Alberta Politics & Government Thread 4.0

[BigThief]

The handful of times I've encountered a group set up I've asked them if they're going to stop crying when this thing fails and from all their answers they'll just bounce around from issue to issue being outraged. Group of beautiful (?) young(??) not trashy (???) women were set up at my nearby grocery store and much like covid this all seems to social time for most of these guys. They get together, have laughs with their fellow dumb dumbs for a few hours and call it a day. When I told them "great job guys, huge line up, you're killing it!" One lady was quite thankful for the support until I kinda chuckled then Kathy and Debra shook her off.

The best minds at work.

[BigThief]

Basically it's like interacting with a bunch of The Fonze clones during A 2:00am trans "research".

[puffnstuff]

Let them fight?

https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/03/02/P...ession-Leader/

Jeff Rath claimed Manning and influential allies have tried to silence and subvert the separatist movement.
Preston Manning Claps Back at Alberta Secession Leader. 'Yahoos'

[BigThief]

"Chat GPT why do I find this so f'n hot "

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

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.

The good news is we’re both wrong. When I posted that I was going off memory and thought that the last NDP budget ended up around $50B when in reality revenues were around $48B expenses ended up around $56B. Since we’re talking about ballooning expenses under the UCP I think that it’s worth noting those expenses were almost identical to the previous year’s expenses.

The $60B in expenses that you’re referring to was from the UCP’s first budge which I thought it would be obvious isn’t the last budget of the previous government but I guess you’re finding it challenging to come to terms with that concept. Based on the UCP’s track record, short of a massive surge in oil prices I think spending will exceed their estimate this year but for the sake of argument let’s assume your $85B figure ends up being accurate.

That’s still an over 50% increase to expenses from the previous government’s last budget without having much to show for it. For someone like yourself who if I had to guess probably complained that the NDP were spending like drunken sailors during their term, wouldn’t that make the increase even worse by default?

Who should we be learning from and emulating?

Not that I’m suggesting we do all of these things but oddly enough if our provincial corporate and personal income rates moved to the average of those across the other provinces and we implemented a PST based on the average across those same provinces we’d probably have a surplus.

But as you pointed out I’m bad at math so if you could explain to us why your plan of pretending the UCP are doing a great job despite growing debt and expenses is a better plan fiscally in comparison to trying to have a rational conversation about the problems and trying to come up with solutions I’m sure that I’ll enjoy reading that.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

Let them fight?

https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/03/02/P...ession-Leader/

Jeff Rath claimed Manning and influential allies have tried to silence and subvert the separatist movement.
Preston Manning Claps Back at Alberta Secession Leader. 'Yahoos'

What did he expect when he kicked this thing off 30 years ago? That the best and brightest would fall for the dumbest thing?


Smith is your creation, Preston. You wrote a covid report where you gave the dumbest mother####ers oxygen to keep going, including using the opinion of shamed, de-licensed medical "professionals" to back it up. And I remember you took quite a hefty chunk of Alberta taxpayer dollars for it, so maybe sit this one the #### out, old man.

Goddamn these people are dumb. The whole modern reform Conservative movement is full of the dumbest yahoos in Canada. Thanks, Preston.

[DJones]

Originally Posted by #-3

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.

Then expand your list. I didn't disagree with most of them being poor choices. They are just immaterial. Like ####, if you have to talk about Tylenol for five years at some point let it go.

People had been saying Keystone was dead for a decade but governments and private interests kept dumping money into them. If Trump would have won it would likely have proceeded. It was the presidential permit that revived and killed it.

If corporate taxes are 50%, your dividends are tax free. If Corporate taxes are 0%, your dividends are taxed at 50%. If corporate taxes are 25%, your dividends get taxed at 25%. Obviously a lot more math involved but that's how corporate taxes work. It's not a real tax, its a tax deferral. I think corporate taxes should be 0%. More revenue would end up going to the government. It would just be sporadic. That's why government hate it, if a big windfall comes in for your opponent but not you, the public will destroy you. Terrible for budgeting even if the net value of taxes goes up significantly.

I have been pushing for a PST, more property taxes, more crown corporations and more provincial spending in pretty much all of my posts. But sure, must be a right wing hack because I said #### Trudeau. Yes, I voted for Smith for the strict purpose of fighting the feds and frankly the complete dismantling of Trudeau policies is a bigger win than I could have hoped for. Smith can go #### off. Now we need someone that can align the top 4 provinces to start clawing back federal spending and taxes.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by DJones

I have been pushing for a PST, more property taxes, more crown corporations and more provincial spending in pretty much all of my posts. But sure, must be a right wing hack because I said #### Trudeau. Yes, I voted for Smith for the strict purpose of fighting the feds and frankly the complete dismantling of Trudeau policies is a bigger win than I could have hoped for. Smith can go #### off. Now we need someone that can align the top 4 provinces to start clawing back federal spending and taxes.

