garage or just through his occasional “Team Dinning E-News” e-mail updates for supporters and the media. On his website, Dinning says, “it’s no secret that when Party Leader and Premier Klein decides that it’s his time to step down, I will put my name forward.” In fact, he’s well in gear. He’s got 12 hired guns working on his campaign, and manager Alan Hallman says they’ve raised $1 million for the effort (though others put the war chest at three times that). Even before the unofficial start to the unofficial campaign–following the province’s September centennial celebrations–Dinning was working the rubber-chicken circuit, making appearances in 61 of Alberta’s 83 ridings. He’ll have hit them all by year’s end.

But it so happens that Albertans may just be looking for a little more muscle in Edmonton right about now. Over the last couple of months, Ottawa and several other provinces have expressed angst about the growing wealth gap between debt-free Alberta–which will post an estimated $8-billion surplus this year–and the rest of the country, at a time when other regions are struggling with rising energy prices and industrial uncertainty. This summer, federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre, the Liberals’ Quebec lieutenant, mused about the feds’ need to “even things out” between the West and the East. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has called for “significant reform” to Canada’s equalization formula–code, political watchers say, for making Alberta shoulder more of the load. “Both Ottawa and Queen’s Park are positioning themselves, because of, well, power. It’s as simple as that,” says Barry Cooper, a political science professor at the University of Calgary. “They are not prepared to see any fundamental restructuring of the federation.”

Albertans might very well need a strong government in the near future, if only to stand up for Alberta and keep interlopers from grabbing its cash as it takes its rightful place as a dominant economic force. The question is, does Jim Dinning, the man who everyone expects to be the next leader of Alberta, have what it takes to do that?

The grandson of Robert J. Dinning, founding chairman of the Alberta Liquor Control Board, seemed to know early on he was destined for political achievement. James Francis Dinning was student council president of Calgary’s Western Canada high school. After studying business in Ontario, he earned a master’s degree in public administration. He spent summers in Montreal, as a research assistant at the Institute for Research on Public Policy, the political think-tank that was then still the young brainchild of Pierre Trudeau. Returning to Alberta, Dinning went to work as an assistant in the Edmonton cabinet office of Peter Lougheed’s government. In 1979, he was promoted to executive assistant to Alberta treasurer Lou Hyndman.

In 1983, Dinning flirted with the private sector, taking a job in government affairs with Dome Petroleum, but a few months later, Lougheed lured him back, appointing him executive director of the premier’s Calgary office. The following year, Dinning was promoted to deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs, and in 1986, under Getty, was elected as an MLA for the Calgary riding of Shaw. He was immediately made a cabinet minister, with the Community and Occupational Health portfolio. Two years later he became a political celebrity when he was handed the Ministry of Education. He was 36 years old.

When Dinning made the miscalculation of backing Nancy Betkowski in the 1992 leadership race against Klein, he figured his political days were numbered. Betkowski, like Dinning, was the favourite of the Alberta establishment. And, like Dinning, she was an urban, Red Tory, eventually taking on the provincial Liberal leadership after being trounced by Klein (by then, she had remarried, changing her name to Nancy MacBeth). But the new populist premier surprised Dinning by appointing him to head up the provincial treasury, putting him in charge of fulfilling his campaign promise to eliminate the $3-billion deficit amassed under Getty by 1996. Dinning did it a year ahead of schedule. “That still is as much Dinning’s legacy” as it is Klein’s, says Faron Ellis, a political science professor at Alberta’s Lethbridge Community College.

By the time Dinning left politics in 1997, he had cemented an enviable reputation as a prudent manager and one heck of a likable guy. The one scandal that might have hurt him–a stinky loan made by the ministry-run Alberta Treasury Branch to the owners of the West Edmonton Mall–didn’t come to light until he was safely ensconced in the private sector, as vice-president of energy distributor TransAlta Corp. Since then, he’s also served as chairman of the Calgary Health Region, where he was widely credited with implementing private sector reforms, and has sat on too many corporate and non-profit boards to list here. Last year, Dinning stepped down from TransAlta to become chairman of Western Financial Group.

