"You inherit a lot of decisions that have been made when you come into this position , and we've had successive governments that made decisions where we've got quite a large reliance on resource revenues."
I almost can't emphasize enough how much this statement made me laugh out loud sitting in a room alone. Nobody in the history of Alberta has done more to double down in the O&G industry than Smiths UPC. Other governments looked for more balanced tax policy or austerity, or to expand into other segments of the energy industry, or hell at the vary least they were welcoming to businesses outside of the industry. This government has gleefully said our only hope is to double the industry, that we need to stop other forms of energy until we get a handle on them, that we shouldn't educate people or bring in outsiders for new ideas, they have cut revenues outside of this industry and spent money promoting it.
I know there are a couple of UPC supports to read this and occasionally post here, so I am telling you this statement only leaves 2 options, Danielle Smith a Moron or she thinks you are. My guess is both are true (that she thinks your a moron, not that you are, a lot of very smart people go a little too far with motivated reasoning)
Last edited by #-3; 02-28-2026 at 08:02 PM.
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The Marlaina and UCP soundbites from that CBC podcast are absolutely infuriating.
It's a good thing Notley and ANDP were the party that continuously cancelled tax credits and subsidies for non-O&G industries (e.g. info tech, film, animation/digital media, and clean tech in 2019; or the scientific research and experimental development tax credits in 2022) and have driven dozens of billions of private-sector capital investment to Vancouver and Toronto because of ideologically-driven policy making (i.e. the moratorium on renewables in 2023).
I think there is overspending in lots of non essential programs and administration.
I would be ok with a pat tax to start as long as it doesn't get wasted.
Alberta needs to balance its budget and not include royalties as the hail Mary approach each year. Start chipping away at debt.
What areas do you think we're overspending on? All anyone ever says is how much the ucp is restricting spending.
Provincial budgets are mainly how much are you paying public sector workers, what infrastructure they have, and what are the ratios you want. That's 90 percent of the budget.
There's always overhead to cut but it's a giant organization. Efficiency waste and bureaucracy is all but guaranteed. A perfect management system would maybe save five percent but we'll never get those high end managers in the public sector to achieve it anyway.
It's not like the feds where they have hundreds of billions in elective spending.
$1.5B Keystone
$144M Dynalife
$95M Turkish Tylenol
$238M Coal Mining
$66M War Room
+/-$9.6B "job creation" tax cuts
$30M Bad Medical PPE
$100M Well cleanup payback
$85M Dismantling AHS (now rebuilding with added layers of government)
$300M in lost local tax revenue on cancelled renewables
$45M payout doctors after picking a fight and needing to get them back to work during a health crisis.
I'm not going to get into political interference in Aimco, or some of the philosophical difference on how some spending can be beneficial to province in the long run.
But the facts are in, this government has a spending problem, they spend $2-3B / year on objectively stupid ideas with no hope of garnering any return to Albertans. They have pushed us to the point were we are more captured by the resource revenue dragon than ever, and have no idea how to do anything else.
Maybe we can stop spending money, maybe we can't, but it would be nice if we just decided when we spend money, we should expect to get something in return.
It was a joke 6 years ago, and it has only gotten worse to even call the UCP party conservative.
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$1.5B Keystone
$144M Dynalife
$95M Turkish Tylenol
$238M Coal Mining
$66M War Room
+/-$9.6B "job creation" tax cuts
$30M Bad Medical PPE
$100M Well cleanup payback
$85M Dismantling AHS (now rebuilding with added layers of government)
$300M in lost local tax revenue on cancelled renewables
$45M payout doctors after picking a fight and needing to get them back to work during a health crisis.
I'm not going to get into political interference in Aimco, or some of the philosophical difference on how some spending can be beneficial to province in the long run.
But the facts are in, this government has a spending problem, they spend $2-3B / year on objectively stupid ideas with no hope of garnering any return to Albertans. They have pushed us to the point were we are more captured by the resource revenue dragon than ever, and have no idea how to do anything else.
Maybe we can stop spending money, maybe we can't, but it would be nice if we just decided when we spend money, we should expect to get something in return.
It was a joke 6 years ago, and it has only gotten worse to even call the UCP party conservative.
