Alberta Politics & Government Thread 4.0

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

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?

Provinces, including Ontario i believe, have adopted this model. It stops minimum wage from being a political football.

Alberta is also in the position that it needs a jolt to bring it back in line with other provinces. A lift to 18 dollars and attachment to inflation would solve some problems in Alberta, for sure.

[Ped]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Provinces, including Ontario i believe, have adopted this model. It stops minimum wage from being a political football.

Alberta is also in the position that it needs a jolt to bring it back in line with other provinces. A lift to 18 dollars and attachment to inflation would solve some problems in Alberta, for sure.

Yes, Ontario's minimum wage is tied to the Consumer Price Index and goes up a similar rate every October 1. Of course, it's still not a livable wage, and there are a lot of business struggling.


There is no easy answer, but as costs rise, everyone gets squeezed.

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by Ped

Yes, Ontario's minimum wage is tied to the Consumer Price Index and goes up a similar rate every October 1. Of course, it's still not a livable wage, and there are a lot of business struggling.


There is no easy answer, but as costs rise, everyone gets squeezed.

Businesses (small and medium) don't struggle as a result of higher minimum wage. The money given to workers is almost exclusively spent locally, which offsets expense.

Businesses that are hurt by a wage increase are extremely borderline as profitable, no matter what policy is in place.

Increased minimum wage, getting closer to livable wage, is just smart policy. It does hurt large companies and corporations, as they do not generally care about the local economy.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Provinces, including Ontario i believe, have adopted this model. It stops minimum wage from being a political football.

Alberta is also in the position that it needs a jolt to bring it back in line with other provinces. A lift to 18 dollars and attachment to inflation would solve some problems in Alberta, for sure.

I don’t disagree but I’m actually trying to get an idea of what business owners would think of what I would consider to be a way more modest and less “cumbersome” approach. I guess the lack of responses from any business owners answers my question.

[DJones]

Originally Posted by #-3

$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.

Every government ####s up. That's part of being a giant organization. But again, divide that by five years and it's what. 1 percent of annual budget.

It's just not a budget altering number. Again, perfect management won't change anything substantial

[Fuzz]

No need to worry everyone, oil up 11%, budget saved. Thanks Donald!


https://bsky.app/profile/blakeshaffe.../3mfzuz6d7dk2r

[#-3]

Originally Posted by DJones

Every government ####s up. That's part of being a giant organization. But again, divide that by five years and it's what. 1 percent of annual budget.

It's just not a budget altering number. Again, perfect management won't change anything substantial

Bhhhhh bhh bhbhbbbhut the light bulbs.

#### off.

This list literally is enough money to wipe out this years deficit in 1 swoop, and would put us in a position structurally to have a smaller deficit next year, which Trump is going to fix for us on his own by starting wars in all of the oil producing countries through no contribution of Maralina.

I'm not a dyed in the wool fiscal hawk, governments should take shots at doing good things, but this government is ####ing stupid there is no other way around it.

The Tylenol is the perfect example, they were looking for a quick political win, so they paid a guy who didn't know what he was doing to sell them something he couldn't supply, just so they could hold a press conference saying they were smarter than the Canadian government. Yet all it did was prove they were dumber, the Canadian health agency understood safety approvals, they understood supply chain timelines, they understood that demand surge shortages are often fleeting, that the fix was on a timeline of a few weeks, not holding a press conference and announcing you spent a bunch of money fixing things today with an incomplete plan but very real spending.

The thing about the NDP policies, agree with them, disagree with them, they had a stated intent, and the achieved it. The light bulb program was a complete waste of money, but they wanted fewer incandescent bulbs in this province, they spent some money and it worked. While the UPC came out and wanted to say they are better at buying medicine for Albertans than Canada, it turned out they were wrong.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by DJones

Every government ####s up. That's part of being a giant organization. But again, divide that by five years and it's what. 1 percent of annual budget.

It's just not a budget altering number. Again, perfect management won't change anything substantial

I hope you never had a negative word to say about the early 2000s Sponsorship Scandal then. If you heard Stephan Harper and other Conservatives (and their supporters) raging about it at the time, you'd think that the federal government was responsible for wasting multiple billions of dollars of public funds. The reality, according to the findings of the official inquiry, were:

The inquiry found that $2 million had been awarded in contracts without a proper bidding process, $250,000 had been added to one contract price for no additional work, thereby doubling the value of the contract, and $1.5 million had been awarded for work that was never completed/

Source: https://carleton.ca/profbrouard/wp-c...1002014002.pdf

To put those figures in perspective, the Sponsorship Scandal -- which was almost solely responsible for bringing down the Chretien/Martin government in the early 2000s -- improperly wasted Canadian taxpayer money over an eight year period equivalent to a mere 4% of what Danielle Smith's UCP government blew on unusable Tylenol in less than one year. And that's just one of the UCP's many, many misuses of public funds that resulted in little to no benefit for the Alberta citizens they are meant to serve.

