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Red Deer Chamber of Commerce urging voters to choose a prosperous future

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News release from the Red Deer and District Chamber of Commerce

A Vote for Prosperity is a Vote for a Better Alberta

Over the past few years Alberta has managed to emerge from the COVID 19 Pandemic in a strong position for growth and prosperity. Since 2019 the state of the business environment has improved in part due to the advocacy of the Alberta Chambers Network working together to advocate for strong business policies in Alberta. Some of those advances include lowering the general corporate tax rate turned declining investment in Alberta around, opening our borders to trade and labour mobility, leading efforts to build national trade corridors, and inspired reciprocity of provincial partners with a vision to build a stronger economy together. As well establishing the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation is setting a new standard for collaborative economic development to build healthy communities. And, for the first time in decades, our nonrenewable resource wealth is being prudently saved for the future.

Today, Alberta leads all provinces in wage growth and job creation per capita. But we cannot rest on our laurels. We need to continue to advocate for good business and economic development policies to continue to reach for a brighter future.

It is with this in mind the Red Deer & District Chamber of Commerce is supporting the Alberta Chambers of Commerce in their Vote Prosperity 2023 platform. This platform focuses on a number of policy recommendations with the goal of allowing our businesses to thrive and create the foundation for healthy and vibrant communities across our province.

Vote Prosperity 2023 informs a path forward for the next provincial government to continue expanding opportunities for shared prosperity. This path forward includes, furthering small businesses in Alberta’s corporate tax advantage to help entrepreneurs create jobs. Reducing regulatory burdens limiting trade and competition would improve cost competitiveness for business and affordability for residents, strengthening Alberta’s reputation as a proponent of commerce. Better preparing young Albertans with hands on learning would help them build careers around their talents and Alberta to develop a highly skilled workforce. Improving fiscal stability and value-for-money of local and provincial public services would enable investment attraction and the viability of our communities.

There are for pillars to the Vote Prosperity 2023 platform for business in Alberta:

1. Strengthening business competitiveness – Lead the nation in tax competitiveness and the reduction of regulatory burdens, Reduce Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions while minimizing risks to business competitiveness, Enable competition and free trade for current and emerging sources of electricity. Work with Confederation partners to establish an internationally competitive regulatory environment for all industries.

2. Growing provincial trade – Facilitate collaboration among Indigenous communities and industry on economic development. Develop and expand economic corridors to increase access to domestic and international markets. Accelerate review and approval processes for trade-enabling infrastructure projects. Continue removing interprovincial trade barriers to strengthen local supply chains.

3. Building healthy communities – Deploy health care talent with sustainable resourcing throughout the province. Equip post-secondary institutions to meet employer demands through high-quality labor market information and targeted funding for in-demand occupations. Expand work-integrated and entrepreneurial learning models in K-12 and post-secondary education. Alleviate socio-economic and regulatory barriers to fully participate in the labour market.

4. Improving government accountability – Adhere to the fiscal sustainability framework and pay down debt. Appoint an independent panel of experts to review current and alternative revenue options with the view to deliver stable and predictable budgets. Eliminate or make transparent hidden and duplicative taxes within provincial purview. Align predictable funding for municipalities with performance metrics to improve local business services.

Albertans believe the province’s business community should have a role in developing a vision and providing leadership to move the province forward. Vote Prosperity 2023 provides that leadership. We encourage voters in the coming Alberta election to support candidates committed to our shared prosperity.

Representing over 24,000 businesses in our province, the Alberta Chambers is comprised of over 100 community Chambers throughout the province and the largest and most influential business association in the province. These pillars symbolize the outcome of nearly one hundred community-driven policies proposed by Chambers, with substantial contributions from the Red Deer Chamber. It is our belief these pillars are the foundation to restoring our province’s prosperity and the health and vibrancy of the communities that comprise it.

The Red Deer & District Chamber of Commerce in partnership with the Alberta Chambers is advocating this platform to all parties and candidates running for election this spring. For more information and to read the platform in its entirety, visit: https://www.abchamber.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/VP-Designed-Platform-Doc.pdf

Established in 1894 the Red Deer & District Chamber of Commerce is a non-partisan, collaborative business leader representing over 825 member businesses. As one of Red Deer’s oldest and most established membership organizations we are striving to build a vibrant community that fosters an environment where businesses can lead, be innovative, sustainable, and grow.

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Carbon Tax

The book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read

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By Franco Terrazzano

Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote a 500-page book praising carbon taxes.

Well, I just wrote a book smashing through the government’s carbon tax propaganda.

It tells the inside story of the fight against the carbon tax. And it’s THE book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read.

My book is called Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax.


 
Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax 

Every now and then, the underdog wins one.

And it looks like that’s happening in the fight against the carbon tax.

It’s not over yet, but support for the carbon tax is crumbling. Some politicians vow to scrap it. Others hide behind vague plans to repackage it. But virtually everyone recognizes support for the current carbon tax has collapsed.

It wasn’t always this way.

For about a decade now, powerful politicians, government bureaucrats, academics, media elites and even big business have been pushing carbon taxes on the people.

But most of the time, politicians never asked the people if they supported carbon taxes. In other words, carbon taxes, and the resulting higher gas prices and heating bills, were forced on us.

We were told it was good for us. We were told carbon taxes were inevitable. We were told politicians couldn’t win elections without carbon taxes, even though the politicians that imposed them didn’t openly run on them. We were told that we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to leave a healthy environment for our kids and grandkids. We were told we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to be respected in the international community.

In this decade-long fight, it would have been understandable if the people had given up and given in to these claims. It would have been easier to accept what the elites wanted and just pay the damn bill. But against all odds, ordinary Canadians didn’t give up.

