Opinion

Election 2017 is almost over. Was it a repeat of past elections? Will Election 2021 be a repeat of this one?

Published

7 years ago

5 minute read

Election 2017 will be over in about 48 hours, and then what?
“The odds are all the incumbents will get re-elected so nothing will change.” If that is your argument, then vote for a challenger. You do not have to vote for all 14 or 16 positions depending on school boards. Find one name that you would like to see win a seat, and vote for that person.
If you find some more names, all the better.
Remember the vote you gave your last choice may be the vote that gives your last choice the win over your first choice. In 2013 Paul Harris only beat Tanya Handley by 8 votes, Bill Stuebing got 5 more votes than Bev Manning, and Cathy Peacock and Jim Watters tied. Incumbents usually fill the last few blanks because of name recognition.
“Wasn’t the removal of the railyard going to revitalize the downtown, about 20 years ago, and haven’t the Riverlands been brought up in the last 3 or 4 elections?” The downtown revitalization is a continuous circle and will never be completely revitalized. There will be new ideas, new plans, changes, and hopes that the next project will be the one, that cures the downtown’s ailments. Next election we may be voting on a new vision for the downtown because the issues are still there.
This year the fashionable issue of the day was “Crime” and with Red Deer having the 2nd highest Crime Severity Index in Canada, it was no surprise. We have the highest number of Fentenyl deaths in Alberta and we hand out 500,000 needles per year and can only account for 350,000 back. Haven’t we heard some of the same arguments since 2004 and in 2011 weren’t we 15th on the Crime Severity Index and now we are up to 2nd. Are we trying for number 1? Is this an issue that disappears between elections?
“We are a growth community.” No we are not. We were in 2013 but we are declining in population, our businesses are closing and or relocating. “It is the recession.” No it isn’t. The province grew, the neighbours all grew, just us that declined. The tax differential is still there but it was there when we were growing.
“Our environmental stewardship is a leader.” We have the poorest air quality in Alberta which is the lowest across Canada. Perhaps we could look at the way we build our city, and make some changes. We have all industry in the north-west and we are building our high schools in the East, South-east. Do we need to build 5 high schools along 30th Ave. So either you commute across the city to work or your children commute across the city to high school. The monitors having been reading in the “needs immediate attention” range sine 2009. Harder to deal with but perhaps better planning may help. The next high school will be a public high school, and perhaps a new board might consider building it north of the river and not along 30th Ave?
There are a lot of reasons to change direction, and since the incumbents seem unwilling to let go the levers of power, the voters must.
If you are satisfied with the status quo, vote for the status quo.
I have voted in over 30 elections at different levels. I have seen the same discussions repeated time and again. The biggest change I saw was the 2015 Alberta election that brought in a whole new government. The world did not end, and the apocalypse did not arrive.
I am sure that the world will continue on but I am hoping for some fresh ideas, fresh thinking, fresh discussions and a fresh start in a new direction.
Perhaps we should just wait and see and discuss this during Election 2021. We might.

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Business

Trudeau’s new tax package gets almost everything wrong

Published on November 22, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Ben Eisen and Jake Fuss

Recently, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced several short-term initiatives related to tax policy. Most notably, the package includes a two-month GST holiday on certain items and a one-time $250 cheque that will be sent to all Canadians with incomes under $150,000.

Unfortunately, the Trudeau government’s package is a grab bag of bad ideas that will not do anything to get Canada out of the long-term growth rut in which our economy is mired. There are too many to list all in one place, but here are four of the biggest problems with Prime Minister Trudeau’s tax plan.