But hey, every government ####s up, as you say, so nothing to see here. Go about your business. Move along. Go be a good deplorable and get angry at transgender people instead of paying attention to how the UCP government have been absolutely terrible stewards of Alberta's public finances.

[DJones]

Originally Posted by #-3

Bhhhhh bhh bhbhbbbhut the light bulbs.

#### off.

This list literally is enough money to wipe out this years deficit in 1 swoop, and would put us in a position structurally to have a smaller deficit next year, which Trump is going to fix for us on his own by starting wars in all of the oil producing countries through no contribution of Maralina.

I'm not a dyed in the wool fiscal hawk, governments should take shots at doing good things, but this government is ####ing stupid there is no other way around it.

The Tylenol is the perfect example, they were looking for a quick political win, so they paid a guy who didn't know what he was doing to sell them something he couldn't supply, just so they could hold a press conference saying they were smarter than the Canadian government. Yet all it did was prove they were dumber, the Canadian health agency understood safety approvals, they understood supply chain timelines, they understood that demand surge shortages are often fleeting, that the fix was on a timeline of a few weeks, not holding a press conference and announcing you spent a bunch of money fixing things today with an incomplete plan but very real spending.

The thing about the NDP policies, agree with them, disagree with them, they had a stated intent, and the achieved it. The light bulb program was a complete waste of money, but they wanted fewer incandescent bulbs in this province, they spent some money and it worked. While the UPC came out and wanted to say they are better at buying medicine for Albertans than Canada, it turned out they were wrong.

Your list added up about 2.5 billion. The majority of which was the keystone gamble and 5 years ago. In retrospect sure, didn't work out but you just gotta do it. Like ####, we just spent 40 billion on a pipeline. If a billion gives a chance at a pipeline you gotta take it. If an Albertan government didn't take that bet I'd be mad. We'll probably spend a billion on the next BC pipeline just on permitting. If that only costs them a billion that would be a miracle, If they can get a route and permit and sell it to someone for a 5 billion loss I'd consider that a win. Hell, Notley gambled a billion on excess rail capacity that didn't end up being required. Similar idea, wasn't a great idea but I can't fault her for it, at the time I probably would have been tempted to do the same. I looked at it as a hedge.

The corporate tax cut is just blatantly untrue. ~90% of any corporate tax cut gets refunded to the province within 3-5 years. That's just how corporate taxes work.

I do not like any party, I find it mystifying why anyone would attach themselves to a team of these #######s haha. Yes, the Tylenol was stupid, no argument here, the private blood clinics was botched, sadly our governments are terrible at tendering bids. The renewable pause, terrible, any government that denies private investment in a useful industry is clearly in the wrong.

But like you realize the NDP spent $400 giving people power bars that shut off people TVs for them. I used mine for two days before I said #### that, took 10 seconds for my tv to turn on. That they didn't understand how our power contracts works and got sued for 2 billion when they broke said contracts in the coal shut down.

None of those things ultimately mattered. One bad natural disaster can wipe out all of those things. Thats why they have contingencies. Something is going to go wrong this year that costs 2-3 billion to Alberta. No idea what it'll be but its going to happen.

[DJones]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I hope you never had a negative word to say about the early 2000s Sponsorship Scandal then. If you heard Stephan Harper and other Conservatives (and their supporters) raging about it at the time, you'd think that the federal government was responsible for wasting multiple billions of dollars of public funds. The reality, according to the findings of the official inquiry, were:



Source: https://carleton.ca/profbrouard/wp-c...1002014002.pdf

To put those figures in perspective, the Sponsorship Scandal -- which was almost solely responsible for bringing down the Chretien/Martin government in the early 2000s -- improperly wasted Canadian taxpayer money over an eight year period equivalent to a mere 4% of what Danielle Smith's UCP government blew on unusable Tylenol in less than one year. And that's just one of the UCP's many, many misuses of public funds that resulted in little to no benefit for the Alberta citizens they are meant to serve.

But hey, every government ####s up, as you say, so nothing to see here. Go about your business. Move along. Go be a good deplorable and get angry at transgender people instead of paying attention to how the UCP government have been absolutely terrible stewards of Alberta's public finances.