How do we know it was only $1.5 billion on the Keystone deal? I think it could be much, much higher. Have any official numbers ever been released?
What about Kenney's decision to cancel the superlab while it was under construction? How much would that have saved us during covid?
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How do we know it was only $1.5 billion on the Keystone deal? I think it could be much, much higher. Have any official numbers ever been released?
What about Kenney's decision to cancel the superlab while it was under construction? How much would that have saved us during covid?
Thanks it's really hard to keep track of the creative ways this UPC government finds ways to throw our money in the garbage.
The $1.5B number has been thrown around for so long I didn't validate it. not sure it matters all that much, it was stupid, they did it.
The second point gets to the idea of ROI, which isn't really the fight we need to have, I think the government can spend money well, I am not sure that CFO agrees. But that doesn't change that we should both agree Danielle Smith and the UCP are unfit for the task of managing our money in a far more stark way that any of our past governments (of my adult life, I guess I'll qualify).
The war on green energy costs us in lost tax income and higher power prices, but it's hard to work out real losses due to inept policies based on ideology.
Same with vehicle insurance. Making photo radar illegal and neutering driver training have led to increased insurance costs, which is really just throwing money away, but that's hard to work out as well.
I'm sure better building standards and banning vinyl siding on new construction in hail areas would lead to lower insurance costs for everyone as well.
All these bad policy decisions lead to increased cost of living, but you don't really see it as a line item.
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The war on green energy costs us in lost tax income and higher power prices, but it's hard to work out real losses due to inept policies based on ideology.
Same with vehicle insurance. Making photo radar illegal and neutering driver training have led to increased insurance costs, which is really just throwing money away, but that's hard to work out as well.
I'm sure better building standards and banning vinyl siding on new construction in hail areas would lead to lower insurance costs for everyone as well.
All these bad policy decisions lead to increased cost of living, but you don't really see it as a line item.
Yeah, I used some fuzzy math, but I've kind of pegged that one at $300M my AI roughly estimated it at $90M/year mostly to municipalities, which is just an AI estimate so grain of salt, but not nothing.
And regarding insurance, energy cost..... I didn't really even dig into how the UPC has driven cost of living up artificially, just wait until the start running all of the low income foreigners out, then we'll see what happens to the cost of living.
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How do we know it was only $1.5 billion on the Keystone deal? I think it could be much, much higher. Have any official numbers ever been released?
What about Kenney's decision to cancel the superlab while it was under construction? How much would that have saved us during covid?
Likely would have had little to no impact on COVID. The lab was supposed to open in late 2022 if it stayed on track with project timelines. But considering what happened during COVID in terms of procurement issues, staffing issues and just government ineptitude in general the lab probably would have been delayed.
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CliffFletcher: You're one of the most miserable persons I've come across in 20 years online. Never change, Fuzz.
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Likely would have had little to no impact on COVID. The lab was supposed to open in late 2022 if it stayed on track with project timelines. But considering what happened during COVID in terms of procurement issues, staffing issues and just government ineptitude in general the lab probably would have been delayed.
Well it's a good thing they cancelled it then. That could have been embarrassing for them. Though at least they could have blamed it on the NDP instead of their own bungling.
I agree the UCP has a spending problem along with a revenue problem, but it almost seems disingenuous to refer to it as “spending” when the insane amount of money wasted with no benefit or, often times, money wasted to limit or reduce potential revenue.
More accurate to say UCP has a money wasting problem. When someone throws money in the garbage they aren’t really spending it.
They are an ideological nightmare and a complete disaster economically. I agree Alberta desperately needs to increase taxation, but the idea of putting more revenue in the hands of the UCP should genuinely worry every single taxpayer.
For the business owners in here(who likely pay their employees above minimum wage anyways), what would your thoughts be on increasing minimum wage by last years inflation rate of 2.1%($0.32/hour) and then again next year by whatever the inflation rate ends up being for 2026?
My thoughts as a non business owner are that while it wouldn’t bring minimum wage anywhere near a living wage it would slow the bleeding for minimum wage earners in the province while increasing tax revenue generated from their earnings. Is that bad?
