Ed Stelmach’s popularity has slid steadily downhill ever since he enlarged the electoral majority he inherited from former premier Ralph Klein 20 months ago. With the byelection victory of the Wildrose Alliance in the Progressive Conservative bastion of Calgary-Glenmore in September and the ascension of Danielle Smith to the Alliance leadership on Oct. 17, many pundits are now speculating that Alberta is on the verge of overthrowing its dominant party, as it has done every 30 to 40 years.

Certainly, Smith, a former journalist and representative for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, comes across as eminently smarter and more articulate than Stelmach. But the Wildrose Alliance, formed by the merger in 2008 of two parties from the right-wing fringe, has some challenges of its own to overcome. Moreover, it’s hard to see how the Alliance platform will improve Alberta’s economic prospects.

Right now, Alliance support is coming from two camps: the Reform-style social conservatives opposed to Stelmach’s red Toryism, who have been there all along; and the Calgary-centred oil and gas industry entourage alienated by Stelmach’s 2007 royalty review. Other than their distaste for Stelmach and big government, the slick downtown oilmen and the suburban and small-town churchgoers don’t have a lot in common.

The wedge issue that could give the Alliance some traction in the broader electorate is the sudden swing in the province’s finances — to a $7-billion deficit, at last count. This, in a province that outlawed deficits in 2000 and retired its debt four years later. (The Stelmach Tories had to pass legislation last spring to legalize the budget shortfall.)

If we suspend our disbelief for a moment and imagine the Wildrose Alliance forming a government, what could that party really do differently? It couldn’t restore the $5-billion hole in government revenue created by the collapse of natural gas prices. Thanks to shale gas discoveries in the U.S., Alberta will not go back to supplying 20%-30% of that country’s natural gas needs — probably, ever. And it was gas royalties that allowed Alberta to offer the highest level of per capita spending and some of the lowest taxes of all the provinces simultaneously.

The Wildrosers have vowed to cut back on spending; but so have the Tories. The Alliance promises to confront public-sector unions more aggressively than the Progressive Conservatives have. The only other big area to cut would be the government’s still-intact $20-billion plan to catch up on its infrastructure deficit. How would either of these measures restore economic growth?

Whereas the Tories have been foot-draggers on the climate-change file, the Wildrose Alliance sit in the denial camp, and would scrap the $2 billion in government funds being directed at carbon capture and storage. Again, I very much doubt that defying the growing movement among other jurisdictions to take action to combat climate change will end well, economically speaking, for Albertans. Smart as Smith is, she is not going to single-handedly halt the reach of a U.S. low-carbon fuel standard.

Alberta’s problem is not Stelmach or even the Progressive Conservative Party. It’s a political culture of immaturity that dictates that non-renewable resource revenues be used today to finance government operations instead of being recognized for what they are: an ephemeral, one-time windfall that should be socked away in a fund for perpetuity, the way Norway manages its Petroleum Fund. Recall that the same voters who blame Stelmach for mismanagement broadly supported the $400 in “Ralph Bucks” doled out to every Albertan in 2006.

The Wildrose Alliance won’t change any of that. It aims only to cut back government expenditures to match extremely volatile revenue, as Klein did in the 1990s — once again exacerbating the boom-and-bust cycles that have marked Alberta’s economic history. IE