EDMONTON—Has Alberta’s incoming premier Jason Kenney taken a page from Doug Ford’s populist playbook by making the slogan ‘open for business’ a central theme of his new government, or is he simply fulfilling a campaign promise?

It depends who you ask. Kenney uttered the words early in his victory speech and the slogan was on the podium of his first media event as Alberta’s premier-designate.

To Jared Wesley, a political scientist at the University of Alberta, it’s more like business as usual for Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party, whose campaign was singularly focused on the economy.

“I honestly wouldn’t read too much into the open-for-business thing,” Wesley said. “I mean, Trump ran on it. I’m pretty sure Liberal premiers have run on it in Canada in the past. I don’t see this as a replication where Kenney heard Doug Ford and said, ‘We have to copy that,’” he added.

But Laurie Adkin, also a political scientist at U of A, said while identical slogans may not indicate a unified strategy between Kenney and Ford, it does show how both have embraced populism to advance politically.

“It’s an old sort of mantra that goes back to the 1980s and to the (Ralph) Klein era,” Adkin said. “So it’s not a accident. It’s part of Kenney’s vision of what he’s going to bring to Alberta — some kind of restoration of foreign investment in the province’s resource sector.”

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Kenney committed to eliminating Alberta’s carbon tax, reducing the corporate tax rate to eight per cent from 12 over four years and reducing regulatory red tape by one third.

“I think when you take a look at the first three bills he’s planning on introducing, those actions will speak louder than any slogan,” said Ken Kobly, president of the Alberta Chambers of Commerce.

Cutting the corporate tax rate won’t have any positive impact for small businesses, Kobly noted. Kenney’s immediate priority is to create favourable conditions to help Alberta’s oil and gas industry recover from the oil recession.

There are many factors that might make it difficult for Kenney to send a signal to Canadian and foreign corporations that Alberta is open for business, Adkin said.

“There’s a Liberal government in Ottawa, an international political economy he can’t control, court decisions he can’t control, and some pushback from other parts of the country … There’s going to be a lot of barriers to him advancing his agenda.”

To Adkin, Kenney’s slogan means cutting regulations and oversight in important areas such as the environment.

“I think what he means by open for business is that he’s going to try and re-establish conditions for foreign capital to invest in Alberta,” Adkin said. “And that will mean diminishing or weakening various kinds of regulation and providing a more attractive set of tax credit and tax cuts.”

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While it may make for short-term gain, cutting regulatory oversight will result in long-term pain for Albertans, Adkin believes.

“There’s always quite significant costs to the public when environmental regulations and oversights, or occupational health and safety or community oversight, are neglected,” she said. “It can be anything from our water supply, to protection of people living around the petrochemical plants from emissions flaring, or rural communities exposed to sour gas.”

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