The much rumoured appointment is finally real. Former prime minister Stephen Harper is now the chair of AIMCo. 

A man diametrically opposed to the concept of defined pension benefit plans for public sector workers is now the chair of an organization responsible for managing the investments of 375,000 Alberta pensioners. I don’t want to belabour the discussion around Stephen Harper too much but the man’s history is relevant. He built a political career campaigning against pensions. He refused to expand Canada Pension Plan benefits while Prime Minister and he pushed the age for receiving Old Age Security benefits from 65 to 67. 

In the release great hay was made of Harper doing this work as chair of AIMCo for free. One thing that lets Harper do that is that he has a defined benefit pension plan from his time in office that pays him more than $200,000 a year. 

Stephen Harper, then Canada’s prime minister, in 2012, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos. (Photo: World Economic Forum/Flickr/Creative Commons).

Tucked into the announcement were other relevant details that show just how much the UCP now controls AIMCo. The deputy minister of finance and treasury board is now a permanent board member of AIMCo. This allegedly independent crown corp now has a full-time government minder.

Curiously, the UCP also rehired back 30 per cent of the board they just fired last week. Bob Dhillon, a massive corporate landlord and board member of Invest Alberta who was literally quoted in the 2019 UCP election platform, is back. Jason Montemurro, a regular UCP donor who runs a business that doesn’t have a website has been offered his old job on the board. And James Keohane, the former CEO of the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan and a person with actual pension governance experience, has returned. The rest of the board had not yet been revealed at press time. 

In the release Danielle Smith spoke glowingly of Harper but also mentioned how important he will be to the UCP’s goal of building up the Heritage Savings Trust Fund to more than $250 billion in the next 25 years. This is bizarre as the UCP government has created a new and separate crown corporation to oversee the governance of the Heritage Trust Fund. 

“The corporation is a preliminary step in our work to grow the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and as Minister Horner said we will have more to say on that before the end of the year. The establishment of the corporation is not related to the actions taken in regards to AIMCo,” said a spokesperson for the finance minister. 

Taking $23.4 billion out of AIMCo’s hands and putting it under the control of a new crown corp does seem relevant to the actions taken at AIMCo simply by virtue of making AIMCo responsible for less.

The goal of growing the Heritage Trust by ten times in 25 years also seems at odds with Danielle’s musing about finding ways “rejuvenate” how the Heritage Fund works. She’s also floated using it for “derisking projects that we’re finding difficult to get financing.”

If you’re using AIMCo to prop up unprofitable oil and gas companies, something we’ve reported on extensively, you’re going to find it hard to grow it to $250 billion.

More details on this new crown corporation are expected before Christmas. But unless Harper is also the chair of this organization he won’t have anything to do with the Heritage Trust Fund. 

Or maybe he will be involved in this new organization? Or maybe they’ll abandon this idea? Everything happening on the AIMCo file seems to have been drawn up on a napkin and talked about for five minutes before being executed. 

This is all quite the whipsaw from what the UCP was telling teachers back in 2019. The Alberta Teachers Retirement Fund just had to be moved under AIMCo’s control because having more assets under its management “provides it with economies of scale that will lower the administrative cost of investing,” according to then finance minister Travis Toews. 

Toews also said that, “AIMCo has a long history of achieving strong returns for their clients.” Horner sacked the board and the CEO last week because of high administrative costs and unsatisfactory returns. 

And of course the UCP keeps talking about creating the Alberta Pension Plan by somehow taking out Alberta’s portion from the Canada Pension Plan. They fire most of the board and the CEO and they’re going to give the Heritage Trust Fund to someone else to manage but AIMCo is also good enough to manage the $334 billion they think Alberta should get from the CPP? 

And the Alberta Pension Plan brings us back to Stephen Harper. Before he became PM he was one of the signers of the famous firewall letter, which had one of its main demands as the… the creation of an Alberta Pension Plan. 

Time is a flat circle. And not just because Harper is back taking up space in our brains. Every 10-20 years conservative politicians get in their brains to try and mess with pensions. Mulroney, Harper, Redford etc. Every time it’s a massive political loser because pensioners vote, have lots of time on their hands and are very invested in making sure their pensions aren’t messed with. 

Sundries

• Our long civic nightmare is now over. Chief Dale McFee has officially resigned from his post as head of the Edmonton Police Service with his time coming to a glorious end on Feb. 21, 2025. Many credible rumours have emerged of McFee taking over the deputy minister of executive council post that was recently vacated by Ray Gilmour when he became interim CEO of AIMCo. 
  
  DM of executive council is the senior most position in the civil service, it’s behind the scenes and it would still see McFee wielding a lot of power. No one is confirming anything of course but McFee wouldn’t be taking a paycut from his enormous salary of $357,000 a year to take this well-compensated job. I’ll have more to say on McFee’s departure and the incredibly harmful legacy he leaves behind him in a future post. 
  
  
• The UCP are making car insurance more expensive and worse! We already have the most expensive car insurance in Canada but don’t worry, giving the insurance companies everything they want will make rates come down eventually, somehow. 
  
  
• The dismantling of Alberta’s healthcare system continues apace. AHS used to have five zones, now AHS has been chopped into pieces and there are seven health “corridors.” Cracking up and reorganizing the executive levels isn’t going to solve any of the serious ongoing problems in Alberta’s health system, but it will make it easier for the UCP to push more privatization—and to give more well-paid patronage gigs to donors and minions.
  
  
• In a rare move from the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), a bad operator in the oilfield is actually getting shut down. After racking up multiple infractions over two years Sunshine Oilsands Limited was told to close up—and required to post a massive $6.1 million security bond to cover all their liabilities. 
  
  
• Lauren Boothby at the Journal reports that UCP-aligned Edmonton city councilor Tim Cartmell has officially announced he’ll be running against Amarjeet Sohi for mayor in the next municipal election. Cartmell says he’s going to run using the new municipal political party mechanisms that the UCP brought in, which brings the number of right-wing slate projects in Edmonton to three now including gondola guy Jeffrey Hanson-Carslon’s TapYEG and the ‘Principled Accountable Coalition for Edmonton’ (PACE). Tim wasn’t even the only high-profile conservative to announce this week: former Ward O-Day’Min councilor Tony Caterina says he’s going to take a run at mayor too.

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