If I’d been in Joe Ceci’s (Alberta's minister of finance) somewhat well-heeled shoes these past three years then I’d probably have spent a lot of time in pubs as well.
It couldn’t have been easy for the very likeable Joe, a former social worker and civic councillor, to be dropped into the role of Alberta’s finance minister just as the province’s economy cratered, jobs disappeared and borrowing subsequently skyrocketed.
But Joe, please, it’s time to put those darn suds down and walk away. You’ve dug a big, daft hole with this weird fight to constantly back the provincial craft brewing industry, a battle now spiralling out of control and costing money we already can’t afford. So, come on, can we just stop digging?
This entire, long-running saga of the NDP government’s relentless push to protect local, small-scale brewers at the expense of other similar Canadian operators is bizarre.
First let’s recall – as though we could forget – that we’ve waged a war of words and legalities with B.C. over the planned expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline that would massively increase the amount of Alberta crude making it to tidewater and thus lessen the bottlenecks of oil flowing southward that do so only at a deep discount.
We are talking about billions upon billions of future tax and royalty revenues flowing into provincial coffers – if it had happened sooner then Joe and his colleagues might have stood a better chance of re-election than that orange-coloured snowball now being introduced to the fires of hell.
And the basis of that whole pro-pipeline argument, voiced by Notley’s government on behalf of us all, was a call to come together as Canadians in the interest of the national good – an argument based firmly in overarching fact, by the way.
So why, with the immediate future of his own government along with Alberta’s finances at stake, does Ceci keep turning up at various brewing operations, raising a pint for a photo op, while pledging to fight a protectionist "little-Alberta" campaign and thereby help small-scale beer operations in Wild Rose Country?
Yes, a lot of us like beer. Some of us like it far too much. But, even in our cups, as Shakespeare would say, we should realize what’s important in the greater sphere and what’s not.
In this daft, utterly contrived beer war, Alberta’s lost repeatedly in the courts.
First we slapped on a tariff of $1.25 a litre on everyone importing such suds into Alberta, except brewers in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. And then – after we got into separate rows with both -- they were told to pay up as well.
The argument has been that other provinces do the exact same thing: even worse. Yep, true enough, but that’s why their booze is more expensive than Alberta’s. Try that same argument on a sales tax and see where that gets you while running for provincial office.
So far we’ve had to pay about $2 million in restitution to affected brewers, never mind the copious legal fees involved.
But now a Toronto law firm is putting together a $100-million class action suit against Alberta over this craft beer silliness.
So Joe and his government are currently considering their options. As with all politicians, if it were his actual money at stake over some picayune issue he’d walk away. But when you play with the house’s money you can play on and on and on.
Exactly why are we doing this at a time when Alberta’s accumulating debt faster than we can add another zero to the total? Isn’t doing something about that more important for our finance minister than appearing in staged photo ops at brew pubs?
– Nelson is a syndicated columnist