Just wanting clarification, are you giving Smith credit for that?

[DJones]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Just wanting clarification, are you giving Smith credit for that?

Net zero, carbon tax, pipelines, emissions cap, gas plant permit denials. Just the general philosophy of Trudeau.

The fact that all those things are dead or at least diminished is wild. I would have lost a lot of money betting on those outcomes. Obviously Trump knocking some sense into the Liberals that they just wasted a decade of productivity helped but I thought her ad campaigns and just general defiance were very effective. She had the media circling around her for months at a time. I do not think anyone even knew about the net zero regulations until Alberta made a huge fuss about it. Completely changed the whole conversation.

Not only are they all dead, but the whole population seems to have turned on the whole concept of them. The conversation is now that Carney isn't going far enough. The pipeline MOU is near meaningless without regulatory changes. The industrial carbon tax is just a backdoor replacement. The PMO giving approvals based on backroom deals is not a viable strategy and leads to corruption. Investors need clearly defined rules before they will invest.

[btimbit]

I disagree with that line of thinking wholeheartedly.

I dislike Smith for the exact reason I disliked Trudeau. Putting ideology ahead of what makes the most sense. I've heard many people defend her BS as necessary to fight Trudeau's BS, but at the end of the day it's still BS.

[DJones]

Originally Posted by btimbit

I disagree with that line of thinking wholeheartedly.

I dislike Smith for the exact reason I disliked Trudeau. Putting ideology ahead of what makes the most sense. I've heard many people defend her BS as necessary to fight Trudeau's BS, but at the end of the day it's still BS.

What way of thinking? That was my priority going into the election. Calm the feds the #### down. A limp wristed premier in the same scenario would have gotten steam rolled. "Sorry guys, at least we got a pipeline though".

At that point its too late and Carney isn't incentivized to change anything. Bad PR and the media is about the only weapon provinces had against Trudeau. The gun buyback is an ongoing comparable. That #### is dead already, they're just going to continue to spend money on it for a few more years for Quebec.

In comparison UCP/NDP squabbling about their 2% growth in expenditure is not enough. I will spend 3%! Their 8 billion in debt is too high, I will only go into debt 7 billion! Cuts are terrible, I will use attrition!

Meh, who gives a ####, if oil is high they'll spend more. If oil drops they'll cut spending. Welcome to Alberta.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by DJones

What way of thinking? That was my priority going into the election. Calm the feds the #### down. A limp wristed premier in the same scenario would have gotten steam rolled. "Sorry guys, at least we got a pipeline though".

At that point its too late and Carney isn't incentivized to change anything. Bad PR and the media is about the only weapon provinces had against Trudeau. The gun buyback is an ongoing comparable. That #### is dead already, they're just going to continue to spend money on it for a few more years for Quebec.

In comparison UCP/NDP squabbling about their 2% growth in expenditure is not enough. I will spend 3%! Their 8 billion in debt is too high, I will only go into debt 7 billion! Cuts are terrible, I will use attrition!

Meh, who gives a ####, if oil is high they'll spend more. If oil drops they'll cut spending. Welcome to Alberta.

What do you think would be different for Alberta if an NDP government were in charge? Actual, things achieved by Smith's perpetually aggrieved position built through decades of lying and deceit, that would not have happened through cooperation? Because whatever it is, you sure chose a lot of cows to slaughter for it. Hope it was worth it. Hope you don't need the ER.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by DJones

Then expand your list. I didn't disagree with most of them being poor choices. They are just immaterial. Like ####, if you have to talk about Tylenol for five years at some point let it go.

You just brought up power bars, so this is a little the pot calling the kettle black. For clarity, It is not about the Tylenol, it is not about the money. It's about the method of decision making. It's about making an announcement about something they don't know how to do, because they assume they are smarter than the people who told them it was hard without looking into how to do it. This is just the ideal form of the pattern they repeat.

Originally Posted by DJones

People had been saying Keystone was dead for a decade but governments and private interests kept dumping money into them. If Trump would have won it would likely have proceeded. It was the presidential permit that revived and killed it.

This is a strong assumption for an otherwise very protective government to welcome trade with open arms, but it's nice that your optimistic look on that was it was basically a little worse than coin flip.

