My distinguished colleague Herb Pinder recently penned a gentle criticism of Frank McKenna. It was directed against McKenna’s remarks in the National Post denouncing the Alberta proposal to administer pensions independent of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP.)

McKenna has been a very successful Liberal politician, originally hailing from New Brunswick. A few generations ago ambitious Maritimers headed for Montreal, then still the financial and economic capital of Canada. Ever since the 1970s, documented in the classic movie, “Goin’ Down the Road,” Toronto has been the favoured destination.

That’s where McKenna ended up. And like so many ex-pats he acquired all the enthusiasms of a Laurentian convert. More Catholic than the Pope, as it were.

Herb Pinder’s piece provided ample documentation to justify his “disappointment” in what happened to McKenna. Even though he knew better, McKenna nevertheless adopted the attitudes and the agenda of the Laurentians. Herb was too polite to suggest the obvious motivation: the attractions of power and influence trump common decency and common sense nearly every time.

His silence on this question aside, Pinder was undoubtedly correct that McKenna had switched teams. But that was not the sole significance of McKenna’s new attitude.

Consider how McKenna appears to his long-term Laurentian masters. So far as they are concerned, Frank McKenna is a perfect spokesperson. He has a great smile and many accomplishments. His National Post piece, which details all kinds of things that “might” or “could” go wrong, shows he has a well-developed imagination as well.

As with the other Laurentians, he believes in “national institutions” that “bind the country together.” Here he mentioned the Trans-Canada Highway, “national childcare,” and of course the CPP, which he avers “is a source of international envy.”

Really! You can’t make this stuff up. It used to be our single-payer health-care system that made us the envy of the world until people started measuring costs and wait-times. And now we are supposed to be proud Canadians because to the CPP?

Ask yourself: to what sort of person would a great pension plan appeal?

Years ago, the second job I landed out of grad school was at the now disgraced York University in Downsview, Ontario. The department chairman stressed as a reason to sign on at York, was their great pension plan. I was in my twenties and told the chairman that I didn’t think the attractive pension plan was a major selling point.

Let’s accept that McKenna really thinks that all Canadians are seeking a CPP security blanket to provide meaning to their otherwise pitiful existences. But then how was it even conceivable for those crazy Albertans to think otherwise? Why do so many of them think the current CPP is just organized robbery?

Well, he doesn’t say. What he does say is that opting out would “generate unprecedented national friction,” pitting Alberta against the other provinces and Ottawa. Was that a threat?

Now Frank, if you were getting ripped off, what would you do? And if you knew it was deliberate and by design, why would you continue to take part? To ask such questions is to answer them.

McKenna is now a banker. Yet he ends his criticism of this province with a truly bizarre remark: “balance-sheet federalism will tear our country apart.”

Let’s take a close look at what that sentence means.

Granted, McKenna lives within the Laurentian myth. Thus he thinks that “national unity” is an important political purpose rather than a self-serving fraud invoked to appease Quebec and exploit the prairie West.

One way to ensure that no one ever discusses who pays for what is to dismiss such concerns as “balance-sheet federalism.” In other words, get rid of all talk about balance sheets and we will all get along, quietly abiding by the Laurentian agenda and raising no questions. Strange words from a banker. But more to the point, that horse left the barn somewhere around 1974.

And yet, that seems to be the strategy of the Laurentians, their executive committee, called the Government of Canada, and their handsomely paid spokespersons, including McKenna. In fact, however, living the Laurentian myth without balance-sheet federalism amounts to wilful ignorance and ideological mystification.

This is the context to consider another event: last week Calgary and Edmonton were the scenes of public meetings hosted by the CPP Investment Board (CPPIB) during which senior officials were supposed to discuss how well the national retirement plan was working and why it was so much superior to the nutty scheme proposed by Alberta.

Senior Manager Michel Leduc set the agenda in his opening remarks in Edmonton. He paraphrased McKenna. The CPP, he said, is a “public policy success story” as well as a “national treasure” envied by many other less benevolently ruled countries in the world.

Josh Andrus, executive director of Project Confederation, was also there. He painted a rather different picture.

He reported that a member of the audience asked: was the CPPIB tracking the balance of payments in and out of the CPP as required under s. 113 of the Canada Pension Plan Act? Call it balance-sheet pension management, akin to the use of balance sheets by bankers.

Not his job, said Monsieur Leduc. Besides, they were in the midst of calculating Alberta’s net contributions to counteract the outrageous claims of Alberta. They were based on the independent accounting of LifeWorks published last fall. So, no details are available.

What about the advertising campaign bragging about the glories of the CPP: how much did it cost?

Around three million bucks.

How much is being spent in Alberta?

None of your business.

And because the CPP is compulsory, not optional, why is there any advertising at all? Obviously, not to change the minds of Albertans.

Those of us who are suspicious might conclude that the CPP is operationalizing one of McKenna’s alleged fears — to turn the rest of the country against us with an advertising campaign. Calm yourself, Frank. We’ve been there before. We can handle it.

But that’s not really the point. The books are closed on Alberta’s contributions as well as the cost of propaganda directed against the province, outside the province. That is the effective truth of balance-sheet federalism.

Far from tearing the country apart, an accurate balance sheet is a prerequisite to reform, which means recovering Canadian federalism. But because the Laurentians cannot abide reform — Ontario is the strongest opponent of an Alberta Pension Plan — this explains why leaving this broken and dysfunctional non-federation daily grows more attractive to Albertans.

Alberta's Potential Exit from the CPP

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