Alberta
Albertans to vote on senators, equalization, daylight saving time
Albertans will have an opportunity to have their say on equalization and daylight saving time and elect nominees to the Senate when they vote in the fall municipal elections.
In addition to voting for Senate nominees, Albertans will be asked to vote on these two provincial topics on Oct. 18, in conjunction with the municipal elections:
- Equalization payments – Should the principle of making equalization payments be removed from the Constitution?
- Daylight saving time – Should Alberta end the practice of changing our clocks twice a year?
“Alberta has a long and proud tradition of grassroots, direct democracy. We will renew that tradition this fall. I encourage all Albertans to get engaged on these important issues and I look forward to taking part in the debate this fall.”
Equalization
Over the last 25 years, Albertans have contributed more than $400 billion more to the nation in tax dollars than they have received in federal spending. Albertans make an immense contribution to equalization through federal tax contributions, which are transferred by the federal government to other provinces for programs and services. The current program has many issues, including a formula that requires it to grow automatically with Canada’s economy, even if contributing provinces like Alberta are experiencing immense economic challenges.
Daylight saving time
Across Canada and the United States, more governments are bringing forward legislation to move to permanent daylight saving time, also known as summer hours. In 2019, Service Alberta asked Albertans if they thought we should make a similar shift. More than 141,000 Albertans responded, of which 91 per cent were in favour of year-round summer hours.
“Changing our clocks twice a year is something that every Albertan has an opinion on. As Alberta first adopted daylight saving time following a referendum in 1971, we owe it to Albertans to give them the same opportunity to make their voices heard now that we are considering another change.”
Senate elections
Along with the municipal elections and the two referendum questions this fall, Albertans will elect three Senate nominees – one for each of the two current vacancies and one in case of early retirement.
The Senate nominee election enhances democracy in the province by allowing Albertans to choose the individuals who will best represent them in Parliament. Having representatives elected by Albertans would increase senators’ accountability to Alberta voters to defend the province’s interests.
Provincial police and pension
For the topics of creating an Alberta Police Service and Alberta Pension Plan, further analysis and work are underway before next steps are determined.
“Through the Fair Deal Panel, Albertans who are policed by the RCMP said that they want to see Alberta build its own provincial police service to improve policing in their communities. We are continuing to study what this could look like and how it could improve the safety and security of Albertans and their property, as part of making an informed decision on the next steps.”
“The potential creation of an Alberta Pension Plan would be a significant decision for Albertans. As such, we are continuing the important work of completing an actuarial, economic and structural analysis so Albertans can make an educated and well-informed choice, and their questions and concerns can be adequately addressed. We look forward to putting this important decision on the table when the time is right.”
Quick facts
- The equalization question will be: “Should Section 36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 –Parliament and the Government of Canada’s commitment to the principle of making equalization payments – be removed from the Constitution?”
- Between 2014 and 2019 alone, Albertans made a net contribution of more than $100 billion to the federal government through federal taxes that helped build critical infrastructure.
- Alberta has not received an equalization payment since the 1964-65 fiscal year.
- The question on daylight saving time will be finalized this summer.
- During 2019 and 2020, legislation was tabled in British Columbia and Ontario to move to summer hours all year. These changes have yet to be implemented.
- In March 2020, the Yukon stopped changing their clocks and adopted Pacific daylight time year-round.
- Since 2018, 17 American states have passed legislation to move to summer hours (daylight saving time) permanently and more states are debating the topic. However, in the United States, federal approval is required to enact the change.
- Saskatchewan, Arizona and Hawaii do not change their clocks twice a year.
- The Government of Alberta would provide names of elected Senate nominees to the prime minister for consideration when filling Senate vacancies.
Alberta’s government is introducing a new acute care funding model, increasing the accountability, efficiency and volume of high-quality surgical delivery.
Currently, the health care system is primarily funded by a single grant made to Alberta Health Services to deliver health care across the province. This grant has grown by $3.4 billion since 2018-19, and although Alberta performed about 20,000 more surgeries this past year than at that time, this is not good enough. Albertans deserve surgical wait times that don’t just marginally improve but meet the medically recommended wait times for every single patient.
With Acute Care Alberta now fully operational, Alberta’s government is implementing reforms to acute care funding through a patient-focused funding (PFF) model, also known as activity-based funding, which pays hospitals based on the services they provide.
“The current global budgeting model has no incentives to increase volume, no accountability and no cost predictability for taxpayers. By switching to an activity-based funding model, our health care system will have built-in incentives to increase volume with high quality, cost predictability for taxpayers and accountability for all providers. This approach will increase transparency, lower wait times and attract more surgeons – helping deliver better health care for all Albertans, when and where they need it.”
Activity-based funding is based on the number and type of patients treated and the complexity of their care, incentivizing efficiency and ensuring that funding is tied to the actual care provided to patients. This funding model improves transparency, ensuring care is delivered at the right time and place as multiple organizations begin providing health services across the province.
“Exploring innovative ways to allocate funding within our health care system will ensure that Albertans receive the care they need, when they need it most. I am excited to see how this new approach will enhance the delivery of health care in Alberta.”