Originally Posted by DJones

If corporate taxes are 50%, your dividends are tax free. If Corporate taxes are 0%, your dividends are taxed at 50%. If corporate taxes are 25%, your dividends get taxed at 25%. Obviously a lot more math involved but that's how corporate taxes work. It's not a real tax, its a tax deferral. I think corporate taxes should be 0%. More revenue would end up going to the government. It would just be sporadic. That's why government hate it, if a big windfall comes in for your opponent but not you, the public will destroy you. Terrible for budgeting even if the net value of taxes goes up significantly.

This is almost unintelligible, but if I understand you correctly then you think the think the corporate tax cuts were offset by dividends which didn't increase? Those who know seem to think that the tax cut directly effect Alberta's budget to the tune of $2.2B/year, so I generally prefer to trust them over you.

At it's core your argument basically seems to ignore the reality of leveraged debt, people don't need to realize assets to benefit from owning them, they can leave the money sheltered and benefit from borrowing at low rates against their equity. Basically use the money to earn more money before paying taxes, which as I've explained before is the fundamental cause of the wealth gap.

Originally Posted by DJones

I have been pushing for a PST, more property taxes, more crown corporations and more provincial spending in pretty much all of my posts. But sure, must be a right wing hack because I said #### Trudeau. Yes, I voted for Smith for the strict purpose of fighting the feds and frankly the complete dismantling of Trudeau policies is a bigger win than I could have hoped for. Smith can go #### off. Now we need someone that can align the top 4 provinces to start clawing back federal spending and taxes.

This one, wont play as well with the crowd who's been enjoying me bashing your ideas, but PST is a bad idea, because again allowing those who have the capacity to save money to differ the date at which they are taxed is the fundamental cause of our wealth gap. The person hit the hardest by sales taxes is the person who spends their last dollar first regardless of how much tax they pay, because interest. In a world where investment debt has become so cheap it is almost riskless, whatever amount we decide we are going to tax people they should be taxed as early in the process as possible, otherwise you are ingraining a compounding wealth gap into the system.

[DJones]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

What do you think would be different for Alberta if an NDP government were in charge? Actual, things achieved by Smith's perpetually aggrieved position built through decades of lying and deceit, that would not have happened through cooperation? Because whatever it is, you sure chose a lot of cows to slaughter for it. Hope it was worth it. Hope you don't need the ER.

As I said, all of those things likely would have been normalized by the time Carney came in. Notley showed a little bit of fight the last year or so she was in power but that was after three years of taking it to the cheek. If she had done that from the beginning we'd have a different conversation.

Gambling that she would completely throw Singh and the NDP under the bus didn't seem a wise choice. Can't have her waste a year talking about co-operation and "lets just give them a bit more time to see the error in their judgement".

#### that, I had zero doubts about Smith haha.

[DJones]

Originally Posted by #-3

This is a strong assumption for an otherwise very protective government to welcome trade with open arms, but it's nice that your optimistic look on that was it was basically a little worse than coin flip.

Trumps the one that approved it... of course I thought he wanted it.

Originally Posted by #-3

This is almost unintelligible, but if I understand you correctly then you think the think the corporate tax cuts were offset by dividends which didn't increase? Those who know seem to think that the tax cut directly effect Alberta's budget to the tune of $2.2B/year, so I generally prefer to trust them over you.

At it's core your argument basically seems to ignore the reality of leveraged debt, people don't need to realize assets to benefit from owning them, they can leave the money sheltered and benefit from borrowing at low rates against their equity. Basically use the money to earn more money before paying taxes, which as I've explained before is the fundamental cause of the wealth gap.

Dividends tax did increase... It's automatic. Corporate taxes going down, there is less money to refund when the dividends are declared. That's what a dividend tax credit is, a refund of corporate taxes. Again, jack up corporate taxes to 50% and all dividends are tax free.

And I'm not ignoring it, that's the whole point of the strategy. Corporations average 8-10% ROA. Let them keep the money and let it grow. Like what is the worst case scenario here? The corporation doesn't sell, doesn't declare dividends and reinvests everything into the economy. That's exactly what I want. I'll wait until the guy dies if need be. Once corporate profits are declared the tax is ours, our system is incredibly tight that way. They just control when they pay it. Even discounting the cost of debt to service the liability is win. The longer they leave the money in Alberta the better. Don't pay taxes for twenty years, that's a good thing.

