Ken Boessenkool: Jason Kenney cannot win an equalization referendum

There is no good outcome for Alberta's premier ... and several ways he can lose.

By: Ken Boessenkool

A keen observer of Alberta politics recently asked me if I could think of a single reason — strategic, political, practical or otherwise — why it makes sense for Jason Kenney to follow through with his referendum on removing the equalization clause from the Canadian Constitution. 

I quickly said “no,” because my reflexive response is that democratic reform is for losers. 

Yet there was once a time that I thought a referendum was a good idea, but the reasons are a bit convoluted, so let me set the stage because it does, at first blush, seem relevant to Kenney’s current plight. 

Christy Clark was elected leader of the B.C. Liberals in early 2011, a race in which I was initially deeply involved. A key reason a leadership race was necessary was Liberal premier Gordon Campbell’s harmonizing of the provincial sales tax with the federal GST. He announced that he would harmonize mere months after a provincial election in which voters couldn’t recall any such promise to do so. In fact, many voters seemed to recall a fairly strong promise not to do so. B.C. voters were understandably furious.

In the scramble to keep his job, Campbell mused about holding a referendum on the decision. He resigned within months but not before conceding that any such referendum would be binding. 

Before that referendum could be held, Christy Clark had been elected by B.C. Liberals as their leader and was premier. There was a vigorous debate within her senior team about whether to go ahead with the referendum.  

One side argued to let bygones be bygones. Any referendum would just remind voters about why they were so mad at the B.C. Liberals (and former premier Campbell). On this view a referendum on the HST was a bad idea. Move on, they said.  

The other side side argued that B.C. voters needed to vent their anger at Campbell and if they didn’t do it via a referendum on the HST, they would do it in an election on Christy Clark. On this view, a referendum on the HST was a good idea. It would allow voters to vent … and move on. 

The latter side won the argument. The referendum occurred, voters rendered judgment on the HST (and Campbell), the HST was unwound and I believe to this day that this was a necessary, though by no means sufficient, condition for Clark’s stunning electoral victory 18 months later. 

Which brings us back to Kenney, who by all the current polling accounts is in a situation not unlike Clark — well behind in the polls and struggling for traction. So perhaps a referendum on equalization would give voters a chance to render a current judgement on Kenney and thereby give him a clearer runway to the election in 2022. Maybe a referendum would satiate Alberta voter anger and allow a fresh start for Kenney. 

And yet. While Christy Clark won whatever the result of the referendum there, it seems to me that Jason Kenney loses whatever the result of the referendum here. 

If voters use the referendum to deliver what seems to be their current judgement of Kenney by defeating it, this will be a monumental rejection of a central plank of Kenney’s agenda since he became leader of the United Conservative Party. He will wear the result, not someone else (as the case with Clark, which is why she didn’t campaign for either side in the referendum). 

And yet Kenney may well be in even worse shape if the referendum passes. First, the chances of seven provinces with half of Canada’s population agreeing to remove the equalization clause is simply a non-starter. Even Erin O’Toole, should he be prime minister later this year, will face similar constraints that Stephen Harper did when he reformed the program to look much like it does today.  

Second, even if the clause is somehow removed from the constitution, other federal spending — health transfers, social transfers, defence spending, etc. — don’t have their own constitutional clauses so it seems to me equalization can easily continue to exist without its own clause. 

But what if the purveyors of this constitutional referendum gambit are right — that somehow a referendum forces the federal government and other provinces to the table to negotiate? What’s to stop one, two or all four Atlantic provinces from having referendums to remove provincial ownership of natural resources from the constitution? Seems to me all of the have-not provinces might be open to giving up equalization if Ottawa could collect all natural resource revenues from the three provinces that have big endowments of them — B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan — and use the money to run more programs across Canada.  

And since you need seven provinces to pass a constitutional deal, does Alberta want to place its control of natural resources at the whim of what would then be Ontario’s swing vote? Other than a few really bad years in Ontario coupled with some stellar years in Alberta which seem unlikely to be repeated, Ontario really doesn’t have an oar in the equalization row, but it might benefit from the federal government spending Alberta resource revenues. 

In short, it’s not clear that winning the referendum puts Kenney in any stronger political position than he’s in now — with a good chance it will put him, and more importantly Alberta, in a weaker position. 

So my reflexive response is also my considered response: skip the referendum, Premier Kenney.

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