Danielle Smith Is No Sarah Palin (in Opinion)

Palin was braver against Big Oil. And more political truths Alaska reveals about Alberta.

Palin vs. Smith: Rise of the petro-princesses.

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• Eco-Policies of Alberta's Next Government?

  Speed up oil sands, give $300 in petro proceeds to each citizen, says surging Wildrose party.

• 'Dutch Disease': McGuinty Was Right the First Time

  Evidence Alberta premier cites to support industry expansion based on dubious energy economics.

• Albertans: Gripped by Stockholm Syndrome?

  Concessions to Big Oil keep causing deficits. Yet Wildrose promises deeper petro-captivity.

The Wildrose Party, a political upstart made up of largely angry white people, sketchy Tories and climate change deniers, seems posed to replace the incompetent bunch of Conservative libertarians, panjandrums and climate change skeptics who have run Alberta into the ground.

Alberta's media have compared Wild Rose leader Danielle Smith to Sarah Palin, but she's no grizzly momma. Smith, a Fraser Institute libertarian, fronts a party that raises money by declaring: "Only when the government of Alberta supports and trusts its most important industry -- oil and gas -- will Alberta's future be truly secure."

Palin, the original "Drill, Baby, Drill" girl, knew better and acted accordingly. In her recently released emails the rogue Republican regularly expressed disgust with the way Big Oil bullied the state's politicians and electorate.

As governor, Palin once stood up a group of Exxon officials by going off and reading to a kindergarten class instead. In a more gutsy move Palin increased the share of royalties for Alaskans by maturely working with Democrats.

Alaska's new governor, a former oil lobbyist, is now working to reverse these gains.

Which does confirm that, while Smith isn't Palin, Alberta's debased political weirdness can't really be explained without some references to nearby Alaska. That wild and crazy petro state has not only been there but done all that. It also boasts parties more wonky than the Republicans, including Tea Party Republicans and the Alberta Independent Party ("Alaska First: Alaska Always.") The Alaska firsters, too, offer a Wildrose platform: less government and more oil.

Alaska or Alberta, you decide

Since the development of Prudhoe Bay oil field and the construction of the multi-billion Trans Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS) in the 1970s, Alaska has lived the oil curse large.

Petroleum taxes from BP, ExxonMobil and Conoco Philips account for four-fifths of the state's revenue. That means that the state's politicians are dogged by an army of well-funded oil lobbyists. Their job i! s to sec ure fewer environmental regulations and lower taxes at almost any cost as the FBI have well documented. Alaska is a petroleum welfare state.

With its $200-billion tar sands mega-project (a development five to 10 times bigger than TAPS), Alberta breathes the same poisonous political fumes. Hydrocarbons account for a third of the government's revenue, most of its exports and a quarter of GDP.

Albertans will happily note they now pay among the lowest taxes in the nation. But their politicians routinely do a much better job representing the interests of Suncor, ExxonMobil, CNRL, Husky, Cenovus, Enbridge and EnCana than they do Alberta taxpayers.

Alaska's political parties, like Alberta's immature offerings, stand further to the right than those in most oil-less jurisdictions and are primarily focused on pumping oil or getting rich.

The only philosophical divide, notes an excellent Atlantic Monthly profile on Sarah Palin, is "between those who view the state as beholden to the oil companies for its livelihood, and will grant them almost anything to ensure that livelihood, and those who view its position as being like the owner of a public corporation for whom the oil companies interests are separate from and subordinate to those of its citizen shareholders." Albertans mostly believe the former.

Oil-lubricated political machines

Thanks to the corrosive power of oil money, Alaska boasts several long, right-wing political dynasties such as those of former senators Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski. Eventually Stevens and Murkowski landed in what Alaskans now fondly call the "Corrupt Bastards Club" by way of their too-cozy dealings with oil interests.

Sarah Palin's successful campaign for governor was fueled by her "rogue Republican" promise to clean up such ! corrupti on.

But Alaska seems to keep heeling ever farther to the right. In 2010 one Tea Party Republican, who called Social Security an unconstitutional service and climate change a fiction, battled an old dynasty Republican Lisa Murkowski for a Senate seat the same way the Wildrose is taking on Alberta's Tories.

Alberta's politics directly mirror Alaska's political cartoons. Ralph Klein, a closet one per center that posed as a populist, ruled the province from its bars and casinos for nearly 14 years. But King Ralph didn't give a fig about the environment or democracy. He single-handedly created the chaos in the oil sands by putting government on "autopilot."

The oil-funded machine of Alberta's Progressive Conservatives, having ruled the so-called maverick province for 41 years, looks and sounds like the Republican Murkowski dynasty in Alaska.

Politically correct, Alberta-style

The new Tory leader, Alison Redford, is a Calgary old boy corporate lawyer. She's the kind of politically-correct person who regards tar sands as a pejorative even though scientists and politicians have employed the apt phrase for 100 years.

Moreover Redford is just as beholden to the province's oil sand developers as Alaska's Republicans are to Big Oil. Redford, who is not well-liked even within her own party, can't even admit that Canada has a case of the Dutch Disease due to rapid tar sands development.