"Kenney can glibly shoot back that when it comes to listening to NDP ideas, he’s no ideologue, he’s already sought the advice of a former New Democratic finance minister."

Newly elected Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, on a swing through Toronto on May 3, 2019, after his visit to Ottawa. Toronto Star/Rick Madonik

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney did something politically clever this week, maybe even politically cute.

He set up a special panel of experts to review Alberta’s finances — and named a former NDP finance minister to be the panel chair.

Besides being a respected academic, Janice MacKinnon is a board member of the Canada West Foundation and chair of the board of Investment Saskatchewan. But most importantly, she was finance minister with Roy Romanow’s NDP government in Saskatchewan 25 years ago — and helped balance Saskatchewan’s troubled provincial budget.

It is now her job to help Kenney’s newly elected United Conservative Party figure out how to balance Alberta’s provincial budget. The last NDP budget forecast a $7-billion deficit for the 2018-19 fiscal year with total provincial debt creeping up towards $60 billion. There was no new budget introduced before this year’s April election.

By naming MacKinnon as chair, Kenney is cleverly trying to inoculate himself against criticism that he is a right-wing ideologue out to slash government spending by gutting government services after only listening to conservative voices. On the “cute” side, this means that when Alberta’s NDP — recently demoted from government to opposition in April’s election — complains about any of Kenney’s future fiscal policies, he’ll throw back in their face the advice from a fellow New Democrat.

But Janice MacKinnon is a New Democrat the same way former B.C. premier Christy Clark was a Liberal. She is a conservative in progressive clothing.

There is no doubt Alberta’s NDP will be unhappy with the advice from Kenney’s new panel. Officially, it’s the Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances.

Unofficially, it’s the Blue Ribbon Panel on Cutting Alberta’s Finances.

That’s because Kenney has already told the panel any talk of raising taxes or changing the province’s tax regime is off the table. He suggested he’d appoint a second blue ribbon panel in two years to look at possible tax reform.

For now, it’s all about cutting, although that’s not how MacKinnon would phrase it.

She says she’ll look at ways to make government spending more efficient.

“I know what it means to practise fiscal discipline,” MacKinnon said on Tuesday after being introduced by Kenney. “When I was minister of finance in Saskatchewan I actually faced the prospect of a province going into bankruptcy because for years governments ignored the warning signs of mounting debts and deficits, and failed to act.”

But finding efficiencies isn’t going to trim $7 billion from the budget.

This is a panel that will be focused on cutting. It’s a job made all the more onerous because Kenney is facing an immediate drop in government revenue. He has promised to scrap the province’s carbon tax and reduce the corporate tax rate from 12 per cent to eight per cent over four years.

So, where to cut?

Under MacKinnon’s watch in the early 1990s, the Saskatchewan government balanced its budget by cutting spending on health care, education, agriculture, highways and government administration. Most famously, she closed 52 rural hospitals and converted them into health-care centres. (She also boosted Saskatchewan’s provincial sales tax to nine per cent, added five cents a litre to the fuel tax, added a deficit-reduction surtax to income tax and increased assorted fees. But tax hikes are not an option for her in 2019 Alberta.)

MacKinnon wouldn’t get into specifics when talking about how she hoped to revamp government spending. But here is a quote from a decade ago.

“A hospital is the most expensive way to treat people,” she told a reporter in 2009 when she was a public policy professor at the University of Saskatchewan. “The money should be spent providing emergency services in (rural) areas or on a really good facility that can stabilize patients before they are transferred.”

Shutting hospitals in rural Alberta and making them into health-care centres would certainly save money — and has been the topic of fierce debate in the province over the years — but it certainly wouldn’t be popular, as the Romanow government could attest.

Another clue to MacKinnon’s thinking comes from a report she co-authored for the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy in October 2017 that warned the then-NDP government to get spending under control. Her recommendations included “common sense policies” such as curbing public-service salaries by $1.5 billion over three years, reducing infrastructure spending by $4.6 billion over the same period, and cutting overall spending by $6.6 billion annually so Alberta’s per capita spending matches other big provinces.

MacKinnon’s panel is to report back with its recommendations by Aug. 15 to help Kenney table his government’s first budget this fall.

It’s sure to be a controversial one, no doubt condemned by the Alberta NDP opposition in general and by former finance minister Joe Ceci in particular.

But Kenney can glibly shoot back that when it comes to listening to NDP ideas, he’s no ideologue, he’s already sought the advice of a former New Democratic finance minister.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.