Markets, Freedom, and Truth
July 22, 2020 1 Comment
We couldn’t find a chart like this anywhere so we had to make one.
Data from Alberta government website:
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#data-export
If you think it’s difficult to see the little red bars representing the deaths, even during the big initial spike in cases, well, you’d be right.
August 12, 2019 Leave a comment
June 5, 2019 Leave a comment
Alberta keeps federal finances afloat, according to a new study:
In a 2017 study, we measured Alberta’s net contribution to Canada’s economy during the most recent economic boom in the province. We showed that when it comes to overall economic growth, job creation, or business investment, Alberta made a substantial contribution to the health of the Canadian economy from 2004 to 2014.
Since 2014, Alberta has struggled and much has changed. However, Alberta continues to punch well above its weight in at least one critically important respect—its net contribution to federal government finances.
Even through the recent recession and uneven recovery, Alberta has remained, by far, the largest net contributor to federal finances.
Alberta’s net contribution to Confederation peaked in 2014 at $27.6 billion. Since then, due to economic weakness in the province, its net contribution shrunk somewhat, but was still $20.5 billion in 2017. In total, from 2014 to 2017, Alberta’s net contribution to Confederation ex-ceeded $92 billion.
Alberta’s large contribution has helped stabilize federal finances and prevent the federal government from running even larger deficits. In 2017, for example, in the absence of Alberta’s net contribution and if all else had remained equal, Canada’s deficit would have been over $39 billion—more than twice the $19 billion that was in fact the case.
Alberta’s economic health is a matter of national importance and its struggles in recent years have implications for all Canadians. In short, Canada cannot reach its full economic and fiscal potential unless Alberta is able to do the same.
— Continue reading the full study —
April 25, 2018 Leave a comment
We always hear about how young people tend to lean “left” and approve of more “socialistic” policies.
Unfortunately for Notley and her gang, this might not be true in Alberta.
Take a look at this table from a CBC survey. Let me know if you see anything interesting:
That might be a bit hard to read, so let me just point out what I find interesting here.
The 18-24 year old crowd gives the Alberta NDP a pathetic 18% support on the question of which party will best be able to defend Alberta’s economic interests. That is encouraging even if our other Alberta political parties are quite bad.
Also interesting is that the only group shown here that appears to have more faith in the NDP than the UCP is the “post grad” crowd. Even then, they only beat out the UCP 42% to 38%.
For the NDP, that’s pretty sad because if they can’t count on overwhelming support from the over-educated, underpaid post-grads (who are often losers who work at universities and spend most of their lives whining for more government funding), who can they count on?
April 10, 2018 Leave a comment
Notley’s stupid schemes just keep getting dumber and dumber…
Not only because Alberta’s treasury is empty…
But for anyone who thinks big pipelines are scary now, wait until the government owns them!
If Kinder Morgan can’t build the pipeline why should the Alberta taxpayer bail them out? Does that not simply put the taxpayer on the hook for major financial damage if Trans Notley Pipeline wallows in limbo forever?
The opposition facing Trans Mountain doesn’t go away if Notley buys the pipeline or loans them money.
What an outrageously bad idea.
Rather than half-baked schemes like buying the pipeline or banning BC wine imports through the provincial wholesale monopoly, perhaps Notley should turn her sights on Ottawa and ask why the province pays nearly $30 billion more into confederation than we get back each year when Ottawa and other provinces are blocking market access for one of our most important products?
September 19, 2016 Leave a comment
With its politically motivated ‘anti-dumping’ laws and tariffs.
September 1, 2016 Leave a comment
The Alberta Advantage is gone, says David Yager.
Rising oil prices will help. And they will surely rise. It’s just nobody knows when, why and how much. But even if WTI returned to US$100 a barrel next year Alberta still won’t the same because every other oil producing jurisdiction will enjoy the same benefit but without Alberta’s new tax increases, carbon taxes, investment concerns, government policy uncertainty and the continuing lack of low-cost international market access through additional pipelines.
— Read more at Energy Now —
August 22, 2016 Leave a comment
Today AIMCo announced that it is investing $500 million in an American company called Howard Energy Partners.
AIMCo is an Alberta crown corporation that manages money for government pensions and endowments. They have $90 billion under management. Virtually all of that money is derived from taxation.
What does Howard Energy Partners do?
Howard Energy Partners is an independent midstream energy company, owning and operating natural gas gathering and transportation pipelines, …
Alberta can’t get pipelines, in part because it is viciously opposed by US-backed opponents.
Meanwhile, the US continues building pipelines — lots of pipelines — and even has the pleasure of getting Alberta taxpayer money invested in its own pipeline companies.
July 20, 2016 Leave a comment
By pointing to her new corporate welfare program for some Alberta brewers
(You get subsidies if you are small and stay small — that’s obviously helpful for one’s growth strategy!)
June 11, 2016 Leave a comment
The Alberta government, through the CIFFC, contracted 300 of the cheapest firefighters they could possibly get.
Everyone made a big deal out of these cheerful South African firefighters, who sang and danced upon their arrival at the airport. Hooray! How cool is that?
No one has said much about the fact that these firefighters were hired as part of a South African government job creation program called “Working on Fire.” They may have only been hired shortly before their departure for Canada (they arrived on May 29).
Are they real firefighters? We can’t be sure.
Once here, the workers go on strike because of their wages, which are pathetic by the standards of a comfortable Albertan (about $4 an hour, or $50 per day). Now they might all be going home.
Premier Rachel Notley says they contracted to pay the firefighters $170 per day + food and lodgings.
So the South African government is exporting its welfare firefighters and taking $120 per day off the top for each one. They must think the Alberta government is a bunch of suckers.
Notley, who apparently thinks everyone should pay $15 minimum wage except when her government wants cheap African thralls to fight fires, says she is going to fix everything. She claims she will somehow ensure the South African firefighters get paid the appropriate Alberta wage (which is small fortune to them — each day will equal almost a month of the average firefighter wage back in their home country).
Since the firefighters are paid by the South African government, this means the Alberta government will have to give money to the South African government. It’s probably fair to think the South African government is still going to skim “a little” off the top.
The South African government tells us not to worry, because that $4 per hour wage is just an “allowance”, and their firefighters still get regular pay at home (average 2,400 rand, or about $205 per month). The welfare firefighters are double dipping!
We’ve heard of people applying the broken window fallacy to natural disasters: “This wildfire is pretty bad, but fixing things will boost our economy!” Even those people wouldn’t be so daft as to suggest it would boost another country’s economy.
Who would have thought that a wildfire in Fort McMurray would lead to foreign aid for South Africa, letting corrupt bureaucrats enrich themselves at the expense of the Alberta taxpayer?
— Read more at CBC.ca —
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