Alberta ad campaign seeks to woo professionals from Toronto, Vancouver

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“Hey. How’s it going? It’s Jason. Got a couple of minutes to chat?”

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So begins a new Government of Alberta ad voiced by Premier Jason Kenney, launching a campaign directed at young professionals in Toronto and Vancouver and evangelizing the province’s high average incomes, relative housing affordability and shorter commute times.

The $2.6-million campaign titled “Alberta is Calling” aims to attract skilled workers to Alberta at a time that multiple sectors are struggling to fill job vacancies and provincial unemployment has fallen below the national average for the first time since 2015.

The campaign, which launched Monday in Toronto and Vancouver on various digital and social media platforms, plays on the economic anxieties of young professionals while boasting of Alberta’s comparative advantages.

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“The cost of living situation in the (Greater Toronto Area) and (Metro Vancouver) has just gotten out of control,” Kenney told reporters at a press conference Monday. “We think that for people who cannot afford a home, and young workers who can barely afford rent, that the comparison to Alberta is very powerful.”

Kenney pointed to the fact Alberta workers receive the highest average earnings in the country — Alberta families took home an average after-tax income of $104,000 in 2020, more than $7,000 higher than Ontario and nearly $10,000 higher than B.C. —  and where average home prices are a fraction of those in Toronto and Vancouver.

“The number one concern coming from our businesses now is labour and skills shortages,” Kenney said. “We need to skate to where the puck is going and the puck is going to labour and skill shortages as the main constraint on future economic growth in Alberta for the foreseeable future.”

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The ad campaign has only just launched, but already some critics have questioned its effectiveness — and the decision to use Alberta’s embattled premier as spokesman. Kenney resigned as leader of the province’s United Conservative Party (UCP) in May after receiving only a slim majority in a leadership review.

Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi tweeted Monday that the province’s biggest attraction for people outside of Alberta is quality of life. “(The) number one concern of young talent: weird politics and our provincial government,” he wrote. “Not sure this will help.”

But perceptions of the campaign are likely to be very different outside of Alberta, said David Soberman, professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

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“I think that Jason Kenney’s image in Alberta is more damaged than it is in the rest of Canada,” Soberman said. And an Ontarian feeling frustrated with the current federal government might even have a positive impression of Kenney from his days as a cabinet minister for former prime minister Stephen Harper, he said.

“Most young professionals would naturally gravitate towards Canada’s bigger cities and the fact that you can go to two of Canada’s biggest cities in Alberta, but spend much less on housing and have more disposable income and sort of benefit from a number of other taxation advantages — it’s something that probably a lot of people haven’t thought of,” he said.

Soberman said campaigns like this one also aggregate information that people may not have seen together, such as highlighting the economic advantages and proximity to world-class skiing alongside Calgary’s third place ranking on The Economist’s most liveable cities list.

The initial teaser ad with the sound of a phone call and beautiful visuals of Alberta’s landscape was clever, Soberman added. “It made me curious. Like, what is this?”

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Alberta’s premier also used Monday’s news conference to attack a controversial proposal from one of the front-runners hoping to succeed him as leader and premier.

UCP leadership candidate Danielle Smith has said if she’s elected, she would bring forward a bill to give the province the power to ignore federal laws and court rulings that are deemed not in Alberta’s interest.

Kenney called Smith’s proposal a “de facto plan for separatism” and compared it to Quebec’s sovereignty movement, suggesting that separatist politics in 1970s Quebec resulted in that province losing population and investment.

“Here we are launching a campaign for Canadians to move to another part of Canada, and if Alberta were to decide effectively to launch a separatist project, I think that would automatically exclude a lot of Canadians,” Kenney said. “Instead of being able to attract people, we would start hemorrhaging people.”

Kenney said he will launch the second phase of the Alberta is Calling campaign in mid-September with a trip to Toronto.

• Email: mpotkins@postmedia.com | Twitter: mpotkins