Though out of the political spotlight for eight years, Dinning has connections in the party and in Alberta’s power corridors that are unmatched by any of his potential rivals. Having spent nearly his whole life in politics, his detractors have nicknamed him “the Dilettante,” but his deep roots in the province’s establishment give him an edge they surely envy. “He became one of the establishment’s young prodigies and he’s always had those connections in the Conservative party,” says Ellis. “Looking at the other contenders, there doesn’t seem to be anyone else who has the complete package in the same way.”

A few years ago, six Calgary academics penned a letter to Ralph Klein, the Alberta Agenda, outlining the steps they believed Alberta needed to take to maximize the powers it had been given under the Constitution, and thus, take a more assertive role in Confederation. The five suggestions were insightful, but harmless, since all of the policies–forming a provincial police force rather than using Mounties, collecting income tax provincially, administering its own pension plan, et cetera–were already being implemented more or less in other provinces. Still, the “Firewall Letter,” as it came to be known (a title invariably preceded in news reports by “the infamous”), because of its aim to protect Alberta from Ottawa’s control, had the political impact of a stick of dynamite. Federal Liberals labelled it a separatist manifesto. “It was the kind of document of which Bernard Landry or Jacques Parizeau would be proud,” said one prominent Grit strategist.

One of the authors was Stephen Harper, now leader of the federal Tories. Another was then University of Calgary professor Ted Morton, now a rookie Alberta MLA, considered the dark horse in the race for the party leadership. Ken Boessenkool’s signature was also on that letter. He’s now Jim Dinning’s policy adviser, which makes it virtually impossible to suggest Dinning’s camp isn’t fully awake to the potential threat Alberta faces from envious partners in Confederation. “I think it is a really serious issue, one that I spent part of my political career looking at,” says Boessenkool. “And I have no question . . . about Jim’s desire to make Alberta the best place in Canada to live, and to do what he needs to do both provincially and nationally to make that happen. Jim’s as big a defender as anybody about using the abilities we have in our jurisdiction to make lives better for Alberta.”

And yet, Dinning himself says he has little interest in many of the items on the Alberta Agenda, arguing that collecting its own taxes would only mean the province would be adding another layer of bureaucracy. Same with the idea of setting up a provincial police force. “[T]his notion that we are going to have a second set of police interpreting the same laws? That’s duplication,” he says.

And on Kyoto, where the feds, having recently classified CO2 emissions as “toxic,” and proposed fines for any energy producing industries that exceed Ottawa’s emission targets, have the greatest opportunity to meddle, Dinning isn’t afraid to sound even greener than the Liberals. He’s called for Alberta to become “the world’s clean energy powerhouse,” suggesting that if the government encourages industry to develop better, cleaner technologies, “it will produce 10 Kyotos” in terms of results. As a visionary, he appears unconcerned with what might happen if things don’t unfold with the elegance and timeliness that he envisions.

Ask Dinning about what he’d do if Ottawa showed up on Alberta’s doorstep with a National Energy Program-style cash grab, or an export tax on its oil, and he’ll insist it’s a non-starter. “Clearly a carbon tax simply is not on,” he says. “Alberta’s resources cannot be taxed by the federal government. It’s illegal, period. . . . And we’d do everything that needs to be done to make that not happen.” But what about the potential for the feds to levy fines against the energy sector for exceeding CO2 emissions? Like his old boss Peter Lougheed, who didn’t give Ottawa any warning before he responded to the NEP by turning off Alberta’s oil taps, Dinning says he can’t get specific about what he might do to stop that kind of encroachment. “Vince Lombardi never showed his playbook,” he says. He’s not willing to be baited into what he calls “a pissing match” with Ottawa. “I’m not going there yet,” he says. “And I say yet. There’s too much more heavy lifting, hard work, and alliance-building to be done first.”

