Among these initiatives, the Wildrose's policy book calls for the creation of an Alberta Pension Plan, which would see the province follow Quebec's lead and withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan.
Rivals contend such talk would turn back the clock and see Alberta become more insular inside Confederation.
But Smith believes such proposals simply reflect the province's size and growing economic clout.
"We are interested in looking at ensuring that Alberta has an opportunity to pursue its full range of options under provincial jurisdiction," Smith told reporters this week.
"Our members are open to the idea of looking at an Alberta Pension Plan and we're going to pursue that — the feasibility of it — to see if it would actually make sense."
A Wildrose government would also do a feasibility study on a provincial police force, said Smith, although the province signed a new deal last year with the RCMP that runs through 2032.
Those two ideas were some of the contentious recommendations made in the so-called firewall letter of 2001, penned by a group of Alberta conservatives who called on then-premier Ralph Klein to exert the province's full powers against an encroaching federal Liberal government.
Signatories included Stephen Harper, at the time the head of the National Citizens Coalition, Tom Flanagan (now the Wildrose campaign manager) and Ted Morton, the governing Progressive Conservatives' current energy minister.
Today, Wildrose has also pledged to "aggressively address" the issue of transfers with Ottawa and the other provinces.
Smith said Alberta must never accept a repeat of the current equalization formula, which her party says is unfairly generous to provinces such as Quebec at Alberta's expense.
The Wildrose leader said the fiscal imbalance, at its peak, has seen Albertans pay $20 billion more in taxes to Ottawa than it received back. Among the options laid out in the Wildrose policy book is a constitutional challenge on the equalization issue.
And Smith, whose party shares many ties with Harper's conservatives, said she expects the Wildrose would find a "partner" in the federal government.
"We finally have a majority government with a prime minister from this province who understands our needs and understands provincial rights and is willing to work with us to make some of those changes to rebalance some of these issues in our federation," she said in an interview with the Herald this week.
Neither Jason Kenney, the federal Conservative political minister for southern Alberta, nor Ted Menzies, Alberta's minister of state for finance would comment on the matter Friday.
But the idea of withdrawing from CPP or developing a provincial police force have long proven controversial and were ignored by Ralph Klein's government of 1992 to 2006.
Progressive Conservative campaign strategist Stephen Carter said the Wildrose's approach to federalism would be to "bring a sledgehammer when you need to use a finishing hammer."
Moving to a provincial pension plan or getting into a pitched fight on equalization sounds good on paper, but "would likely wall us off from the rest of the country at a time when we need the rest of the country more than ever," he said.
Tory Leader Alison Redford, who's tried to cultivate a relationship with both the provinces and the Harper government since becoming premier last fall, has seen her co-operative tack pay off, said Carter.
He noted there was muted response from other provinces to the changed federal health transfer, which will mean an additional $800 million to $1 billion in federal funding for Alberta annually.
"Premier Redford believes Alberta should be a leader in Confederation. We should walk away from the firewall ideas of the past," he said.
Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman said such isolationism is a distraction from the real issues affecting voters.
"Danielle wants to talk about all these other things and firewalls. That's very right wing policy," he said Friday. "It's Tea Party policy."
But Smith, who has advocated for bilateral energy agreements with sympathetic provinces such as Saskatchewan and British Columbia, said she's not concerned about alienating other provinces.
"Someone's got to say the system isn't working. Someone's got to tell Quebec and the other provinces they can actually strive for something better. They don't have to constantly be looking to Ottawa to transfer dollars to them to be able to meet their pressing local needs. I believe they'll accept that challenge. It may be a little tough to accept that initially," she said in the interview.
Bruce Foster, a policy studies professor at Mount Royal University, said that while there are some inequities within equalization, the distribution of funds basically reflects Alberta's wealth.
By raising such a "bogeyman," Smith is tapping into a deep vein within Alberta politics that casts the province as both assertive and insular, he said.
"Firewall Alberta is derided across the rest of the country," Foster added.
"How good would that play out for Stephen Harper to be saddling up to the richest province and saying, 'Yeah, you know you're right, screw the rest of them?'"
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: James Wood
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