Alberta is dealing with two big problems: we need to get people back to work and we need our provincial government to stop overcharging Albertans by $10 billion a year. There’s plenty of evidence from our own backyard that shows Alberta’s business tax cut will be part of the solution, not the problem. In 2001, the Alberta government began reducing its business tax rate from 15.5 per cent to 10 per cent in 2006. Alberta’s average yearly real GDP growth rate between 2001 and 2014 was higher [Read more]
Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Column: Alberta’s repeal of carbon tax makes economic, environmental sense
Utopian legislators in the United States often look with rose-tinted glasses upon the Canadian approach to everything, from higher education and medical care to global warming and international affairs. Since Canadians are the ones who live with such policies, they’re more inclined to recognize their mistakes and reverse the course, as exhibited by Alberta’s carbon tax. The repeal of the carbon tax in Alberta has had one indisputable beneficiary: Albertans. Premier Jason Kenney introduced the [Read more]
Column: Alberta’s Gas City Sparking Light of Fiscal Responsibility
It’s tough for politicians to balance budgets so it might seem far-fetched to believe they can actually save money. But Medicine Hat’s politicians are doing it. By creating their Heritage Savings Reserve to steward resource revenues, the Gas City has sparked a light of fiscal responsibility for Alberta to follow. Medicine Hat has an abundance of energy resources. The city has over 4,000 gas wells and ambitions to increase its oil production to 5,000 barrels per day. When energy prices are [Read more]
Column: Ottawa’s carbon tax is so bad it’s uniting Alberta and Quebec
Imagine a tax so bad that it’s uniting Alberta and Quebec. With all of the heated rhetoric over pipelines and equalization, that sort of unity seems like an impossibility. But it turns out the tax is all too real and it’s Ottawa’s carbon tax. The Trudeau government has been busy uniting the provinces against its economically damaging policies. Six premiers wrote to the prime minister urging him to change or scrap legislation that bans tankers on the West Coast and makes approvals for future [Read more]
CTF: Quebec feels Alberta’s pain, so why keep blocking pipelines?
As Quebec continues to face it’s own “dirty energy” export problems, their politicians should understand the pain Albertans are going through, but they are still deciding to oppose pipelines. Last year, Hydro-Quebec generated nearly $15 billion by selling more than 200 TWh of electricity. Despite these high sales, Quebec produces “too much” energy and Hydro-Quebec must regularly let water flow away without generating electricity, resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue. Eager to [Read more]
Scheer says it would take Conservatives five years to balance budget
VANCOUVER - Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer says the economy has become such a mess under the Liberals that it would take a Conservative government five years to clean it up. He accused the Liberal government of embarking on a "deficit spree" and spending at a rate that will add $71 billion to the national debt by the end of this year. Scheer made the comments Friday to members of the Canadian Club at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, where he also accused the Liberals of stacking a panel on [Read more]
Column: The carbon tax will always be unfair for Albertans
Albertans have been getting a raw deal with the carbon tax since day one and things will only get worse if we let the Trudeau government impose its tax. When Alberta’s economy-wide tax kicked in there were less than a hand-full of provinces that had a carbon tax. Taxpayers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and in the territories weren’t paying the punitive tax. On April 1, the federal government imposed a carbon tax on [Read more]
Getting the Trans Mountain expansion back on track
For Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Federal Court of Appeal’s recent decision to overturn approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was a political thunderbolt that instantly derailed progress on one of his government’s most critical files. Luckily for the purveyor of sunny ways, the storm clouds came with a silver lining: a careful reading of the decision also offers some guidance on how his government can get Trans Mountain back on track. There have been no shortage of twists and [Read more]
CRAIG: Ottawa should stop funding anti-oil research
Just when you thought Canada’s nonsensical world of oil and gas policy couldn’t get any worse, consider this little nugget of lunacy. The federal government is actually funding anti-oil research activists. Yes, your tax dollars at work. If you visit the federal government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s website you’ll find a document that lists grants awarded in 2015, including one for $2.5 million over six years that will fund “mapping the power of the carbon-extractive [Read more]
Column: Foreign oil gets free ride from feds
New documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation show the federal government requires Canadian oil to meet a higher environmental standard than oil that is imported into Canada. How absurd is that? By putting up a big roadblock in front of Canadian oil companies, the federal government has lost out on billions of tax dollars, killed thousands of jobs and hurt businesses across Canada that sell goods and services to Canada’s energy sector. Recall that Canadian pipeline company [Read more]