Patient-focused, or activity-based, funding has been successfully implemented in Australia and many European nations, including Sweden and Norway, to address wait times and access to health care services, and is currently used in both British Columbia and Ontario in various ways.
“It is clear that we need a new approach to manage the costs of delivering health care while ensuring Albertans receive the care they expect and deserve. Patient-focused funding will bring greater accountability to how health care dollars are being spent while also providing an incentive for quality care.”
This transition is part of Acute Care Alberta’s mandate to oversee and arrange for the delivery of acute care services such as surgeries, a role that was historically performed by AHS. With Alberta’s government funding more surgeries than ever, setting a record with 304,595 surgeries completed in 2023-24 and with 310,000 surgeries expected to have been completed in 2024-25, it is crucial that funding models evolve to keep pace with the growing demand and complexity of services.
“With AHS transitioning to a hospital-based services provider, it’s time we are bold and begin to explore how to make our health care system more efficient and manage the cost of care on a per patient basis. The transition to a PFF model will align funding with patient care needs, based on actual service demand and patient needs, reflecting the communities they serve.”
“Covenant Health welcomes a patient-focused approach to acute care funding that drives efficiency, accountability and performance while delivering the highest quality of care and services for all Albertans. As a trusted acute care provider, this model better aligns funding with outcomes and supports our unwavering commitment to patients.”
“Patient-focused hospital financing ties funding to activity. Hospitals are paid for the services they deliver. Efficiency may improve and surgical wait times may decrease. Further, hospital managers may be more accountable towards hospital spending patterns. These features ensure that patients receive quality care of the highest value.”
Leadership at Alberta Health and Acute Care Alberta will review relevant research and the experience of other jurisdictions, engage stakeholders and define and customize patient-focused funding in the Alberta context. This working group will also identify and run a pilot to determine where and how this approach can best be applied and implemented this fiscal year.
Final recommendations will be provided to the minister of health later this year, with implementation of patient-focused funding for select procedures across the system in 2026.
David Clinton
Contrasting the principle of equalization with the execution
Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).
So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light.
You’ll need to search long and hard to find a Canadian unwilling to help those less fortunate. And, so long as we identify as members of one nation¹, that feeling stretches from coast to coast.
So the basic principle of Canada’s equalization payments – where poorer provinces receive billions of dollars in special federal payments – is easy to understand. But as you can imagine, it’s not easy to apply the principle in a way that’s fair, and the current methodology has arguably lead to a very strange set of incentives.
According to Department of Finance Canada, eligibility for payments is determined based on your province’s fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity is a measure of the taxes (income, business, property, and consumption) that a province could raise (based on national average rates) along with revenues from natural resources. The idea, I suppose, is that you’re creating a realistic proxy for a province’s higher personal earnings and consumption and, with greater natural resources revenues, a reduced need to increase income tax rates.
But the devil is in the details, and I think there are some questions worth asking:
- Whichever way you measure fiscal capacity there’ll be both winners and losers, so who gets to decide?
- Should a province that effectively funds more than its “share” get proportionately greater representation for national policy² – or at least not see its policy preferences consistently overruled by its beneficiary provinces?
The problem, of course, is that the decisions that defined equalization were – because of long-standing political conditions – dominated by the region that ended up receiving the most. Had the formula been the best one possible, there would have been little room to complain. But was it?
For example, attaching so much weight to natural resource revenues is just one of many possible approaches – and far from the most obvious. Consider how the profits from natural resources already mostly show up in higher income and corporate tax revenues (including income tax paid by provincial government workers employed by energy-related ministries)?
And who said that such calculations had to be population-based, which clearly benefits Quebec (nine million residents vs around $5 billion in resource income) over Newfoundland (545,000 people vs $1.6 billion) or Alberta (4.2 million people vs $19 billion). While Alberta’s average market income is 20 percent or so higher than Quebec’s, Quebec’s is quite a bit higher than Newfoundland’s. So why should Newfoundland receive only minimal equalization payments?
To illustrate all that, here’s the most recent payment breakdown when measured per-capita:
 |
For clarification, the latest per-capita payments to poorer provinces ranged from $3,936 to PEI, $1,553 to Quebec, and $36 to Ontario. Only Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC received nothing.
And here’s how the total equalization payments (in millions of dollars) have played out over the past decade:
 |
Is energy wealth the right differentiating factor because it’s there through simple dumb luck, morally compelling the fortunate provinces to share their fortune? That would be a really difficult argument to make. For one thing because Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).
So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light. Perhaps that stand is correct or perhaps it isn’t. But it’s a stand they probably couldn’t have afforded to take had the equalization calculation been different.
Of course, no formula could possibly please everyone, but punishing the losers with ongoing attacks on the very source of their contributions is guaranteed to inspire resentment. And that could lead to very dark places.
Note: I know this post sounds like it came from a grumpy Albertan. But I assure you that I’ve never even visited the province, instead spending most of my life in Ontario.
Which has admittedly been challenging since the former primer minister infamously described us as a post-national state without an identity.
This isn’t nearly as crazy as it sounds. After all, there are already formal mechanisms through which Indigenous communities get more than a one-person-one-vote voice.
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