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Alberta

Alberta Budget 2021 Highlights

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Maintaining responsible spending

A careful approach to spending

Budget 2021’s responsible approach to spending will mean more investment in priority areas like health care, education and job creation.

Sound fiscal anchors

Budget 2021 is built on 3 fiscal anchors:

  • Keep net debt below 30% of GDP to help protect future generations from rising debt servicing costs.
  • Deliver services more cost effectively by bringing spending in line with other comparator provinces.
  • Re-establish a plan to balance the budget post-pandemic when a more stable level of predictability returns to the budgeting process.
    Getting back on track

    Operating expense

    • In 2021–22, operating expense is $1 billion higher than 2020–21 forecast and begins to normalize, remaining relatively flat over the next 2 years.

    Deficit

    • $18.2 billion deficit is targeted for 2021–22, $2 billion less than the 2020–21 forecast.
    • $11 billion and $8 billion deficits are targeted for 2022–23 and 2023–24 respectively.

    Declining deficit can be attributed to decreasing expense as:

    • the costs of the pandemic subside
    • the government works to streamline and modernize service delivery
    • revenue increases as the economy recovers
      Budget 2021 funding highlights

      Budget 2021 provides funding of:

      • $23 billion for health services
      • $8.2 billion operating expense for kindergarten to grade 12 (K to 12) education services
      • $6.3 to $6.4 billion operating expense for social services ministries
      • $136 million over 3 years for the Alberta Jobs Now program
      • $166 million over 3 years for the Innovation Employment Grant
      • $500 million in 2021–22 for additional investments in economic recovery

Investing in health care

Budget 2021 invests record funding in health care

Alberta’s government is increasing Health’s budget by over $900 million (or 4%) to $23 billion, and that’s excluding the impact of COVID-19.

  • $5.4 billion for physician compensation and development (including academic medicine)
  • $3.5 billion for community care, continuing care and home care programs, including $20 million over 4 years for palliative and end of life care
  • $1.9 billion for drugs and supplemental health benefits.
  • $34 million for children’s health supports to expand mental health and rehabilitation services for children and youth
  • $140 million over 4 years for mental health and addiction services
    Continuing the fight against COVID-19

    Budget 2021 invests in continued supports to protect Albertans as we enter the second year of the pandemic.

    • $1.25 billion COVID-19 Contingency to address health-care costs for responding to the pandemic, including surgical wait times and backlogs
    • This is in addition to $2.1 billion spend in 2020-21
      Getting health care back on track

      Budget 2021 invests $16 billion for Alberta Health Services operations. Includes:

      • Alberta Surgical Initiative
      • Continuing Care Capacity Plan
      • CT and MRI Access Initiative
        Investing in health care capital

        Budget 2021 commits $3.4 billion over 3 years for health related capital projects and programs, providing:

        • $2.2 billion for health facilities, with $143 million for 5 new projects
        • $766 million for Alberta Health Services self-financed capital, for parkades, equipment and other capital requirements
        • $343 million for capital maintenance and renewal of existing facilities
        • $90 million for health department IT projects

Preparing for recovery

Paving the way for jobs and investment

Alberta’s Recovery Plan is a bold strategy to create jobs that get people back to work, build infrastructure and diversify our economy. This includes the acceleration of the Job Creation Tax Cut, which creates employment opportunities by making Alberta one of the most attractive jurisdictions in North America for new business investment. Budget 2021 will spend an additional $3.1 billion in 2021–22 to continue supporting recovery plan strategies.

Building infrastructure to create 90,000 new jobs

Budget 2021 invests $1.7 billion more in capital funding in 2021–22 than what was planned in Budget 2020.

The 3-year Capital Plan now totals $20.7 billion and will support more than 50,000 direct and 40,000 indirect jobs through to 2024.

Diversifying the economy

In 2021–24, $1.5 billion invested in Alberta’s Recovery Plan.

Budget 2021 invests in established and emerging sectors that hold the greatest potential for growth and job creation, and are fundamental to our economic recovery including: energy; agriculture and forestry; tourism; finance and fintech; aviation, aerospace and logistics; and technology and innovation.

 

Economic recovery spending highlights

    • Innovation Employment Grant supports small and medium-sized businesses that invest in research and development
    • Developing framework to protect intellectual property in Alberta
    • Investment and Growth Strategy supports emerging sectors while building on our existing strengths
    • Invest Alberta provides supports and services to drive up investment and showcase Alberta as the best place in the world to do business

 

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Alberta

Media melts down as Danielle Smith moves to end ‘transitioning’ of children in Alberta

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

After Alberta’s Danielle Smith put forth legislation to protect kids from being gender ‘transitioned,’ the Canadian media went on a predictable melt down, citing ‘experts’ who blatantly lie to advance the LGBT agenda.

A year after announcing her intention to combat transgender ideology and protect children, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has tabled three pieces of UCP (United Conservative Party) government legislation: 

  • The Education Amendment Act 2024 will require parental consent for “socially transitioning” children under the age of 16 (changing a child’s name or “preferred pronouns”). The bill also gives parents an “opt-in” option for any sexual or content at school. Smith has emphasized that the Alberta Teaching Profession Commission has the power to discipline teachers if they decide to break the law. 
  • The Health Statues Amendment Act 2024 will ban the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, as well as prohibit sex change surgeries on minors. 
  • The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act will ban trans-identifying men from female sports teams.  

