Advice for Premier Notley: The US File

There was a political earthquake in Alberta this week as Rachel Notley and the New Democratic Party ended 44 years of Tory Party dominance in Alberta. The excitement (shock for many) of victory now turns to the even larger challenge of actual governance. Premier Notley has yet to announce who will hold some of the most important portfolios in the new government, but there are several posts that will be important where the United States is concerned; Energy, Environment, International and Intergovernmental Relations (IIR), and the Premier herself.

For this blog post, I thought I'd imagine what I'd say if Premier Notley were to call seeking some advice on how to engage the United States (my invoice is in the mail).


1) Canada is "special" but not especially important.
There's has always been periodic hand-wringing in Canada about the so-called "special relationship" that animates Canada-U.S. relations, particularly when Americans are caught ignoring or under-appreciating Canada, as George W. Bush did in September 2001 when he noted that "America had no better friend in Great Britain." Canada benefits from a relatively privileged status in America that no other foreigners have, even Brits. However, it's really important to remember that while Canada's national interests are relatively narrowly defined (mainly commercial ties to the U.S.), America's agenda is genuinely global and includes a bottomless pit of issues. America frequently seems uninterested in Canadian issues because it, unfortunately, often has bigger fish to fry elsewhere. Canada periodically contributes to issues high on the American agenda; Afghanistan is a case in point. However, getting on the U.S. agenda usually means there is a problem. For Canada, being under the radar is normally a good thing.

2) Most Canadian issues are buried in the US bureaucracy
One could object to the first point and say that the Canadian economy is important to the United States. Yes, but the asymmetries of power there are stark. More importantly, as Geoffrey Hale at the University of Lethbridge has argued, the depth of economic integration between the two has resulted in most issues of importance to Canadians being handled within the U.S. domestic regulatory process. Some might argue that's a good thing until such time as Canadians seek standing in those processes and classified like any other foreigner. The dust-up over Country of Origin Labeling is a pretty good example here.

3) Recognize you are swimming in deep, deep waters.
 The United States is perhaps the most open, raucous, and competitive of all the world's political environments. As I have noted in several different posts to this blog, the United States is a complex stew of competitive forces that, especially to outsiders, looks like a system paralyzed by inaction. In part, that inaction is a reflection of the diverse, well-organized, and well-financed competition of ideas and power. Moreover, it is also a profoundly open political system (far more open than Canada's) with multiple points of entry for the well-organized to insert themselves (see posts here about Keystone XL).

4) It's a political system you don't really understand.
Canadians can be a little smug about what they think they know about the United States. Some travel, episodes of the West Wing, House of Cards, or some Wolf Blitzer on CNN, and a lot of people think they have things figured out. Hardly. In fact, as one of my earliest blog posts argued, Canada is surprisingly ill-equipped to engage it's most important market. The Keystone XL debacle is a great example of this. But I have heard officials in the Alberta Government argue that the parallel of Canadian premiers in America is a U.S. Senator..... No!!!! The systems are very different and those differences should not be minimized.

5) Don't "piss on my rug."
The historians among you will have read about an incident in 1965 in which Prime Minster Pearson travelled to the U.S. give a speech at Temple University. In that speech, Pearson was critical of America's deepening military involvement in Southeast Asia. President Johnson was not happy, and when he him at Camp David a day later, the President reportedly grabbed the Prime Minister and shouted "don't you come into my living room and piss on my rug." I would argue, for example, that Prime Minister Harper's critique of the Obama Administration's handling of Keystone XL while in New York City in September 2013 wasn't especially helpful. 

The point is, don't head to Washington and start complaining publicly about American policy. It normally doesn't get you what you want, and can sometimes backfire. Quiet diplomacy that takes advantage of Canada's "special relationship" has always been more effective. Moreover, such soft power tactics by Canada are much more in keeping with the construction of Canada's international diplomatic reputation.

6) Think twice about linkage politics.
It's tempting to think that Canadians can offer up concessions on one set of issues in the hope of getting some kind of quid pro quo on something else. The entire edifice of post-9/11 border security cooperation, for example, is premised on an implicit exchange of Canadian border security and anti-terrorism measures in exchange for continued U.S. market access. It's a set of linkages that, I would argue, has not generated any kind of quid pro quo. Canada isn't unimportant to the United States, but formal linkage runs the risk of non-agreement that the U.S. has far greater capacity to withstand. That said, and as I argued in my February 26 post about Keystone XL, putting issues on the table that are connected but not formally linked could be useful. This is a no-brainer if there are lots of good reasons to do them anyway (see next point). In August of 2013, Prime Minister Harper reportedly sent a letter to President Obama proposing a quid pro quo on Keystone XL and greenhouse gases. It's equally unclear why the White House failed to respond. Yet, why offer formal linkage when there are good reasons for action on climate change, period (see next point)?

7) The climate change black-eye.
Alberta put the international environmental bulls-eye on its back in 2005 when the government of the day parked an enormous Caterpillar dump truck on the National Mall in Washington as part of the Smithsonian's Folkways Alive Festival. For Alberta, it was a serious coming-out party in which half the province descended on DC to extol the virtues of Alberta, and the stable, secure supply of oil represented by the Alberta oil sands. It raised awareness of Alberta among U.S. policy-makers, but it turned out to be a call to arms for some of America's well-funded, well-organized environmental organizations, the Natural Resources Defense Council among them. It was a form of international attention to Alberta's environmental record on extractive industries that the Alberta Government, frankly, was unaccustomed to (see points 2, 3 and 8).

