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

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.
Business
It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers
The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.
Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.
These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.
Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.
In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.
Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.
According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.
Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.
A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.
These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.
Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.
Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
2025 Federal Election
Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is planning to borrow more money than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
That’s an odd plan for a former banker because the federal government is already spending more on debt interest payments than it spends on health-care transfers to the provinces.
Let’s take a deeper look at Carney’s plan.
Carney says that his government would “spend less, invest more.”
At first glance, that might sound better than the previous decade of massive deficits and increasing debt, but does that sound like a real change?
Because if you open a thesaurus, you’ll find that “spend” and “invest” are synonyms, they mean the same thing.
And Carney’s platform shows it. Carney plans to increase government spending by $130 billion. He plans to increase the federal debt by $225 billion over the next four years. That’s about $100 billion more than Trudeau was planning borrow over the same period, according to the most recent Fall Economic Statement.
Carney is planning to waste $5.6 billion more on debt interest charges than Trudeau. Interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion per week.
The platform claims that Carney will run a budget surplus in 2028, but that’s nonsense. Because once you include the $48 billion of spending in Carney’s “capital” budget, the tiny surplus disappears, and taxpayers are stuck with more debt.
And that’s despite planning to take even more money from Canadians in years ahead. Carney’s platform shows that his carbon tariff, another carbon tax on Canadians, will cost taxpayers $500 million.
The bottom line is that government spending, no matter what pile it is put into, is just government spending. And when the government spends too much, that means it must borrow more money, and taxpayers have to pay the interest payments on that irresponsible borrowing.
Canadians don’t even believe that Carney can follow through on his watered-down plan. A majority of Canadians are skeptical that Carney will balance the operational budget in three years, according to Leger polling.
All Carney’s plan means for Canadians is more borrowing and higher debt. And taxpayers can’t afford anymore debt.
When the Liberals were first elected the debt was $616 billion. It’s projected to reach almost $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, that means the debt has more than doubled in the last decade.
Every single Canadian’s individual share of the federal debt averages about $30,000.
Interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. That’s more than the government takes in GST from Canadians. That means every time you go to the grocery store, fill up your car with gas, or buy almost anything else, all that federal sales tax you pay isn’t being used for anything but paying for the government’s poor financial decisions.
Creative accounting is not the solution to get the government’s fiscal house in order. It’s spending cuts. And Carney even says this.
“The federal government has been spending too much,” said Carney. He then went on to acknowledge the huge spending growth of the government over the last decade and the ballooning of the federal bureaucracy. A serious plan to balance the budget and pay down debt includes cutting spending and slashing bureaucracy.
But the Conservatives aren’t off the hook here either. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will balance the budget “as soon as possible,” but hasn’t told taxpayers when that is.
More debt today means higher taxes tomorrow. That’s because every dollar borrowed by the federal government must be paid back plus interest. Any party that says it wants to make life more affordable also needs a plan to start paying back the debt.
Taxpayers need a government that will commit to balancing the budget for real and start paying back debt, not one that is continuing to pile on debt and waste billions on interest charges.
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