Trump’s oil tariffs could spell deficits for Alberta government

After recently meeting with president-elect Donald Trump, Premier Danielle Smith warned that Trump’s tariffs could include oil. That’s just one more risk factor added to Alberta’s already precarious fiscal situation, which could mean red ink in the near future.

Trump has threatened a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods, which includes oil, and could come as early as January 20 when he’s sworn in as president. Such tariffs would likely widen the price differential between U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil and Alberta’s Western Canadian select (WCS) heavy oil.

In other words, the average price difference between Canadian oil (WCS) and U.S. oil (WTI) could increase, reflecting a larger discount on Canadian oil. According to the Alberta government’s estimate, every $1 that WCS is sold at discount is a $600 million hit to the government’s budget.

To maintain its $4.6 billion projected budget surplus this fiscal year (2024/25), the Smith government is banking on oil prices (WTI) averaging US$74.00 per barrel in 2024/25. But every $1 decline in oil prices leads to a $630 million swing in Alberta’s bottom line. And WTI has dropped as low as US$67.00 per barrel in recent months.

Put simply, Trump’s proposed tariffs would flip Alberta’s budget surplus to a budget deficit, particularly if paired with lower oil prices.

While Smith has been aggressively trying to engage with lawmakers in the United States regarding the tariffs and the inclusion of oil, there’s not much she can do in the short-run to mitigate the effects if Trump’s tariff plan becomes a reality. But the Smith government can still help stabilize Alberta’s finances over the longer term. The key is spending restraint.

For decades, Alberta governments have increased spending when resource revenues were relatively high, as they are today, but do not commensurately reduce spending when resource revenues inevitably decline, which results in periods of persistent budget deficits and debt accumulation. And Albertans already pay approximately $650 each in provincial government debt interest each year.

To its credit, the Smith government has recognized the risk of financing ongoing spending with onetime windfalls in resource revenue and introduced a rule to limit increases in operating spending (e.g. spending on annual items such as government employee compensation) to the rate of population growth and inflation. Unfortunately, the government’s current plan for restraint is starting from a higher base level of spending (compared to its original plan) due to spending increases over the past two years.

Indeed, the government will spend a projected $1,603 more per Albertan (inflation-adjusted) this fiscal year than the Smith government originally planned in its 2022 mid-year budget update. And higher spending means the government has increased its reliance on volatile resource revenue—not reduced it. Put simply, Smith’s plan to grow spending below the rate of inflation and population growth isn’t enough to avoid budget deficits—more work must be done to rein in high spending.

Trump’s tariffs could help plunge Alberta back into deficit. To help stabilize provincial finances over the longer term, the Smith government should focus on what it can control—and that means reining in spending.

Tegan Hill

Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute

Related Topics:#DanielleSmith #DonaldTrump #FraserInstitute #TeganHill AlbertaOilExportsTariff TrumpTariffs TrumpTariffsAlberta

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.