Rachel Notley Goes To Washington

In May of last year, I wrote a little piece for newly-elected Premier Rachel Notley offering my two bits on what a sub-federal government like Alberta ought to know about managing its interests in the United States (linked here).  Since Ms. Notley is in Washington this week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to do a bit of stock-taking.

In the spirit of the pile of seminar essays I just finished assessing, I'd offer a "B+" or "A-" to Premier Notley's early management of the U.S. file.

Malcolm Mayes, Edmonton Journal, April 28, 2016

I'd like to say I knew the Premier is a regular reader of my blog, or that I had a hotline to the Premier's office since a lot of what I recommended seems to have happened. I don't have a hotline and I doubt the premier is a fan. Moreover, pats on the back are hard to come by in academia, so I am going to shamelessly accept one for myself here.....





To recap, I offered 12 bits of advice to Notley last spring:

Washington Monument and National Mall, April 2016

1) Canada is "special" but not especially important.
2) Most Canadian Issues are buried in the U.S. bureaucracy.
3) Recognise you are swimming in deep, deep waters.
4) It's a political system you don't really understand.
5) Don't "piss on my rug."
6) Think twice about linkage politics.
7) Climate change black-eye.
8) Put "stable, secure supply" argument to bed.
9) The United States is also a federal system.
10) Don't just preach to the choir.
11) Alberta is important to its neighbours
12) Keep the Washington Envoy, but....

I won't run through an assessment of each of these in detail. However, several things stand out.
 
The Notley government seems to have a far more realistic assessment than her predecessors of what it can hope to achieve in Washington, with or without the assistance of Ottawa. As depicted in the Mayes cartoon above, the United States is a difficult place to get noticed, and, if you do, it's often for all the wrong reasons. The fact that Notley didn't rush off to Washington during her first few months in office was most likely due the full plate of issues she needed to deal with; a steep learning curve being the first non-Tory government in 44 years and a fossil-fuel economy in free fall, just to name two.

Yet, Notley was in the United States last October, reassuring parts of Wall Street that an NDP government knew how to manage its finances. Avoiding Washington was important since it signaled a toned down approach to Alberta's long-standing advocacy on behalf of the province's oil and gas interests. The overriding focus of the previous decade of Tory governments was to profile the importance of Alberta's oil and gas resources to American audiences. It had become a tiresome and predictable message from Alberta (and Ottawa) and had begun to overshadow everything else.

Tory governments were successful in raising awareness of Alberta's oil and gas resources, but in doing so were unprepared for the reaction, particularly from American and European environmental advocacy groups. By avoiding Washington last October, Notley (by design or otherwise) signaled an end to the sledgehammer messaging around the linkages between pipelines, energy, security, and jobs. Moreover, it marked an end to the unhelpful hectoring of the Obama Administration and (not so) veiled criticism of the U.S. political system.

U.S. Supreme Court, April 2016

It's hard to say whether all of this was borne of strategic thinking on the part of the Notley government or a lack thereof, but it was certainly risky here at home. Notley's election made many in the Alberta oil patch nervous. Was the new premier going to solve the energy sectors problems, or make them worse? Over the last year, Notley has become something of a convert to the idea that pipeline access for Alberta's energy wealth needs active promotion; just not necessarily in Washington and not necessarily over the stillborn Keystone XL project. Indeed, the Premier has been actively promoting pipeline projects out of Alberta in all directions and notably rejecting parts of the so-called Leap Manifesto adopted by the federal NDP at their recent leadership convention. Notley is the premier of Alberta, after all.

Today and Friday, Notley is in Washington to speak with thought leaders in a few think tanks and to deliver a lecture at Johns Hopkins University. Pipelines and fossil fuels will undoubtedly be part of the conversation. But, importantly, so will the Notley government's new proposals on climate change mitigation. The debates over whether these measures are significant, enough, or go too far in the context of weak oil prices will go on for some time. But, for the first time, the message Alberta is delivering will be less monotone or heavily weighted toward energy extraction and transportation.

It will be a message shift that those in Washington who follow Canadian issues will pay attention to, including environmental organization. Does Notley's visit amount to a drop in the ocean in terms of its impact? Can Alberta meet with anyone of consequence? Will Alberta make believers out of anyone? Will enough social license be purchased in Washington that Obama will change his mind and approve Keystone XL? Unlikely. The American political system is messy, doesn't move quickly, is that way by design, and is completely distracted by the 2016 Presidential election campaign. But, it's a start.

More important for Notley is that her audience in Alberta perceive she is doing something proactive on the linkage between energy and climate change that has clouded Alberta's economic future.

Finally, I think Rachel Notely's appointment of a career civil servant to be Alberta's Washington envoy last fall has turned out to be a good move; one that may be having a greater impact on everything I've already said than we'll ever know.

U.S. Capitol, East Side, April 2016

Alberta's Washington office was originally conceived of as a high profile listening post and advocacy shop with a set of eyes and ears different from those in the Canadian Embassy and with a voice that would be uniquely Alberta's. I have always appreciated the idea, but the post had become a sought-after patronage appointment for Tory luminaries who might be recognized on the streets of Edmonton, Calgary, or Vegreville, but not on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. More importantly, none of them necessarily knew Washington or the U.S. political system sufficiently to be successful (the previous Alberta envoy, Rob Merrifield, would disagree).

"Career civil servant" is normally not connected to positive decision-making. But in this case, it was exactly the right move. Alberta now has an envoy with extensive civil service experience (including a stint as Canadian Consul General in Chicago, one of Canada's most important foreign appointments) and an appreciation of the challenges of advocacy in the United States that will limit ambitions to what can actually be achieved. That means penetrating the U.S. federal bureaucracy where most Canadian issues are handled, not necessarily the halls of Congress where some Members need to be shown where Alberta is on a map.