Together, these three bills represent the most definitive pushback against gender ideology in Canada by any premier. Smith’s decision to announce her intent to pursue such legislation and then wait has turned out to be politically savvy—it has given the UCP government a good look at the LGBT response, and during that time the U.K.’s Labour government has successfully fought to maintain a similar ban in the courts and publicly rebutted many of the scare tactics used by LGBT activists.

Smith and the UCP are thus walking into this debate with eyes wide open, and are clearly certain that the public is on their side (it is) and that the legislation can survive the court challenges surely coming from LGBT activists. The policies are clearly popular with the UCP party’s base, who handed Smith a staggering 91.5% approval rating in her leadership review at UCP gathering in Red Deer last Saturday.  

The party also passed 35 policy resolutions, including several that indicate the UCP’s willingness to go further in fighting transgender ideology, with resolutions that would restrict “exclusively female spaces” like bathrooms and changerooms to females and designating transgender surgeries as “elective cosmetic procedures” not funded by the taxpayer. The motions received near-unanimous support.  

The Canadian press, unsurprisingly, is working hard to present policies that the vast majority of Canadians support as an attack on fundamental norms (albeit norms that only surfaced in the last few years and were never presented to voters). Global News ran the headline: “Alberta unveils 3 sweeping bills affecting trans and gender-diverse youth.” It is important to note that the press accepts the premises of transgender ideology as the starting point for their reporting, with heavy usage of nonsensical phrases like “gender-diverse youth,” which implies that there are many genders. 

In fact, Global News and other Canadian outlets trotted out talking points that have been definitively rebutted by the U.K.’s Cass Review and multiple medical studies—in fact, even the New York Times has been reporting on the permanent harms of puberty blockers over the past several years. An example from Global News: 

Alberta parents of gender-diverse youth like Haley Wray believe the new laws will give kids less choice — especially when it comes to health-care that is not permanent but instead, gives kids time to work through their identity struggles. 

‘Hormone blockers are a very valuable tool,’ Wray said, explaining they have a very small window of effectiveness to pause, but not prevent, puberty. ‘It is reversible because nothing changes. And what that does is it allows youth and families to have that that pause, that break to explore further, validate, understand what this means and know that permanent changes aren’t happening.’

Wray believes the proposed legislation will make the province a less safe place for tens of thousands of Alberta kids who aren’t straight. It’s why, Wray says, a growing number of families with transgender children are now grappling with whether Alberta is a place they can stay. ‘I know people who have, and I know people who genuinely feel like there is likely nowhere to go,’ she said. 

This is incorrect. Puberty blockers cause permanent damage, and children may be rendered permanently sterile after taking them for a relatively short period of time. Puberty is not something that can be “paused,” and it frequently causes irreversible rather than reversible damage. Smith and her government understand this, which is why they have decided to pass this legislation—not, as nearly every press outlet claimed, to “target trans youth,” but to protect them. 

The CBC chimed in with sentences like this one: 

Terms like ‘biological female’ and ‘biological male’ can be used to imply that transgender people are still their assigned sex at birth, despite their identity. 

To translate: a scientifically accurate and precise statement is now an ideological one, but inherently ideological language invented by the transgender movement over the past decade is, in fact, technically accurate. People can identify as anything they want; it is irrelevant to their biology. The CBC presents pointing this out as some sort of propagandistic attack on vulnerable people. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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Alberta

Alberta calling for federal election! Premier Smith demands feds scrap dangerous oil and gas production caps

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Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean issued the following statement on the proposed federal oil and gas production cap:

“This production cap will hurt families, hurt businesses and hurt Canada’s economy. We will defend our province, our country and our Constitutional rights.

“Make no mistake, this cap violates Canada’s constitution. Section 92A clearly gives provinces exclusive jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resource development yet this cap will require a one million barrel a day production cut by 2030.

“The evidence is overwhelming. Three reports from reputable firms have shown that these regulations will sucker-punch Canada’s economy, a million barrels cut every day according to S&P Global, $28 billion a year in lost GDP according to Deloitte, and up to 150,000 lost jobs according to the Conference Board of Canada.

“The losses to GDP mean billions a year will disappear from the economy. Billions that won’t be going towards new schools, hospitals and roads, all for a reckless ideological scheme that will not reduce global emissions.

“Ultimately, this cap will lead Alberta and our country into economic and societal decline. The average Canadian family would be left with up to $419 less for groceries, mortgage payments and utilities every month. Canadian parents and workers will suffer while Justin Trudeau outsources the duty to provide safe, affordable, reliable and responsibly produced oil and gas to dictators and less clean producers around the world. We could be the solution. Instead, Ottawa would rather sacrifice our ability to lead.

“Tweaks won’t work. This cap must be scrapped. Alberta’s government is actively exploring the use of every legal option, including a constitutional challenge and the use of the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. We will not stand idly by while the federal government sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for its extreme agenda.”

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