It reduces the wrong taxes. When it comes to economic growth, not all taxes are created equal. Some cause far more economic harm per dollar of government revenue raised than others. The government’s package creates a holiday on the GST for some items (only for two months) which is a mistake given that the GST is one of the least economically harmful components of the tax mix. Canada’s recent growth record is abysmal, and boosting growth should be a primary goal of any changes to tax policy. A GST cut of any duration fails this test relative to other tax cuts.
Temporary tax holidays shift consumption in time, they don’t boost growth. The government’s GST reduction is actually a short-term tax holiday on certain items that will last two months. There are decades worth of economic research showing that when governments create short-term tax breaks, they may change the timing of consumption, but they won’t contribute to actual economic growth. Shifting consumption from the future to the present won’t help get Canada out of the economic doldrums. This is particularly true of the Trudeau tax holiday since purchases that Canadians may have made after the two-month holiday period will simply be shifted forward to take advantage of the absence of the GST. As noted above, there are better taxes to cut than the GST, but no matter what taxes we are talking about permanent reductions are vastly superior to temporary tax cuts like short-term holidays.
One-time tax rebates don’t improve economic incentives. Perhaps the worst element of the Trudeau government’s announcement was a plan to send $250 cheques to all Canadians earning under $150,000. One-time tax rebates are a terrible way to provide tax relief. When you cut income tax rates, you improve incentives for people to work and invest because they get to keep a larger share of their earnings. This helps the economy grow. One-time rebates that you get regardless of the economic choices you make has no similar effect. This means that the rebate with its $4.7 billion price tag won’t help Canada’s poor growth performance.
It borrows from the future to give to the present. The federal government is currently running a large deficit. This raises the question of who will have to pay the $4.7 billion bill for the one-time payments announced today. The answer is that the government will have to borrow the money and therefore future taxpayers will have to either pay it off or service the extra debt indefinitely. The money the Trudeau government will send out won’t come out of thin air, it’ll have to be borrowed with the burden falling on future taxpayers.

The Trudeau government got one thing conceptually right, which is that there are advantages to reducing the tax burden on Canadians. Unfortunately, the policy package it has put forward to provide tax relief gets everything wrong. It reduces the wrong taxes, shifts taxes temporally rather than cutting them, does nothing to improve economic incentives, and burdens future taxpayers. With the holiday season around the corner, this attempt at a gift to Canadian taxpayers is the economic equivalent of a lump of coal in the stocking.

Authors:

Ben Eisen and Jake Fuss

Business

DEI gone?: GOP lawmakers prep to clean house in federal government

Published on November 22, 2024

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Casey Harper

Many of Trump’s cabinet picks so far have also pledged to remove DEI programs from the federal government. These policies can range from training federal employees on “white privilege” to using medical research funds to study racism to awarding federal funds to recipients only as long as they toe the line on DEI orthodoxy.

President-elect Donald Trump’s win and his subsequent creation of a Department of Government Efficiency have galvanized lawmakers to pave the way for legislation to clean out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, staff and programs that have ballooned under the Biden-Harris administration.

The Center Square was given advance copy of two bills filed Thursday by U.S. Rep. Bob Good, R-La., to end DEI practices at the Department of Housing and Urban Development

The first bill, the Flexibility in Housing Act of 2024, would block a Biden-Harris administration rule at HUD. That rule is about to be finalized and would require HUD grant recipients to implement “equity-driven housing plans.”

The newly introduced bill, however, would block that rule and give power to states and local governments to decide how best to spend the funds.

The second bill, the “No Discrimination in Housing Act,” would prevent large corporations from using DEI programs to get federal tax credits in buying up single family American homes, something many economists say is driving up the cost of homeownership for Americans.

The new bill “would prohibit any entity with a DEI initiative from receiving the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit – thereby ensuring the tax credit is distributed based on merit – not for the advancement of the radical DEI ideology.”

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s radicalization of housing policy prioritizes woke DEI corporations, yet does nothing that will actually drive down the cost of a home in an economy destroyed by Bidenflation,” Good told The Center Square. “My bills aim to restore Trump-era housing flexibility and eliminate the DEI housing policies that prohibit families from pursuing the American dream.”

These two bills, first obtained by The Center Square, are in line with Republicans’ renewed push to eliminate the hard left turn toward DEI policies taken in the last few years of the Biden-Harris administration.

Those policies have been under the microscope for years, but Trump’s win gives Republicans hope they can be undone.

Many of Trump’s cabinet picks so far have also pledged to remove DEI programs from the federal government. These policies can range from training federal employees on “white privilege” to using medical research funds to study racism to awarding federal funds to recipients only as long as they toe the line on DEI orthodoxy.

The latest high-profile examples of controversial DEI spending involves the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Amid the scandal of its handling of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, reporting has shown that FEMA lists DEI and equity as it number one priority.

U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, introduced the Dismantle DEI Act, which advanced out of the House Oversight Committee, which would eliminate DEI programs in the federal government and return to a “colorblind” approach.

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion – these are words that, on the surface, seem to represent ideals we can all support,” Cloud said. But when these principles are redefined and implemented as an ideology within our federal government, they take on a meaning that diverges from their original intent.”

A recent report from Do No Harm documented about 500 examples of DEI programs across many agencies choosing to reward some Americans over others.

“Under the guise of progress, this ideology seeks to categorize individuals based on immutable characteristics rather than valuing the content of their character or their individual achievements,” Cloud continued.