Did anyone think the sponsorship scandal was materially effecting the budget? It's not even a rounding error. Same with the arrive app. 50 million is nothing. It's the principal of the matter. They had flawed/biased/corrupt bids. That's what people are mad about.

It's pretty much the UCP with the Tylennol. If they just ####ed up and bought something stupid. Whatever. If it was a fabricated ploy to get money to business associates to enrich themselves. String them up

[Fuzz]

This is amazing, keep going.

[AFireInside]

Originally Posted by DJones

Your list added up about 2.5 billion. The majority of which was the keystone gamble and 5 years ago. In retrospect sure, didn't work out but you just gotta do it. Like ####, we just spent 40 billion on a pipeline. If a billion gives a chance at a pipeline you gotta take it. If an Albertan government didn't take that bet I'd be mad. We'll probably spend a billion on the next BC pipeline just on permitting. If that only costs them a billion that would be a miracle, If they can get a route and permit and sell it to someone for a 5 billion loss I'd consider that a win. Hell, Notley gambled a billion on excess rail capacity that didn't end up being required. Similar idea, wasn't a great idea but I can't fault her for it, at the time I probably would have been tempted to do the same. I looked at it as a hedge.

The corporate tax cut is just blatantly untrue. ~90% of any corporate tax cut gets refunded to the province within 3-5 years. That's just how corporate taxes work.

I do not like any party, I find it mystifying why anyone would attach themselves to a team of these #######s haha. Yes, the Tylenol was stupid, no argument here, the private blood clinics was botched, sadly our governments are terrible at tendering bids. The renewable pause, terrible, any government that denies private investment in a useful industry is clearly in the wrong.

But like you realize the NDP spent $400 giving people power bars that shut off people TVs for them. I used mine for two days before I said #### that, took 10 seconds for my tv to turn on. That they didn't understand how our power contracts works and got sued for 2 billion when they broke said contracts in the coal shut down.

None of those things ultimately mattered. One bad natural disaster can wipe out all of those things. Thats why they have contingencies. Something is going to go wrong this year that costs 2-3 billion to Alberta. No idea what it'll be but its going to happen.

You don't give a pipeline company 1.5 billion with no strings attached if that pipeline hasn't been entirely approved. Just weeks after giving away 1.5 billion that pipeline was scheduled to be going through the courts in Montana, who had already shut it down.

1.5 billion would go a long way fixing issues in healthcare, and education etc.

If the NDP did that you would be losing your mind. If the Liberals did that you'd be losing your mind.

Stop giving the UCP a free pass. It's embarrassing.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by DJones

Every government ####s up. That's part of being a giant organization. But again, divide that by five years and it's what. 1 percent of annual budget.

It's just not a budget altering number. Again, perfect management won't change anything substantial

Why have total expenditures grown roughly 75% since this government took over?

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Why have total expenditures grown roughly 75% since this government took over?

75%? Hasn't spending gone from about $60B in 2019 to $85B in the most recent budget? Math is hard but that is far from 75% and the growth in that timeframe is pretty much in line with every government across Canada. Who should we be learning from and emulating?

[Fuzz]

This is a great website for visualizing this stuff. You can see how much Alberta is leaving on the table compared to other provinces.





https://financesofthenation.ca/real-fedprov/

[DJones]

Originally Posted by AFireInside

You don't give a pipeline company 1.5 billion with no strings attached if that pipeline hasn't been entirely approved. Just weeks after giving away 1.5 billion that pipeline was scheduled to be going through the courts in Montana, who had already shut it down.

1.5 billion would go a long way fixing issues in healthcare, and education etc.

If the NDP did that you would be losing your mind. If the Liberals did that you'd be losing your mind.

Stop giving the UCP a free pass. It's embarrassing.

As I just said I didn't lose my mind when the NDP gave away money to the rail companies. It was a hedge.

I would have done the same thing, project wasn't dead until Biden killed it. If we had done that to an American company we would 100% be sued and they would get paid back. Sadly doesn't work going the other way. America always wins those or they just ignore them.

Liberals throwing away a billion dollars doesn't even make the news anymore. We're all just immune to the shock of it now.

