Alberta Advantage? No way
The Globe and Mail

By WILLIAM THORSELL
Monday, June 23, 2003 - Page A13

 
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein is in Washington and New York this week to promote his province's virtues in a competitive world. "In New York, I'll be selling the Alberta Advantage to financial leaders who want to hear about our robust economy and opportunities for investments," he says. What does this have to do with Alberta's conspicuous opposition to gay marriage?

The Alberta government always puts capital letters on the words Alberta Advantage. What is it? The official description is this: "Alberta offers a wealth of opportunity to residents, business people, tourists and visitors alike. It's the Alberta Advantage."

Much of the rhetoric focuses on low tax rates, courtesy of high petroleum revenues, and there is no doubt about that. Alberta offers an attractive combination of low taxes and good public services in many fields, especially health care, where Edmonton ranked No. 1 in the recent Maclean's survey of Canadian health systems. Alberta is good place to get sick.

Alberta's economic prosperity is abetted by its wonderful natural landscapes, the mosquitoes and terrible winters aside.

If you were just an economic animal that liked the outdoors and could spend January through March in Mexico, the Alberta Advantage would be quite convincing. And yet . . . .

Mr. Klein angrily pointed out last week that the Alberta government's opposition to recognition of gay marriages is not a superficial reaction to recent court rulings or Ottawa's decision to eliminate discrimination against gays in this field. No: Alberta made it quite clear five years ago that it would never endorse gay marriages as the price of accepting the Supreme Court of Canada's insistence that Alberta's human-rights legislation apply to gay people in matters of employment and such.

Alberta came close to using the "notwithstanding" clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to allow continued discrimination against gays in housing and employment, but the contradiction in doing so was so ludicrous that even rural Tory backbenchers took pause. Mr. Klein was able to fend off a caucus revolt, in part, by promising that marriage in Alberta would never fall to the equality rights of homosexuals under the Constitution. It's just not part of Alberta's DNA.

So we stand corrected: Alberta's fervent desire to get around Ottawa's jurisdiction and the judgment of the courts on this central matter of discrimination is deeply rooted and even profound, not some off-the-top reaction to the latest news. Alone among the provinces, Alberta will try to find some way to ensure that gays don't share in the blessings and privations of marriage (as though there were only so much marriage to go around).

American academic Richard Florida has made a name for himself by analyzing the advantages that some cities have over others in attracting the kind of talent that makes the world go 'round these days in high tech, research and innovation.

In The Rise of the Creative Class, Prof. Florida, who lives in Pennsylvania, explores "new models for economic development that I call technology, talent and tolerance." He has expanded this research in many speeches and papers, including The Economic Geography of Talent. The Alberta Advantage looks pretty feeble in this context because it doesn't deal with the whole person in its concept of the contented individual.

In highly mobile societies, Prof. Florida describes strong correlations between the economic and cultural vitality of cities and their attitudes to social diversity. He has gone as far as establishing a kind of "gay index" to measure the social climate of cities, on the premise that the embrace of gays in a culture reflects a whole set of values that fuels 21st-century growth.

By this measure, New York should be thriving, and Mr. Klein will see that it does this week on his visit. By this measure, Calgary and Edmonton should not be thriving -- but they are, despite the hostility in Alberta to gays and, it is often alleged, other obvious minorities. Alberta's social climate discourages precisely the kind of people who Prof. Florida says are critical to success in the new economy, yet Alberta booms. Ah -- those petroleum revenues again.

Quality of life is a matter of opinion to some degree, but it is not comprehended by after-tax income and the proximity of mountains alone. Like residents of a gated community, Albertans can enjoy peace, order and social stolidity as a matter of choice because of their wealth, and call the outcome the Alberta Advantage if they wish.

It is measured in too few ingredients to satisfy the aspirations of Richard Florida's "creative class" and denies Albertans as a whole the intellectual and spiritual rewards that come from diversity rather than oil.

William Thorsell is director and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum