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Alberta

Alberta’s financial update one for the ages – Historical investments in savings and debt reduction on the way

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Q1 update: Paying down debt and saving for the future

Strong economic activity this year will see Alberta make historic investments in savings and debt reduction.

High revenue forecast for bitumen royalties, other resource revenue and corporate income taxes have increased the province’s forecast surplus to $13.2 billion for 2022-23.

This year’s surplus enables the government to make the largest single-year debt repayment in Alberta’s history, repaying $13.4 billion in debt that comes due this fiscal year. The government will also allocate $5.2 billion to debt coming due in 2023-24.

The government will make the largest ever single-year investment in the Heritage Fund, retaining the fund’s remaining 2021-22 net investment income of $1.2 billion and allocating $1.7 billion, for a total investment of $2.9 billion. This is over and above the $705 million retained for inflation-proofing last year.

“Alberta’s commitment to fiscal discipline and our unrelenting focus on economic growth has helped bring about an extraordinary turnaround in our financial situation. We promised Albertans we would get our fiscal house in order and that’s exactly what we’ve done. Now, we’re paying down debt so future generations won’t have to, saving more for a rainy day, and putting more money in Albertans’ pockets.”

Jason Kenney, Premier

“For too long, governments in Alberta refused to exercise fiscal discipline during boom times. Those days are over. Alberta’s government is making the prudent decision to save and invest surplus revenues so future generations can benefit from the prosperity of today.”

Jason Nixon, President of Treasury Board and Minister of Finance

Indexing personal income taxes

The province is fulfilling a commitment made in 2019 to index personal income taxes to inflation, retroactive to the 2022 tax year. The basic personal tax amount is rising to $19,814 and will rise again in 2023.

An additional 80,000 to 95,000 Albertans will pay no provincial personal income tax by 2023, on top of the approximately 1.3 million tax filers who already pay no provincial personal income tax.

Many Albertans will first see the benefit of indexation through lower tax withholdings on their first paycheques of 2023. In addition, since indexation will resume for 2022, Albertans will receive larger refunds or owe less tax when they file their 2022 tax returns in spring 2023. In total, resuming indexation for 2022 and subsequent years will save Albertans an estimated $304 million in 2022-23, $680 million in 2023-24 and $980 million in 2024-25.

Indexing personal income taxes to inflation will contribute further to Alberta’s strong tax advantage: Albertans already pay less in overall taxes, with no PST, no payroll tax and no health premiums.

Alberta’s government has already introduced some of the most generous measures to keep more money in the pockets of Albertans, committing $2.4 billion in relief for rising prices, inflation and cost of living, including:

  • Providing $300 in relief for 1.9 million homeowners, business operators and farmers over six months through the Electricity Rebate Program.
  • Eliminating the 13-cent-per-litre provincial fuel tax until at least the end of September.
  • Helping school authorities cover high fuel costs for buses under the Fuel Price Contingency Program.
  • Providing natural gas rebates from October 2022 to March 2023 to shield consumers from natural gas price spikes.
  • Maintaining Alberta senior benefits for those over 75 years of age, exempting them from the Federal Old Age Security increase.

Other economic growth indicators

Momentum has picked up in Alberta’s labour market. The province has added 68,200 jobs since the beginning of the year and most industries have surpassed employment levels from early 2020, before the pandemic first took hold of the province. Alberta’s unemployment rate fell to 4.8 per cent, the lowest since early 2015. In response to these positive developments, the province has revised its forecast for employment growth to 5.3 per cent, up from 4.1 per cent at budget. The unemployment rate has also been revised down to 5.9 per cent in 2022 from the budget forecast of 6.6 per cent.

Business output has surged in the province on the back of higher demand and prices. While energy products have led the increase, there have been gains across most industries including chemical and forestry products, food manufacturing and machinery. Merchandise exports have risen more than 60 per cent so far this year, while manufacturing shipments are up over 30 per cent.

Higher energy prices are boosting revenues and spending in the oil and gas sector. Strong drilling activity has lifted crude oil production to 3.6 million barrels per day so far this year and is expected to reach a record high this year. Outside the oil and gas sector, companies are proceeding with investment plans, buoyed by solid corporate profits.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow by 4.9 per cent in 2022. This is down slightly from the budget forecast of 5.4 per cent, reflecting softer expectations for growth in consumer spending and residential investment as a result of higher inflation and interest rates. Even so, real GDP is expected to fully recover from the COVID-19 downturn and surpass the 2014 peak for the first time this year. Private sector forecasters are expecting Alberta to have among the highest economic growth in the country this year and in 2023.

Quick facts

  • The surplus for 2022-23 is forecast at $13.2 billion, $12.6 billion more than what was estimated in Budget 2022.
  • The revenue forecast for 2022-23 is $75.9 billion, $13.3 billion higher than reported in the budget.
    • Non-renewable resource revenue is forecast at $28.4 billion in 2022-23, up $14.6 billion from budget’s $13.8 billion forecast.
    • Corporate income taxes are up $2 billion from the budget, with a new forecast of $6.1 billion for 2022-23.
    • Revenue from personal income taxes is forecast to be $13.3 billion in 2022-23, down $116 million from budget. Indexation of the personal income tax system, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2022, is forecast to lower revenue by $304 million. This is partially offset by increased revenue from rising primary household income.
  • Total expense is forecast at $62.7 billion, up slightly from the $62.1 billion estimated at budget.
    • Education is receiving an extra $52 million to support the new teachers agreement and to help school authorities pay for bus fuel.
    • $279 million the province received from the federal government for the Site Rehabilitation Program is being spent this year instead of next year.
    • $277 million is needed to cover the cost of selling oil due to higher prices and volumes.
  • The Capital Plan in 2022-23 has increased by $389 million mainly due to carry-over of unspent funds from last fiscal year and an increase of $78 million for highway expansion.
  • Taxpayer-supported debt is forecast at $79.8 billion on March 31, 2023, which is $10.4 billion lower than estimated in the budget.
  • The net debt-to-GDP ratio is estimated at 10.3 per cent for the end of the fiscal year.

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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