Danielle Smith's boom and bust Alberta math doesn't add up

Danielle Smith’s boom and bust Alberta math doesn’t add up
Somehow a province that contributes16 per cent of Canadian Pension Plan contributions is owed 53 per cent of its projected 2027 value.

By Heather Mallick Star Columnist
Monday, September 25, 2023
2 min to read
Article was updated Sep 25, 2023

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/danielle-smith-s-boom-and-bust-alberta-math-doesn-t-add-up/article_853c6e4a-a30f-51fb-9ab0-5944193d8516.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a08&utm_source=ts_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=C60005D1AADA1B52D32FA3F88D5F9E9F&utm_campaign=top_200186

"SNIP..........

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith dreams of money coming to her as she sits passively, just waiting. A Garda security van will crash on the highway heading west out of Calgary and great big canvas sacks of cash will slide onto her head. Finders keepers. Garda doesn’t see it that way.

Or she turns into a giant magnet and all the iron filings in the Northern Hemisphere are drawn to her. Not my fault, she says, brushing them out of her hair, I’m just a big alloy. When I was a kid, my breakfast cereal, fortified with iron and B12, would end up stuck to my head. My mom would get mad.

Smith has talked about this since 2003. A libertarian, she thinks it will be just that easy for Alberta to leave the Canada Pension Plan and swan off with $334 billion of its assets, a figure plucked from the air. Not by her but by LifeWorks, an Alberta human-resources consultancy.

LifeWorks sounds like a shower installer, the one you regret you hired. (I went with Glass Ninja and so should you.) Still, it massaged the numbers, and somehow a province that contributes only 16 per cent of plan contributions is owed a third of a trillion dollars.

........SNIP"