What Dinning will say is that he believes “forging and maintaining alliances with other provinces” is key to keeping Alberta safe from Ottawa’s harassment. It’s a strategy he became enamoured of as deputy intergovernmental affairs minister under Lougheed in ‘84. Alberta was leading the charge for free trade with the U.S., but the newly elected Mulroney government in Ottawa was skittish. Lougheed sent intergovernmental minister Jim Horsman and Dinning across the country to win support from other premiers, prompting prime minister Brian Mulroney to sign on to the idea and make it his winning platform for the ‘88 federal election.

On everything from revenue sharing, to health care, to Kyoto, Dinning insists that making friends with fellow premiers is the solution to influencing policy federally. “If you understood what they’re looking for . . . , and say, ‘what do you want to accomplish? We’ll help you get your thing accomplished,’” he says, “then you’re building stronger alliances across the country, such that when that green-eyed monster called envy comes out, you are going to have friends and supporters, people you’ve helped and people who have helped you . . . And they are going to say, ‘Prime Minister, stand down. That’s unacceptable . . . that Ottawa would try that chicanery in Alberta.’ . . . The nation is led not just by one national leader, but in fact there are 13 national leaders sitting around the table. That’s how a confederation is supposed to work.”

But what if your fellow premiers are the ones pressuring Ottawa to punish Alberta in the first place? That’s what the U of C’s Cooper worries about. Remember, he says, “the big drive for the NEP came from Ontario, not from Ottawa.” Dinning, allows Cooper, is “a nice guy and everybody likes him.” But, he adds, “that’s not going to be the issue if this perfect storm comes out of Ottawa . . . He’ll have to say that we’re on our own, that we don’t have any friends, that these guys are after our stuff and we’d better wake up and smell the coffee.”

In October, Dinning issued a press release outlining his views on what Alberta should do with its huge energy windfall. Stepping over the sort of specific and inconvenient policy options that current politicians must consider, he proposed that any initiative be able to withstand a three-point test: “Does it put future generations of Albertans first? Does it create prosperity for all? And does it make Alberta a model for Canada?” But one could just as easily argue that tax cuts are as much an investment in future generations as increasing teachers’ salaries. And the second, “prosperity for all,” question is similarly adaptable to any ideological viewpoint. The third test, meanwhile, is another sign that Dinning is determined to orient his policies based on what the rest of the country thinks–not necessarily what’s in the selfish interests of the province he hopes to lead. “Just having lots of cash and being the envy of Canada puts us against our neighbours and friends. We can do better,” Dinning writes in the news release.

Much of the support for the men Dinning’s team say are his toughest leadership rivals–Ted Morton and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Ed Stelmach–may be from folks who prefer their premier be less concerned about what Ottawa or the media thinks of Alberta’s riches, and focus instead on what works for Alberta. Both contenders are big in rural ridings; Dinning’s strength is in the city centres. “Ted is often positioned as the guy to Jim’s right and, in a sense, so is Stelmach; they are both willing to draw a line in the sand,” he says. “That’s not to say Jim wouldn’t, but it is certainly true he has not indicated his aggressive intention of doing so. It’s going to take a lot of fairly sophisticated framing of what the issue is against Ottawa and Toronto, and it’ll take a while for the message to get across. Otherwise, we are just going to be robbed blind one more time.”

Dinning insists that while he’s anxious to head off any Alberta-envy from eastern Canadians, he’s capable of a fight, should they choose to bring one. He cites as proof his work as a finance minister who made deep cuts despite the bitter outcry of Alberta’s public sector and interest groups. “Check the track record of the guy, who in office was making the tough calls,” he retorts. “Some people are allowed to talk. Others get to do. And I do. I don’t talk.”

