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Fast-forward to late October 2019 and the spectacle of an Alberta finance minister declaring boldly that the ATB’s role is to “provide maximum profitability back to the ownership,” i.e., the government. Even regular bankers shy away from being so forthright. For example, speaking earlier this year, the CEO of RBC, David McKay, characterized his bank’s purpose as “helping clients thrive and communities prosper.” Eighty-one years after Alberta waded into the banking business, the CEO of RBC sounds like an Albertan of yesteryear compared with Alberta’s finance minister, who wants the province’s bank to focus on making money.

The fresh perspective Kenney and Toews offer on ATB’s purpose may shock Albertans used to thinking of the ATB as anything but a profit-oriented bank. By design, ATB’s risk profile is constrained by the limits of its markets — Alberta’s borders. That its profits are down and loan losses up in 2019 is testament to the state of the Albertan economy and further evidence, if Canadians outside the province still need it, that the province is truly facing difficult economic times.

Albertans have a well-deserved reputation for self-reliance and competitiveness. It’s easy to understand how their government would want any bank it owned to operate according to market principles. That said, if you’re going to run a bank on market principles alone, why own it? Why not privatize it and let it survive or not as the market dictates? Perhaps the answer to that is that Albertans have a tradition dating back at least a hundred years now of not fully trusting central-Canadians or their “eastern” institutions, especially banks. It’s impossible to understand how the ATB came to be and has survived so long without appreciating that history.