“Federal agency treated ‘Red Deer’ family in an unaccountable, heavy-handed way.” – MLA Jason Stephan

Submitted by Red Deer South MLA Jason Stephan

JASON STEPHAN: Conduct of airport detentions violate our fundamental freedoms

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the “supreme law of Canada”, recognizing in its preamble, the “supremacy of God and the rule of law”.

Under the Charter, everyone has the “Fundamental Freedoms” of conscience and religion, thought, belief, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly, and association.

Under the Charter, “every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada” and “to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province”.

This past weekend, the Public Health Agency of Canada forced a young man from Red Deer arriving from the U.S.A. at the Calgary International Airport into isolated quarantine. The young man had in his possession a negative COVID test result, obtained in good faith prior to departure, and was permitted for boarding, however, did not meet the agency’s particular requirements in landing.

All of this was unknown to the young man’s family, who had not seen him for almost two years, were so excited to see him, and were waiting at airport arrivals to take him home.

This federal agency treated the family in an unaccountable, heavy-handed way. The agency would not tell the young man or his family where he was being taken and for how long. The young man did not have a cell phone and the agency tried to prevent them from even seeing each other. This harshness was unnecessary. The young man’s mother stated that all of this “feels wrong”. She is correct.

The onus of proof is on government to justify limits on our Charter freedoms. Under the Charter, government is required to demonstrate “proportionality” between objectives and limits imposed to achieve them. That in turn, requires demonstration of a “rational connection” between the limit and the objective, and “minimal impairment” of no more than is necessary to accomplish the objective. These foundational Charter principles are to be applied with rigour to government health “measures” to ensure they are “reasonable” and “demonstrably justified”.

The WHO defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.

Instead of a societal state of “physical, mental and social well-being”, we are seeing increasing societal contention, disconnection, despair, and hopelessness. This is not healthy.

Principled approaches for every day activities are better than prescriptive approaches seeking to regulate the endless varieties of these activities. A principled approach that supports freedom, is less complex or vulnerable to contradiction.

A principled vision of hope is healthy, requiring government to trust adults to govern themselves, allowing them and their families more freedom to carry on the activities of daily living as they individually see fit, in a good faith respecting reasonable health measures and the rights of their neighbors to do the same.

Jason Stephan is the UCP MLA for Red Deer-South

Related Topics:#AirportDetention #JasonStephan #PublicHealthAgencyofCanada #YYCDetention feature

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Low oil prices could have big consequences for Alberta’s finances

Published on April 26, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill

Amid the tariff war, the price of West Texas Intermediate oil—a common benchmark—recently dropped below US$60 per barrel. Given every $1 drop in oil prices is an estimated $750 million hit to provincial revenues, if oil prices remain low for long, there could be big implications for Alberta’s budget.

The Smith government already projects a $5.2 billion budget deficit in 2025/26 with continued deficits over the following two years. This year’s deficit is based on oil prices averaging US$68.00 per barrel. While the budget does include a $4 billion “contingency” for unforeseen events, given the economic and fiscal impact of Trump’s tariffs, it could quickly be eaten up.

Budget deficits come with costs for Albertans, who will already pay a projected $600 each in provincial government debt interest in 2025/26. That’s money that could have gone towards health care and education, or even tax relief.

Unfortunately, this is all part of the resource revenue rollercoaster that’s are all too familiar to Albertans.

Resource revenue (including oil and gas royalties) is inherently volatile. In the last 10 years alone, it has been as high as $25.2 billion in 2022/23 and as low as $2.8 billion in 2015/16. The provincial government typically enjoys budget surpluses—and increases government spending—when oil prices and resource revenue is relatively high, but is thrown into deficits when resource revenues inevitably fall.

Fortunately, the Smith government can mitigate this volatility.

The key is limiting the level of resource revenue included in the budget to a set stable amount. Any resource revenue above that stable amount is automatically saved in a rainy-day fund to be withdrawn to maintain that stable amount in the budget during years of relatively low resource revenue. The logic is simple: save during the good times so you can weather the storm during bad times.

Indeed, if the Smith government had created a rainy-day account in 2023, for example, it could have already built up a sizeable fund to help stabilize the budget when resource revenue declines. While the Smith government has deposited some money in the Heritage Fund in recent years, it has not created a dedicated rainy-day account or introduced a similar mechanism to help stabilize provincial finances.

Limiting the amount of resource revenue in the budget, particularly during times of relatively high resource revenue, also tempers demand for higher spending, which is only fiscally sustainable with permanently high resource revenues. In other words, if the government creates a rainy-day account, spending would become more closely align with stable ongoing levels of revenue.

And it’s not too late. To end the boom-bust cycle and finally help stabilize provincial finances, the Smith government should create a rainy-day account.

Alberta

Governments in Alberta should spur homebuilding amid population explosion

Published on April 26, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill and Austin Thompson

In 2024, construction started on 47,827 housing units—the most since 48,336 units in 2007 when population growth was less than half of what it was in 2024.

Alberta has long been viewed as an oasis in Canada’s overheated housing market—a refuge for Canadians priced out of high-cost centres such as Vancouver and Toronto. But the oasis is starting to dry up. House prices and rents in the province have spiked by about one-third since the start of the pandemic. According to a recent Maru poll, more than 70 per cent of Calgarians and Edmontonians doubt they will ever be able to afford a home in their city. Which raises the question: how much longer can this go on?

Alberta’s housing affordability problem reflects a simple reality—not enough homes have been built to accommodate the province’s growing population. The result? More Albertans competing for the same homes and rental units, pushing prices higher.

Population growth has always been volatile in Alberta, but the recent surge, fuelled by record levels of immigration, is unprecedented. Alberta has set new population growth records every year since 2022, culminating in the largest-ever increase of 186,704 new residents in 2024—nearly 70 per cent more than the largest pre-pandemic increase in 2013.

Homebuilding has increased, but not enough to keep pace with the rise in population. In 2024, construction started on 47,827 housing units—the most since 48,336 units in 2007 when population growth was less than half of what it was in 2024.

Moreover, from 1972 to 2019, Alberta added 2.1 new residents (on average) for every housing unit started compared to 3.9 new residents for every housing unit started in 2024. Put differently, today nearly twice as many new residents are potentially competing for each new home compared to historical norms.

While Alberta attracts more Canadians from other provinces than any other province, federal immigration and residency policies drive Alberta’s population growth. So while the provincial government has little control over its population growth, provincial and municipal governments can affect the pace of homebuilding.

For example, recent provincial amendments to the city charters in Calgary and Edmonton have helped standardize building codes, which should minimize cost and complexity for builders who operate across different jurisdictions. Municipal zoning reforms in Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer have made it easier to build higher-density housing, and Lethbridge and Medicine Hat may soon follow suit. These changes should make it easier and faster to build homes, helping Alberta maintain some of the least restrictive building rules and quickest approval timelines in Canada.

There is, however, room for improvement. Policymakers at both the provincial and municipal level should streamline rules for building, reduce regulatory uncertainty and development costs, and shorten timelines for permit approvals. Calgary, for instance, imposes fees on developers to fund a wide array of public infrastructure—including roads, sewers, libraries, even buses—while Edmonton currently only imposes fees to fund the construction of new firehalls.

It’s difficult to say how long Alberta’s housing affordability woes will endure, but the situation is unlikely to improve unless homebuilding increases, spurred by government policies that facilitate more development.