Originally Posted by #-3

This one, wont play as well with the crowd who's been enjoying me bashing your ideas, but PST is a bad idea, because again allowing those who have the capacity to save money to differ the date at which they are taxed is the fundamental cause of our wealth gap. The person hit the hardest by sales taxes is the person who spends their last dollar first regardless of how much tax they pay, because interest. In a world where investment debt has become so cheap it is almost riskless, whatever amount we decide we are going to tax people they should be taxed as early in the process as possible, otherwise you are ingraining a compounding wealth gap into the system.

This is some 100 year old logic that's been solved repeatedly by near every country on earth. No one wants to tax poor people, its a waste of time. If you are poor 80% of the things you spend money on wouldn't have PST attached to them. Every sales tax on earth has a basic good exemption list. If it does effect them there's a 1000 ways to give the money directly back to them.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

The good news is we’re both wrong. When I posted that I was going off memory and thought that the last NDP budget ended up around $50B when in reality revenues were around $48B expenses ended up around $56B. Since we’re talking about ballooning expenses under the UCP I think that it’s worth noting those expenses were almost identical to the previous year’s expenses.

The $60B in expenses that you’re referring to was from the UCP’s first budge which I thought it would be obvious isn’t the last budget of the previous government but I guess you’re finding it challenging to come to terms with that concept. Based on the UCP’s track record, short of a massive surge in oil prices I think spending will exceed their estimate this year but for the sake of argument let’s assume your $85B figure ends up being accurate.

That’s still an over 50% increase to expenses from the previous government’s last budget without having much to show for it. For someone like yourself who if I had to guess probably complained that the NDP were spending like drunken sailors during their term, wouldn’t that make the increase even worse by default?



Not that I’m suggesting we do all of these things but oddly enough if our provincial corporate and personal income rates moved to the average of those across the other provinces and we implemented a PST based on the average across those same provinces we’d probably have a surplus.

But as you pointed out I’m bad at math so if you could explain to us why your plan of pretending the UCP are doing a great job despite growing debt and expenses is a better plan fiscally in comparison to trying to have a rational conversation about the problems and trying to come up with solutions I’m sure that I’ll enjoy reading that.

More tax revenue isn't going to solve the problem of wasteful spending. There are provinces across the country who have higher taxes and PST yet they are still running up the tab, growing deficits and have debt loads that are becoming unsustainable. Giving the Alberta government, any party, more revenue just means they will find wasteful projects. We'd just be giving a problem gambler more money. They'll blow through that new cash and still keep racking up more debt. More money doesn't solve the inherent problem of excessive spending.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

More tax revenue isn't going to solve the problem of wasteful spending. There are provinces across the country who have higher taxes and PST yet they are still running up the tab, growing deficits and have debt loads that are becoming unsustainable. Giving the Alberta government, any party, more revenue just means they will find wasteful projects. We'd just be giving a problem gambler more money. They'll blow through that new cash and still keep racking up more debt. More money doesn't solve the inherent problem of excessive spending.

We spend less than the rest of Canada on education, and at the Canadian average for healthcare. So we either aren't spending enough, or are spending in the wrong areas. Either way, it's a governance issue, not an over-spending issue. And that blame can only fall on one party.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by DJones

Net zero, carbon tax, pipelines, emissions cap, gas plant permit denials. Just the general philosophy of Trudeau.

The fact that all those things are dead or at least diminished is wild. I would have lost a lot of money betting on those outcomes. Obviously Trump knocking some sense into the Liberals that they just wasted a decade of productivity helped but I thought her ad campaigns and just general defiance were very effective. She had the media circling around her for months at a time. I do not think anyone even knew about the net zero regulations until Alberta made a huge fuss about it. Completely changed the whole conversation.

Not only are they all dead, but the whole population seems to have turned on the whole concept of them. The conversation is now that Carney isn't going far enough. The pipeline MOU is near meaningless without regulatory changes. The industrial carbon tax is just a backdoor replacement. The PMO giving approvals based on backroom deals is not a viable strategy and leads to corruption. Investors need clearly defined rules before they will invest.

So it sounds like you are giving her credit for it. Is that correct?

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

More tax revenue isn't going to solve the problem of wasteful spending. There are provinces across the country who have higher taxes and PST yet they are still running up the tab, growing deficits and have debt loads that are becoming unsustainable. Giving the Alberta government, any party, more revenue just means they will find wasteful projects. We'd just be giving a problem gambler more money. They'll blow through that new cash and still keep racking up more debt. More money doesn't solve the inherent problem of excessive spending.

So you’re agreeing with me that the UCP are spending way too much for not enough return?

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

So you’re agreeing with me that the UCP are spending way too much for not enough return?

Yeah, there is some spending that certainly doesn't make sense.