Pension becomes another Alberta-Ottawa fight. But this time, Trudeau's on offence

Jim Dinning, engagement panel chair: Thank you, Duane from Camrose. We appreciate all your comments on the potential Alberta Pension Plan. Isn't this telephone town hall format a swell idea? Sarah, please put through the next call.

Operator: Our next commenter is Justin, and he's on the line from Ottawa.

OK, so it didn't quite happen this way, but may as well have.

As limited as the province's engagement process has been thus far on Alberta going it alone on pension — a sunny-side-up questionnaire and phone-in forums — the largest stakeholder in this matter was bound to weigh in.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued his apparent opening salvo in what's becoming a federal-provincial pension dispute, and it was an open letter to Premier Danielle Smith. This sort of intergovernmental communications is part unquiet diplomacy, part public relations, and Smith should know, as a frequent practitioner of this epistolary gesture.

Trudeau's public plea to not rend asunder the Canada Pension Plan comes nearly one month after Smith launched her persuasive go-it-alone pitch for Albertans to pay less, get more, and take for themselves 53 per cent of the national retirement fund's assets.

"The harm it would cause is undeniable," the prime minister wrote. "Withdrawing Albertans from the Canada Pension Plan would expose millions of Canadians to greater volatility and would deny them the certainty and stability that has benefited generations."

Smith, who recently warned Albertans would freeze in winter blackouts under Ottawa's net-zero plan, promptly replied with a Dear-Justin letter, accusing him of trying to "stoke fear in the hearts and minds of Canadian retirees."

There was not a single number in Trudeau's letter, with no attempts made to counter the provincially commissioned report from Alberta, which stoked hope the province is entitled to $334 billion of CPP assets, and Alberta Pension Plan's annual contribution rates could initially be $1,425 lower for Albertans. Smith says that compares to "only" $175 more for those in the eight remaining CPP provinces.

"The Prime Minister would be far more constructive if he responded and gave us an alternative calculation," Smith told reporters. "Like, what does he think the actuaries would say?"

Not only has Ottawa not provided its own analysis, nor has the pension-stewarding Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, whose executive Michel Leduc suggested last month that Alberta's likely asset claim is around or below 20 per cent, without showing CPPIB's arithmetic.

Rather, the pension board issued this week a commissioned critique of Smith's engagement process thus far, which consists of cheery ads, a website that only touts the idea's virtues, a survey that doesn't offer chances to naysay, and no in-person consultations.

In Google searches this week, I spotted an ad from the province headlined "More Alberta, Less Ottawa" — the old anti-Ottawa activists' refrain from the 2001 "firewall letter" that advocated the pension withdrawal. At the first telephone town hall of his engagement process, Dinning himself evoked that old slogan to characterize the Albertans who believe the answer on an APP is "yes, no matter what."

While the Dinning panel and ads lean solely on Alberta's Lifeworks report, economist Trevor Tombe has produced his own financial appraisal, estimating the provincial report overstates the province's fair claim by half or more — a starting pool for a provincial fund that wouldn't mean quite as rosy an upside for ratepayers or pensioners.