They're going to spend more than that on the new BC pipeline that likely will never exist. No, I am not mad about that. When the regulatory system is incapable of attracting private investment it will inevitable fall to the province to fund permitting costs. I would much prefer the regulations just get thrown in the trash and start over but that's obviously not going to happen. Before Carney scrapped the net zero regulations I assumed the province was going to start building gas plants under a crown corporation as well. Obviously private investment wouldn't have broken the law but a crown corporation can get away with that stuff.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

This is a great website for visualizing this stuff. You can see how much Alberta is leaving on the table compared to other provinces.

https://financesofthenation.ca/real-fedprov/

That website shows some interesting things. When looking at personal income real per capita dollars Alberta is towards the top of the provinces behind Quebec, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Newfoundland. At the corporate tax level, Alberta is the second highest behind Saskatchewan.

[troutman]

https://thebreakdownab.substack.com/...utm_medium=web

On March 12, 2025, Justice Hoffman in the BC Supreme Court issued a shocking ruling against one of the key leaders of the separatist movement in Alberta, Dr. Dennis Modry.

The ruling was the result of a legal scandal that had taken years to unfold and ended with a scathing judgement against the former physician.

According to the ruling, obtained at CanLii, Dennis Modry, the founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project and separatist leader who has engaged in negations with the US State Department misappropriated almost a million and a half dollars from family members suffering from dementia.

[Fuzz]

Elder abuse, should be in prison.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by DJones

Your list added up about 2.5 billion. The majority of which was the keystone gamble and 5 years ago. In retrospect sure, didn't work out but you just gotta do it. Like ####, we just spent 40 billion on a pipeline. If a billion gives a chance at a pipeline you gotta take it. If an Albertan government didn't take that bet I'd be mad. We'll probably spend a billion on the next BC pipeline just on permitting. If that only costs them a billion that would be a miracle, If they can get a route and permit and sell it to someone for a 5 billion loss I'd consider that a win. Hell, Notley gambled a billion on excess rail capacity that didn't end up being required. Similar idea, wasn't a great idea but I can't fault her for it, at the time I probably would have been tempted to do the same. I looked at it as a hedge.

The corporate tax cut is just blatantly untrue. ~90% of any corporate tax cut gets refunded to the province within 3-5 years. That's just how corporate taxes work.

I do not like any party, I find it mystifying why anyone would attach themselves to a team of these #######s haha. Yes, the Tylenol was stupid, no argument here, the private blood clinics was botched, sadly our governments are terrible at tendering bids. The renewable pause, terrible, any government that denies private investment in a useful industry is clearly in the wrong.

But like you realize the NDP spent $400 giving people power bars that shut off people TVs for them. I used mine for two days before I said #### that, took 10 seconds for my tv to turn on. That they didn't understand how our power contracts works and got sued for 2 billion when they broke said contracts in the coal shut down.

None of those things ultimately mattered. One bad natural disaster can wipe out all of those things. Thats why they have contingencies. Something is going to go wrong this year that costs 2-3 billion to Alberta. No idea what it'll be but its going to happen.

Without the tax cuts my list added up to $3B, with the tax cuts it added up to $13B. the List was far from exhaustive, I really tried to focus on areas where other government likely would have done better, who didn't start with the base assumption that governing is easy and doesn't require detail orientated planning before announcing policy that experts had already warned would be ineffective.

You can go find the Keystone thread here, from day one their were plenty of people who had a massive degree of certainty that it was sunk money from day one, and nothing was done to protect the province from that.

The other thing about this list is +/-$3B of those costs are annually recurring and growing mainly the tax cuts.

By what measure did Alberta recoup the corporate tax cuts? I don't think there is a lot for evidence that we would have lost business without the tax cut, it would be an especially rich for the separatist right to argue we should be worried about the risk of scaring off business. The other side of the argument is that there will be jobs growth which is also hard to buy into when Alberta employment metrics have general lagged behind the rest of the country in the years since the tax cuts. Seemingly it was a straight across wealth transfer towards those with productive investments in the province, now it seems the only idea they have for recouping that wealth transfer is the raise property taxes on everyone else.

I think the reason you get strong retorts to all of your posts here, is because if you aren't completely beholden to one side of the political spectrum than you are extremely poorly calibrated, you are talking about a piece of a program that cost $136M and achieved it's stated goal (I really don't bemoan you disputing the value of that goal, I have criticized it myself), while I am talking about a problem over 100x larger with little basically no positive outcomes, and I would argue spending that was largely DOA in terms of hoping for positive outcomes.

I don't know if you are a right wing hack, or if you just can't calibrate problems within two orders of magnitude, but the ANDP, Prentice, Redford, Trudeau, Harper.... are basically beyond reproach in comparison to the fiscal management of the UCP, and really should not be brought up as points of comparison, directly address the UPCs problems and stop comparing them to their betters.