Mr. Prentice goes to Washington....

The number of long-time journalists with deep institutional and historical knowledge remaining at Canadian newspapers is dwindling, but one of my favourite observers is Graham Thomson, provincial affairs columnist for the Edmonton Journal. His commentary is an astute dose of reality about how Alberta functions politically. This past week, Alberta Premier, Jim Prentice made the latest of a long-line of high-profile trips to Washington, D.C. aimed at promotion and advocacy of the provinces interests in the U.S. capital. In an editorial Thursday morning Thomson repeated an observation he's made before about the many high-profile trips made by Alberta premiers to Washington, D.C.: it's all about politics at home!

It is a point that merits repeating when ever a Canadian politician, of any order of government, goes the the United States. It is also a point that will undoubtedly be repeatable for generations to come. Yet, Premier Prentice's trip to the Imperial Capital last week was different. While these are early days in Jim Prentice's leadership, he has thusfar demonstrated an unusual sophistication about the American political system and the challenges Canadians confront there.
Fishing in the Dark?

Alberta premiers have been going to Washington for decades. Indeed, one of the first to take an active interest in the independent promotion of Alberta's interests in the American capital was Peter Lougheed in the 1970s and 80s. Frequent visits to Washington were mirrored by a corresponding expansion of policy expertise about the United States within the Alberta civil service. Some of this activity was the result of traditional tensions within Canadian federalism and an ingrained inclination to be suspicious of Ottawa's representation of provincial interests abroad. This activity was, in fact, the origin of Alberta establishing it's own interests office in Washington, D.C. in 2005, the genealogy of which I have written about here.

Yet, until recently, the frequent sojourns to Washington by Alberta premiers had a cookie-cutter quality to them that raised questions among observers about the utility of such trips. A definitive story about the decline in sophistication of Canadian diplomacy in the United States during the 1990s has yet to be written. However, a mixture of cuts to the federal foreign service, the closure of consulates in the United States, and a general reduction in Canadian defence spending within NATO all contributed to a shrinking Canadian footprint in U.S. policy circles. In effect, there were fewer Canadian eyes and ears in the United States. At the same time, Mexico was doing exactly the opposite, arguably building an entire generation of sophisticated observers that continues to pay dividends today.

The rapid policy changes in the U.S. following the 9/11 terrorist attacks laid bare some of the inadequacies of Canadian understanding of the American political system. Indeed, the 2003 discovery of Mad Cow disease on an Alberta farm, subsequent closure of the U.S. market to Alberta beef, and the inability of both Ottawa and Edmonton to reopen the border further emphasised the weakness of Canadian influence in the United States.

Even at it's most influential, Canada doesn't often register in American policy circles. This has frequently worked for Canada in that being on Washington's radar often means you have drawn attention because you are a problem (ie. North Korea, Syria, etc). Yet, Canada faces another daunting hurdle in that the depth of North American economic integration has created a situation in which most issues of importance to Canadians are dealt with inside U.S. domestic regulatory processes. Canadians clearly benefit from such degrees of integration, but also face challenges when there are problems because Canadians are nevertheless still foreigners (see Geoffrey Hale, So Near Yet So Far, for a complete treatment of this argument). 

While these are problems Canada as a whole has regularly encountered, Alberta has seemingly encountered more of these problems of late than others. The perennial softwood lumber dispute always looms, but in recent years there has been the Mad Cow mess, Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) and, of course, the Keystone XL pipeline.

The deep and complicated waters of the American political system frustrate Canadians. But thus far, Premier Prentice seems much closer to "getting it" than almost all of his predecessors.

Last week's sojourn to the Imperial Capital includes some fairly high-profile meetings and stops with the likes of World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Romeo, a speech at the American Chamber of Commerce, and the meetings with Wall Street financial analysts. It was an impressive lineup that went beyond paying courtesy calls on the "usual suspects": essentially all of those who already support your position, public events that mainly draw ex-pat Canadians or unpaid Congressional interns. 

Keep Your Friends Close, Your Enemies Closer

Of particular note was the Premier's meeting with the executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Peter Lehner. For those of you following the Keystone XL fiasco, NRDC has been one of the more outspoken opponents of the project from the outset. In my view, the willingness of an Alberta premier to meet with NRDC represents a seismic shift. Until recently, the Alberta Government spent a lot of time vilifying NRDC as a group of environmental radicals. In fact, NRDC is one of the best financed, most respected environmental advocacy groups in the United States. Moreover, they have earned an impressive degree of access and respect within the the policy-making process in Washington precisely because they are not considered radical. Trying to define them as such in the context of Keystone XL has been a loss-leader for Alberta.

It was a strategy that revealed a basic failure to appreciate the basic differences in political institutions and culture between the two countries. As I have written about elsewhere in this blog, the American political system is far more open than Canada's. To Canadians, America looks impenetrable, chaotic, and riven with special interests that paralysed process. That's right, but much of it is by design. Environmental policy is a particularly good example where well-organised, well-funded, and smart organisations can find multiple ways to access a very open U.S. system. Canada, by contrast, is a relatively closed system where public consultation on environmental issues are concerned (see paper on this topic written by my colleague Dr. Ian Urquhart).

Two Thumbs Up

Hence, I have to score Premier Prentice's trip to the U.S. last week as a major success. Keystone XL is still a long way from being built, and a meeting of the minds with NRDC isn't going to happen, but last week represents a bit of a sea change in Alberta's approach to the U.S. Prentice seems to realize where Canada fits in American policy-making (not very high), and how hard it is to move the American process in any particular direction (even the well-financed and -organized are frequently frustrated). Hence, recent setbacks on Keystone XL have been met with disappointment, but also a more humble appreciation of process. Gone are the shallow, contemptuous, and unhelpful, critiques of the U.S. political system. Present is a new-found patience with process, and a realization that Keystone XL has, rightly or wrongly, become about much more than a pipeline in the United States.

Perhaps it's a result of the Premier's time in the federal government, perhaps it's the recent (and positive) changes in the leadership Alberta's Ministry of International and Intergovernmental Relations, or that someone's been reading this blog? What ever the case, let's hope this is the start of a more sophisticated, and possibly successful, period in Alberta's advocacy efforts in the United States.