Academic offers insights, tips for HR on how to handle 'political turmoil'
Former premier of Alberta Jason Kenney spoke out recently against that province’s current separatist movement, saying that a sovereignty referendum would have disastrous results.
“If this gets to a ballot, there will be marriages that will break up over it. There will be wives and husbands who just can’t tolerate each other over their opinions on this,” Kenney said in a report by Global News. He was being interviewed at Bankers Hall in Calgary, where he works as an advisor and corporate board member.
While Alberta’s economy remains resilient on the surface, the mere discussion of separation could have significant consequences for business investment and HR planning, according to Jason Foster, professor of human resources and labour relations at Athabasca University.
“If suddenly there's a referendum, if there's a big public debate about ‘Does Alberta leave Canada?’ I think a lot of employers would start thinking twice about medium and long-term investments in the province."
Danielle Smith lowers bar for referendum
The movement, which has existed in one form or another since William Aberhart’s social credit scheme and push for secession in the 1930s, is having another moment – partly due to premier Danielle Smith’s Conservative government’s recent adjustment to the legal bar for qualifying a referendum.
In May, she reduced the requirement from 600,000 signatures collected over 90 days, to 177,000 signatures inside four months, raising eyebrows and causing experts to question her motives. Plus, there have been reports that Albertans are more in favour of separating than they have been in the past.
However, optics may have a lot to do with what looks like increased momentum, Foster warns.
“They're being assisted by the premier, in stoking those kinds of fires to get them all riled up,” he says.
“Whether it's actually persuading more Albertans that we should actually leave the country, I think is unlikely, but there certainly is something happening there.”
While Albertans are not necessarily more pro-separatism than they were in the past, "the separatists’ movement feels like it has some wind in its sails, and so they've got some energy, and they're making it a big push,” says Foster.
Adding to the uncertainty is the possibility of Alberta withdrawing from Canada’s federal pension plan.
Separatist sentiment and its roots
Foster says the current wave of separatist energy in Alberta is being fuelled by both political and economic factors.
“A lot of the changes in the energy industry actually have very little to do with federal government policy,” he says.
“It's about automation. It’s about [the fact] that the era of big oil sands projects is over because that created thousands of jobs when they were building those things. And they're now in the phase where they’re just pumping oil out of the ground. And doesn't take a lot of people to do that these days.”
He adds that policies around the environment and energy, as well as job loss in the energy sector are contributing to a “sense that something’s wrong.”
“Even though it's not the largest employer in terms of numbers, that industry, it's psychologically a really key industry for Alberta … a decade of consistent job losses in that industry has led to a degree of unease and angst amongst portions of Alberta … we need to blame somebody for the fact that things are shifting in the energy industry.”
Business investment and long-term planning
Given this uncertainty and unrest, how should employers prepare?
“They need to pull back from Alberta a little bit because of the economic uncertainty that talk of separatism creates,” says Foster.
“They're going to hire fewer people. That has that whole cascade of effects around both the labour market more broadly and specific companies’ employment levels.”
Foster points to the experience of Quebec in 1980 and 1995 as a cautionary tale: “We certainly saw it in Quebec around the times of their two referendums. We saw a lot of corporate flight. We saw a lot of companies making long-term decisions away from Quebec because of that, that level of uncertainty. Alberta is not immune from that.”
Advice for HR: Acknowledge employee anxiety
For HR professionals, Foster’s advice is to acknowledge employee anxiety and lean into resilience.
“All of this political turmoil, all of this talk of separatism and pulling out of the CPP and the like, is causing angst and anxiety amongst your staff, amongst your workers,” he says.
“Make sure you're interacting with your employees in such a way that you understand that this is a tumultuous, difficult time in Alberta politically, and that leads to people's anxieties increasing. It leads to all sorts of personal impacts.”
