Alberta floating the idea of dropping out of the Canada Pension Plan amounts to a smoke screen for what it really wants, according to the former head of one of Canada’s largest institutional investment funds.

“Alberta’s frustrated. Sometimes you do something that may not be very logical just to get attention,” Leo de Bever, former CEO of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo), said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg’s Amanda Lang.

His comments come one week after Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said there’s a “compelling case” to be made for the province to pull out of the CPP.

“Mathematically it wouldn’t make a great deal of sense from an administrative efficiency point of view … but at the margin, this is not about the real underlying issue. In the end, it really isn’t what we should be focusing on,” de Bever said.

He said what Albertans really want is more capacity to move the province's oil and gas.

“I think what they want to hear is more support to safely get their product to the west coast and to international markets … some pipelines built I think would go a long way,” he said.