Canadians knew you could care about the environment and oppose carbon taxes. Canadians saw what they were paying at the gas station and on their heating bills, and they knew they were worse off, regardless of how many politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics tried to convince them otherwise. Canadians didn’t need advanced degrees in economics, climate science or politics to understand they were being sold a false bill of goods.

Making it more expensive for a mom in Port Hope to get to work, or grandparents in Toronto to pay their heating bill, or a student in Coquitlam to afford food won’t reduce emissions in China, Russia, India or the United States. It just leaves these Canadians, and many like them, with less money to afford everything else.

Ordinary Canadians understood carbon taxes amount to little more than a way for governments to take more money from us and dictate how we should live our lives. Ordinary Canadians also saw through the unfairness of the carbon tax.

Many of the elites pushing the carbon tax—the media, politicians, taxpayer-funded professors, laptop activists and corporate lobbyists—were well off and wouldn’t feel the brunt of carbon taxes. After all, living in a downtown condo and clamouring for higher carbon taxes doesn’t require much gas, diesel or propane.

But running a business, working in a shop, getting kids to soccer and growing food on the farm does. These are the Canadians the political class forgot about when pushing carbon taxes. These are the Canadians who never gave up. These are the Canadians who took time out of their busy lives to sign petitions, organize and attend rallies, share posts on social media, email politicians and hand out bumper stickers.

Because of these Canadians, the carbon tax could soon be swept onto the ash heap of history. I wrote this book for two reasons.

The first is because these ordinary Canadians deserve it. They worked really hard for a really long time against the odds. When all the power brokers in government told them, “Do what we say—or pay,” they didn’t give up. They deserve to know the time and effort they spent fighting the carbon tax mattered. They deserve all the credit.

Thank you for everything you did.

The second reason I wrote this book is so people know the real story of the carbon tax. The carbon tax was bad from the start and we fought it from the start. By reading this book, you will get the real story about the carbon tax, a story you won’t find anywhere else.

This book is important because if the federal Liberals’ carbon tax is killed, the carbon taxers will try to lay blame for their defeat on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will try to say that carbon taxes are a good idea, but Trudeau bungled the policy or wasn’t a good enough salesman. They will try to revive the carbon tax and once again make you pay more for gas, groceries, and home heating.

Just like with any failed five-year plan, there is a lingering whiff among the laptop class and the taxpayer-funded desk rulers that this was all a communication problem, that the ideal carbon tax hasn’t been tried yet. I can smell it outside my office building in Ottawa, where I write these words. We can’t let those embers smoulder and start a fire again.

This book shows why the carbon tax is and always will be bad policy for ordinary Canadians.

Franco’s note: You can pre-order a copy of my new book, Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax, here: https://www.amazon.ca/Axing-Tax-Rise-Canadas-Carbon

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2025 Federal Election

Poilievre To Create ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor

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From Conservative Party Communications

Poilievre will create the ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor to rapidly approve & build the infrastructure we need to end our energy dependence on America so we can stand up to Trump from a position of strength.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced today he will create a ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor to fast-track approvals for transmission lines, railways, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure across Canada in a pre-approved transport corridor entirely within Canada, transporting our resources within Canada and to the world while bypassing the United States. It will bring billions of dollars of new investment into Canada’s economy, create powerful paycheques for Canadian workers, and restore our economic independence.

“After the Lost Liberal decade, Canada is poorer, weaker, and more dependent on the United States than ever before,” said Poilievre. “My ‘Canada First National Energy Corridor’ will enable us to quickly build the infrastructure we need to strengthen our country so we can stand on our own two feet and stand up to the Americans.”

In the corridor, all levels of government will provide legally binding commitments to approve projects. This means investors will no longer face the endless regulatory limbo that has made Canadians poorer.  First Nations will be involved from the outset, ensuring that economic benefits flow directly to them and that their approval is secured before any money is spent.

Between 2015 and 2020, Canada cancelled 16 major energy projects, resulting in a $176 billion hit to our economy. The Liberals killed the Energy East pipeline and passed Bill C-69, the “No-New-Pipelines” law, which makes it all but impossible to build the pipelines and energy infrastructure we need to strengthen the Canadian economy. And now, the PBO projects that the ‘Carney cap’ on Canadian energy will reduce oil and gas production by nearly 5%, slash GDP by $20.5 billion annually, and eliminate 54,400 full-time jobs by 2032. An average mine opening lead time is now nearly 18 years—23% longer than Australia and 38% longer than the US. As a result of the Lost Liberal Decade, Canada now ranks 23rd in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index for 2024, a seven-place drop since 2015.

“In 2024, Canada exported 98% of its crude oil to the United States. This leaves us too dependent on the Americans,” said Poilievre. “Our Canada First National Energy Corridor will get us out from under America’s thumb and enable us to build the infrastructure we need to sell our natural resources to new markets, bring home jobs and dollars, and make us sovereign and self-reliant to stand up to Trump from a position of strength.”

Mark Carney’s economic advice to Justin Trudeau made Canada weaker while he and his rich friends made out like bandits. While he advised Trudeau to cancel Canadian energy projects, his own company spent billions on pipelines in South America and the Middle East. And unlike our competitors Australia and America, which work with builders to get projects approved, Mark Carney and Steven Guilbeault’s radical “keep-it-in-the-ground” ideology has blocked development, killed jobs, and left Canada dependent on foreign imports.

“The choice is clear: a fourth Liberal term that will keep our resources in the ground and keep us weak and vulnerable to Trump’s threats, or a strong new Conservative government that will approve projects, build an economic fortress, bring jobs and dollars home, and put Canada First—For a Change.”

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