BNN Bloomberg is a fairly sober enterprise information group, so when it studies that Alberta’s United Conservative Get together (UCP) needs to make Stephen Harper chair of the Alberta Funding Administration Corp. (AIMCo) board, you must take it significantly.
That is true even when inserting a controversial former prime minister with deep ties to the fossil gasoline business and partisan hyperlinks to the UCP right into a management place at a Crown-owned firm liable for managing provincial retirement financial savings is simply concerning the worst monetary administration thought you’ve ever heard.
It’s one other instance of how, with the UCP in energy, simply once you suppose issues couldn’t get any weirder, they get weirder!
The Bloomberg report, which appeared round 1 p.m. yesterday in Alberta, got here 5 days after Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner sacked the corporate’s CEO, Evan Siddall, and its complete board of administrators, claiming it needed to be accomplished to “restore confidence in Alberta’s investment agency.”
Properly, it’s true, AIMCo, as the corporate is popularly recognized, has had critical efficiency points which have been notably troubling because it was recognized to be the UCP’s deliberate vessel for the Canada Pension Plan funding funds Premier Danielle Smith and her advisors desperately need to seize to determine an Alberta pension that would then be used to prop up the fossil gasoline business, which is quickly approaching its best-before date.
However nearly all of political Alberta, and a lot of the funding business as properly, had been scratching their heads on the seemingly inexplicable timing of the transfer, when simply days at the start had gave the impression to be copacetic on the Crown-owned firm so far as the federal government was involved.
Bloomberg’s startling revelation suggests an evidence.
There are three bylines on the Bloomberg story, so we will assume that no less than three reporters have been making calls attempting to pin down for the file what they’d heard from what the story refers to as “people familiar with the matter.”
If that is so – I’m simply speculating right here, though in an knowledgeable manner – when the federal government realized the Harper story was about to interrupt, it might have felt it had higher do away with the board and the CEO earlier than they began throwing roadblocks in the way in which of a doubtlessly catastrophically dangerous enterprise determination.
It additionally sounds to me as if Bloomberg determined to proceed with out a named supply when Horner’s sudden firing spree provoked a brouhaha within the funding business about his interference in what was claimed to be an arm’s size investor of pension funds, insulated from political interference.
Anyway, based on Bloomberg, “Harper’s name has been circulating as a potential chair for Alberta Investment Management Corp. for a number of months.” That will surely be on model for the UCP, which for apparent causes holds Harper in excessive regard.
There can be a sure irony if the previous PM had been to be given the chair of the AIMCo board, since he was one of many six signatories of the infamous Firewall Letter, the 2001 Alberta sovereignty-association manifesto that known as for the province to give up the CPP, create a provincial pension plan, and undertake a number of different measures that may quantity to a half-step out of Confederation.
After all, this was earlier than Harper had glimpsed the complete potential of grabbing the brass ring that had the important thing to the Prime Minister’s Workplace on it. Naturally, nothing was heard of Harper’s previous separatist inclinations throughout the gloomy years from 2006 to 2015 when he occupied the PMO.
Since then, Harper has been busy working the Munich-based Neoliberal Internationale, formally recognized these days because the Worldwide Democracy Union, and discovering purchasers for Harper & Associates, a consulting agency that trades closely on his political connections. Because the Bloomberg report put it, with power business corporations amongst its purchasers, H&A “touts access to Harper’s global network and his experience as a former Group of Seven leader.”
As for Siddall, he has up to date his LinkedIn resume to notice he’s in a state of “career transition.” In the interim, no less than, he says he might be tying up unfastened ends and smelling wildflowers. It’s to be hoped, though not anticipated, that these unfastened ends don’t contain a non-disclosure settlement.
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