In her election-night victory speech, Premier-elect Notley noted that a major task of her government would be to remove the black-eye Alberta had sustained over its environmental record. Part of doing so in the United States will be a simple change of tone and rhetoric (see point 5). However, it's also about demonstrable progress on enforcement of existing environmental legislation, new standards for land reclamation in extractive industries, and proposals for dealing with Alberta's major contribution to Canada's CO2 emissions growth.

This suggests that much of the gains to be had for Alberta in removing its environmental black-eye can be found in Ottawa, not Washington. Late this year in Paris, the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be meeting to hammer out a replacement to the Kyoto Protocols. As of today, Canada has yet to put it's proposals on the table. We know where the United States is with its own proposals; likely to be along the lines announced in the Obama Administration's important agreement with China this past November (link to agreement here). The new Notley Government should push Ottawa to put similar sets of proposals on the table in advance of the Paris meetings. If the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases are headed in this direction, everyone else is going to end up there too.

8) Put "stable, secure supply" argument to bed.
Recent Tory governments have been telling virtually anyone in America that will listen that, relative to the Middle East, Alberta represents a stable, secure, long-term supply of energy. For a while, that argument resonated. However, as environmental concerns grew, and as the fracking revolution in the United States has transformed American consumption, the "stable and secure" argument has fallen flat. Moreover, it misrepresents Alberta as just another petrostate-- albeit a friendly one. Oh, and while you're at it, get rid of Ezra Levant's "Ethical Oil" argument (should be an easy one for Notley). I've never understood why Levant has been so offended by critiques of Alberta's extractive industries. I think he and I would agree that such critiques are a flattering byproduct of the fact that Canada is a liberal democracy. However, that isn't a reason for those critiques to be silenced.

9) The United States is also a federal system.
 Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called federalism the "laboratory of democracy." In both countries, the experience of competition among federal and sub-federal jurisdictions has produced key policy innovations which are eventually adopted nation-wide. Yet, like Canada, America has its own sensitivities where federalism is concerned. Provincial premiers are among the most powerful and autonomous sub-federal leaders in the developed world. Within Canada, they command tremendous influence over policy. However, that autonomy does not necessarily extend to the United States where American officials have long been wary of directly engaging Canadian provinces; Quebec and the periodic pursuit of sovereignty have been key here. Policy-makers in Washington would rather deal with Ottawa than be accused of "divide and conquer" tactics. I've shamelessly linked here to a piece I've written on this subject.

Hence, Canadian premiers should have modest expectations about what can be achieved in Washington through their direct intervention and representation. Messaging will always be important, but policy changes flowing from those efforts will be tough to detect.

10) Don't just preach to the choir.
Washington is a tough place to get noticed, so meeting with the narrow sub-set of sympathetic policy makers, industry supporters, or expats interested in Canada is guaranteed to generate a crowd for your speech and get you some press back home. However, meeting mainly with those who agree with you on a policy issue, like Keystone XL, doesn't really advance your cause. Jim Prentice began to change this approach during his brief tenure as premier. Premier Notley would be wise to continue what was started and meet directly with those who disagree with her government's policy. Her repeated assurances to the oil and gas sector in the days after her election suggest she already has this mind-set.

11) Alberta is important to its neighbors.
Rather than expending significant resources in Washington fruitlessly trying to influence policy, Premier Notley would be wise to expand the investment Alberta has put into its interactions with counterparts in nearby American states where common and overlapping interests on a range of issues have the potential to create leverage with the respective national capitals. Continued investments in the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER) and regular meetings of western premiers and governors ought to continue. Both of these have been important, but under-utilized fora. Why not push for the expansion and formalization of the agendas considered by each? Alberta has been a key driver of important initiatives aimed at eliminating barriers to economic activity within Canada; the New West Partnership for example (see blog post about that). Why not try and extend some of this agenda to Alberta's American neighbors? There would be a thousand objections, not the least of which would come from Ottawa and Washington. Yet, for how long could either capital object to states and provinces working on shared problems like watershed management, transportation corridors, carbon trading schemes, or renewable energy before they themselves signed on (see point 6 again)?

12) Keep the Washington Envoy, but....
The last years of the Klein government saw the formalization of an Alberta representative housed in the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Admittedly, the Alberta representative is a relatively expensive proposition that few other provinces have repeated. Moreover, to this point, that representation has been filled with high profile Albertans with close ties to the Tories. Since high profile Albertans are not household names in DC's crowded diplomatic and policy communities, I would prefer to see this position filled on the basis of more merit than patronage. However, I still see the value in having a separate set of eyes and ears on the ground in DC to advance Alberta's message and be on the lookout for legislative and regulatory issues of particular interest to Alberta. The foreign service officials in the Embassy and the Ambassador do a fine job, but represent the whole country. Perhaps the most important function Alberta's representative can continue to play in DC is to be a permanent fixture in relationship building and message delivery (points 6, 7, and 9) in a marketplace of intense political debate where issues rapidly rise and fall off people's radar screens. Periodic missions to DC by the premier or members of cabinet are simply not enough.