Alberta spent decades condemning the National Energy Program. Now some of its loudest separatists are counting on the same idea to fund a new nation of Alberta.
The Alberta Prosperity Project has just discovered a revolutionary idea. The only problem is they are 46 years too late to call it revolutionary.
The year – 1980 – That was the year Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced the National Energy Program.
The plan was simple on paper. Increase Canadian ownership of the oil industry. Expand east west pipelines. Reduce reliance on foreign oil. And use Canada’s energy wealth to strengthen the country’s economy.
In other words, treat oil as a national strategic asset.
In Alberta, the reaction was nuclear.
The policy became one of the most despised federal programs in Western political history. It was blamed for driving away investment, interfering with provincial rights and siphoning resource wealth out of the province.
The anger did not fade quickly. The issue helped carry Brian Mulroney to power in 1984. Within a year the policy was dismantled.
For decades afterward the National Energy Program became political shorthand in Alberta. Mention it and people immediately understood what you meant. Ottawa interference. Wealth redistribution. A warning about what happens when someone else decides how your resources should be used.
Which makes today’s separatist conversation a little awkward.
Because the economic pitch behind many independence arguments is built on a very familiar concept.
Control the oil.
Collect the royalties nationally.
Use that revenue to fund the government of a new country.
Keep taxes low while oil wealth carries the load.
If that structure sounds familiar, it should.
The National Energy Program proposed using oil wealth to strengthen Canada as a nation.
The separatist pitch proposes using oil wealth to build Alberta as a nation.
The core economic idea is almost identical. The only real disagreement is which nation gets to run the program.
For forty years Alberta politicians warned that Ottawa wanted to use Western oil to fund the country. Now some of the same political circles are proposing that oil fund an entirely new country instead.
Apparently the concept itself was never the problem.
It was the flag on the paperwork.
None of this means the energy debate itself is irrational. Canada still faces the same structural realities it did in 1980. Most of the oil sits in the West. Most of the population sits elsewhere. Pipelines still have to cross the same geography. And governments still see energy as both an economic engine and a political tool.
Those facts have not changed in forty years.
What has changed is the branding.
The National Energy Program was condemned as federal overreach. Repackage the same idea under the banner of independence and suddenly it becomes the economic blueprint for a new nation.
Politics has always had a short memory.
In Canada’s energy debate, it sometimes barely lasts a generation.
Read more: Column on accountability, Manifesto
Totally agree. I’ve been saying this for years.
This is one of the worst-written pieces of tripe regarding the National Energy Program I’ve ever read. It reads like a grade 4 essay based on the ramblings of a parent who had no idea what they’re talking about in the first place.
First off, the NEP set out to isolate the western Canadian energy market. Using strict control of export permits, and high taxes on exports, the program tried to force producers to accept a “made in Canada” price that was not only significantly below market prices, but below their cost to produce.
Perversely, the export taxes that prevented producers from selling for profit were used for the creation of a state-owned competitor, Petro Canada.
Many investors decided they weren’t interested in paying for the privilege of competing against the government in order to operate at a loss. Jobs were lost and families suffered as a result. And the Eastern Canadian energy market? Well, they didn’t even buy western Canadian oil at the “made in Canada” price. They imported oil from the Gulf of Mexico.
The people of Lloydminster know this quite well. Many of the people whose families suffered from the job losses that naturally resulted from this are still around today, which makes the publication of this revisionist garbage in a publication entitled “Border Pulse” not only insulting to the living memory of the hardship that was so recklessly inflicted, but incredibly out of touch with the community this publication is pretending to have its fingers on the pulse of.
As it pertains to the APP, I cannot seem to find any policy proposal from them that would do what the NEP did: again, impose a below-cost non-market oil price, restrict exports and create a state-owned competitor whom existing producers would be forced into funding.
I do absolutely understand why this was published without a byline, because it would be embarrassing for the author to have to answer the criticism they’ll face for having written something so disconnected from reality.