Whether or not a battle with the feds ends up being the decisive leadership issue will likely be determined by when that campaign starts. Klein has mused about sticking around as late as 2007, though there’s a slim chance he’ll slip out earlier or be turfed at the March party convention. With the release of the Gomery report on the Liberal sponsorship scandal scheduled around the same time, Prime Minister Paul Martin could look to distract voters from his party’s corruption. The likely target is Alberta, much as it was in 2004, when Martin painted Klein as a menace to national health care, a threat that only he could neutralize. “The Liberals are building up policy arrows in their quiver to crowd Gomery off the front pages,” University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman told reporters in October. “They will pick on Ralph Klein again and say they are against private health care. Of course, more private health care is provided in Quebec than in Alberta, but they won’t attack Quebec because there is the possibility of upward movement for them there. They can beat up on Klein because they have nothing to lose in Alberta.” And if Martin ends up re-elected in the election expected next spring, you can be sure that Liberal-loathing Albertans will be angry enough that they’ll want something more than a boy scout in Edmonton–someone able to push back against Ottawa’s bullying.

That means that Dinning’s opponents will likely do their best to paint him as soft, and worse–a closet Liberal. They could bring up the fact that while he was at the helm of TransAlta, the company donated $25,000 to Martin’s leadership campaign. “It was a corporate donation,” Dinning explains, though he readily admits to personally donating $200 to the B.C. Liberal party, which he calls the “Liberal-slash-Conservative party of B.C.” And it won’t be good for this fiscal hawk’s reputation when the head of the province’s largest public sector union hints that he may back his candidacy–as Don MacLennan, president of the Alberta Union of Public Employees did recently to a Calgary magazine reporter.

Steve Patten, political scientist at the University of Alberta, says the new leader will be determined by who can win new support, rather than draw from the existing Tory base. While Dinning has all but been anointed as Ralph’s successor by the mainstream media, this is not an old-fashioned leadership campaign. “If it was, somebody doing what Dinning’s doing would probably have it wrapped up,” Patten says. In the old days, when party association delegates cast the ballots, connections were everything. But in this one-member, one-vote leadership race, if Dinning can’t mobilize the Conservative grassroots as well as the others, he could end up another Nancy Betkowski. “It’s important to remember that Klein wasn’t seen as someone who could just take the leadership. And Ralph really took advantage of the one-person, one-vote [system],” Patten says.

Gordon Butler, a rancher near Youngstown, Alta., and former president of the Western Stock Growers’ Association, says he’ll be plunking down his $5 party membership fee specifically to vote against Dinning. The 56-year-old says he’s wary of a boardroom favourite, because he believes the Alberta establishment has been in power too long and is getting too comfortable in their positions. “I don’t think Jim Dinning is aware of the concerns in rural Alberta right now. I just haven’t seen him around,” Butler says.

So, after preparing so long for Alberta’s top office, Dinning now finds an Alberta that’s a different place than when he first began: more self-assured, more isolated, more circumspect, and more determined to resist interference from Ottawa. The question facing the Dinning camp is whether Albertans even want as their leader the eternal diplomat, when the time for diplomacy appears to be past–do they need a nice guy once the niceties have been dispensed with? He may not want to reveal his playbook on what may be the most pressing issue facing his province today, but not doing so may become the most pressing issue facing Jim Dinning.

IN HIS OWN WORDS: JIM DINNING ON…:

Fiscal responsibility:
“We will not spend more than we take in; we will live within our means. Having now got the ace of spades we are not going to go back into debt. We don’t need to . . . But being fiscally conservative is not an end in and of itself. It is a means. It’s a value set against which you lead as a government, as a province.”

Education:
“Let’s make sure that in education we put down some markers. Let’s just say that every kid who goes to school in the province today, every child by the time they are 9 or 10 years of age, will read at a Grade 3 level. Every education and economic study will tell you that if a kid is reading at a Grade 3 level by the time they are 10, then 10 and 15 years later they have a better standard of living, they have a job, they have a higher quality of health, they live in and contribute to communities that are stronger, that are safer, that enjoy a better quality of life.”

Health care:
“If there is one area where Albertans want action, it’s in this area. And rather than get dragged into how it is characterized, whether it’s private or public . . . If we focus on eight words–quality health care delivered fast to all Albertans–and we say everything we’re going to do is going to fit in that box . . . [W]e built Alberta on people trying new things, on people taking risks.”

