MORGAN: Keep your hands off our Heritage Fund, Premier Smith!

Short memories seem to become once a politician gets into office. Premier Danielle Smith forgot her promise from last year's election campaign to cut income taxes for Albertans. When called on that broken promise, Smith said it was more important to take surplus tax dollars and put them in the Heritage Fund to save for Albertans rather than let citizens keep the money in their pockets today. Now, Premier Smith is musing about using the funds in the Heritage Savings Trust fund to "de-risk" projects that can't secure conventional funding through investors or lending institutions. In other words, she wants the citizens of Alberta to use their savings to assume the financial risk that private enterprises aren't willing to. Again, the premier appears to be suffering from a short-term memory lapse. It was only a few short years ago when Jason Kenney used Alberta's tax dollars to backstop the Keystone XL pipeline as private investment dried up. That cost Alberta's citizens $1.3 billion when President Joe Biden cancelled the pipeline upon assuming office. Private investors knew better than to sink funds into the pipeline while Biden was signalling his intent to shut it down. Kenney appeared to have missed the signal. Smith used to be a strong advocate against corporate welfare while she was heading the CFIB and while she was in media. Smith's tune is starting to change for some reason and Albertans had best be concerned. Alberta has a terrible record when the government dips into the business world. MagCan, Gainers, Novatel, and the Swan Hills waste disposal facility were all government backed initiatives and they all soaked taxpayers dearly. MagCan was supposed to help diversify Alberta's economy and the government backed the financing for it while private investors fled. The business didn't even last a year and taxpayers were soaked for the bill. The ugly red brick facility still stands north of High River, today like a monument to the folly of corporate welfare. Smith would have driven past it hundreds of times while she commuted from High River to Calgary but the significance of the building appears to be lost on her. Part of the reason the pitch for an Alberta Pension Plan by the Smith government fell flat was that opponents effectively convinced many Albertans that the provincial government would mismanage the fund. While the Smith government strenously denied they would ever mess around with the fund, their arguments begin to sound hollow as they appear to be unable to resist the temptation to dip into Alberta's Heritage Fund. If they are willing to take money out of those savings and dump them into high-risk investments, what's to stop them from doing the same with a pension plan? The role of the government is to de-risk investment but they are supposed to do it with good provincial policies, not with loan guarantees and subsidies. If Alberta's investment environment is too high a risk to invest in, the government needs to identify why and to reduce that risk. The biggest threat bogging down investment in Alberta has been the Trudeau government and its ideological obsession with shutting in Alberta's energy sector. The Smith government has been using every tool at its disposal including the Sovereignty Act to fight back against Trudeau's malignant agenda and they should be applauded for that. While the UCP government deserves applause for its focus on protecting Alberta's industries from the federal government, they deserve boos for even considering using the savings of Albertans to fund high risk projects. Such policies are contrary to what Danielle Smith has traditionally represented and it certainly isn't what she campaigned upon only a year ago. As the saying goes: Governments are bad at picking winners. But losers are good at picking governments. The losers are surely lining up at the trough while Smith hints that government subsidies may be in the works for them. Government has no business being in business. Smith must remember that wise addage. Perhaps she needs to be reminded of it though.