Same-sex marriage:
“I am in favour of the traditional definition of marriage.”

Abortion:
“A woman has a right to choose.”

Alberta collecting its own income tax:
“Some people have been misled to believe that Alberta will set up its own tax collection system and we will collect Ottawa’s taxes. That’s nonsense. Ottawa will continue to collect its taxes. Now you are simply burdening–it’s like Enron was great for the lawyers? A second tax collection system will be great for the accountants. Instead of writing one cheque, you’ll have to write two. And if Alberta says you’re getting a refund, then you have to re-file with Ottawa and vice versa.”

An Alberta-run pension plan, to replace the CPP:
“There is a nugget of gold there. I’ve been part of negotiations around the Canada Pension Plan to cap contributions at 9.9 per cent, to limit the expansion of benefits, because one of the biggest killers of the CPP has been that provinces and Ottawa agreed to the expansion of benefits for Canadians under the Canada Pension Plan. It wasn’t just Ottawa that arbitrarily did that, it was provinces that agreed to that. So we led the charge on limiting contributions, on limiting benefits. I would say if Alberta were to lose future battles about expanding benefits or increasing contributions rates, we should have in my top drawer a plan, an Alberta Pension Implementation Plan, just leave it there, you don’t have to leave it out on the table all the time. But just know that it’s there. Maybe that will be our ace of hearts in future negotiations.”

A reformed Senate:
“I think Alberta should be an active, strong advocate of an elected Senate. Once it’s elected, it will become effective. And then we’ve got to go to work on [making it] equal.”

LEADERSHIP RACE: THE MEN TO BEAT

Based on what they’ve seen on the campaign trail so far, insiders with the Jim Dinning camp are girding themselves for what they see as a three-way contest in the one-member, one-vote run-off for the leadership of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative party. They confidentially predict their man will come in first (naturally) on the first ballot, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Ed Stelmach in second, and MLA Ted Morton third.

Their plan for the race, then, is to woo as many Stelmach supporters as they can. They’ll do that either by convincing them Dinning’s the better candidate, or that voting for Stelmach might let the staunchest conservative, Morton–whom they plan to brand as too radical–come up the middle. But contests like this have a way of surprising. Here’s how the three leadership candidates stack up in the coming race.

JIM DINNING
Pros: Establishment candidate. Strong support in Calgary’s business sector. Organizing and fundraising miles ahead of other candidates. Strong reputation as a fiscal conservative thanks to his stint as treasurer during Alberta’s austerity years. Deep experience in government dating back to the Lougheed era.

Cons: Frontrunner makes him the biggest target. Platform on several key issues remains vague. Out of politics for eight years. Often labeled as a Red Tory.

ED STELMACH
Pros: Longtime MLA. Key and popular player in current government. Outspoken in his determination to defend the province from Ottawa. Could benefit from an “anyone but Dinning” campaign or an “anyone but another Calgarian” campaign. The Vegreville-area farmer is popular with rural voters.

Cons: Untested as a leader. Strong association with the Klein government’s later, less popular terms. Not a strong speaker.

TED MORTON
Pros: Strong rural support. Longtime opponent of federal intrusion into provincial jurisdiction (opposes the gun registry, the wheat board, judicial activism; co-authored Alberta Agenda). Not part of the establishment.

Cons: Political rookie. An intellectual in a province grown fond of populist leadership. Cooler personality than rivals. Labelled by critics as a right-wing radical.

Other rumoured leadership candidates include former economic development minister Mark Norris, who lost his seat in the last election. Education Minister Lyle Oberg is said to have strong support in Alberta’s southern reaches. Community Development Minister Gary Mar was in, but appears to be out again after being scandalized last year over funnelling hefty–and untendered–consulting fees to a former executive assistant, costing Mar his high-profile health portfolio. Justice minister and Edmontonian Dave Hancock has garnered some support from Tories looking for a non-Calgarian leader, and among the province’s powerful legal lobby, but is widely considered to sit to the left of Ralph.

[This article appeared in the November 14, 2005 issue of the Western Standard.]