In this special edition of The Alberta Report, host Derek Fildebrand is joined by Western Standard Opinion Editor Nigel Hannaford and News Editor Dave Naylor to discuss the UCP's economic diversification plan, including a new tax credit, tuition tax incentives, and a $1,200 bonus for first-time home buyers.
00:01:02.260They're also creating tuition tax incentives, anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 for graduating students who stay in the province and apply their trade there.
00:01:14.520So just a way to get more workers into the province and broaden that tax base.
00:01:20.420So the UCP will literally pay NDP voters to move to Alberta.
00:02:18.800It's called Alberta's Future Tax Credit.
00:02:20.880And it's the NDP's plan to grow jobs here in the province, which will cost roughly $400 million.
00:02:30.640If we look back to December of 2022, Notley said this Alberta's future tax credit is estimated to cost $250 million annually.
00:02:43.080You know, she quoted back in December that it would create roughly 20,000 jobs.
00:02:49.920Now, that number on Wednesday, she promised to attract $20 billion in private sector investment to the province while creating 47,000 jobs in Alberta's energy sector.
00:03:04.200And what's the reaction of the UCP to their announcement so far?
00:03:09.400Again, I just sent off a question to Smith.
00:03:15.680I know she's having a news conference this morning.
00:03:18.960And my question was simply, you know, Rachel Notley came out with this jobs plan yesterday, but she's also open to increasing the corporate tax.
00:03:28.260So, you know, it kind of seems a little hypocritical.
00:03:32.000And I asked, of course, the UCP leader, Daniel Smith, what her thoughts are on this.
00:03:39.920Yeah, I think, you know, we were also listening to Rachel Notley on the Chorus Radio Network today with Shea Gannam.
00:03:47.280She was asked about taxes, and she committed to not raising personal income taxes.
00:03:53.440And personal income taxes are actually technically higher than they were when she was premier because Jason Kenney de-indexed them for inflation.
00:04:02.040But they are more or less, other than four years of inflation, they are more or less where Rachel Notley was.
00:04:09.040But she was careful on using careful little words that, yeah, she would raise taxes on businesses.
00:04:20.480But it's not, this strikes me, Nigel, as, yeah, it's a center-left policy announcement, but it's not radically different from what you're seeing from the UCP.
00:04:30.920Other than their stances on business taxes, that aside, this jobs platform, I think, it's trying to strike kind of towards the middle.
00:04:39.020Similar to Smith's announcement today, it's more money for businesses and people if you create jobs rather than just cutting taxes to allow businesses to create jobs.
00:04:51.120Well, there's actually a lot in here, as you would expect, with a $400 million tax bill.
00:04:57.400And, of course, she was asked yesterday, how do you pay for this?
00:05:01.200And she said, oh, it'll pay for itself.
00:05:02.660I couldn't help thinking of Mr. Trudeau.
00:05:03.920She did actually use those words today.
00:05:12.060It's a little bit like Mr. Trudeau looking at the, you know, don't forget, these budgets pay for themselves.
00:05:21.360She does have a case to make that you can, I mean, a similar case is made for lowering taxes on people and on businesses, that if you lower, now, I think there's probably less evidence to suggest that it would be the case here.
00:05:32.480But, you know, if you lower taxes on businesses, businesses create more economic activity and therefore actually pay more in taxes overall, even though there's a lower rate.
00:05:40.320I think she's trying to argue that if we subsidize businesses to create jobs, well, that'll create more tax revenue overall.
00:05:47.900I think there's less evidence to support that.
00:05:49.520But, I mean, it's not probably as far out as Justin Trudeau's budget.
00:06:10.540So, no, no, no, there are some serious questions about this.
00:06:14.260I mean, look, just for one thing, $1,200 to, say you're a tradesman and you're in BC or anywhere, you can get $1,200 from moving to Alberta.
00:06:24.680That might appeal to you, and suddenly you've got a tradesman without all these training programs that Rachel Notley is proposing, which, by the way, are a payoff to her union allies.
00:06:37.120You'll notice that in that $18 million training program, it's part of this $400 million package that we're talking about.
00:06:43.160I believe it was actually announced, correct me if I'm wrong, Arthur, I believe this was actually announced in front of a union headquarters.
00:06:49.820It was announced at local 488, UA local 488 here in Edmonton, and in the $400 million, like Nigel mentioned, the NDP plans to invest $18 million into union-led training facilities and consult on expanding the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation to include other sectors.
00:07:17.400As Nigel was kind of hinting, you know, if you're a business in downtown Toronto and you're looking at Alberta and you see the UCP cutting business taxes, you see the NDP raising business taxes, it's an easy decision.
00:07:30.220And the other thing is, I think both parties have to worry about throwing up big-figure promises with the plunging price of oil, right?
00:07:40.520Because all of a sudden, a $500 million promise when oil's at $80 doesn't seem a big problem.
00:07:58.040But there's a dark side of me that would like oil to plunge during the campaign so that both parties could answer for why they don't plan for the future.
00:08:06.800But, you know, they just, they always budget in their promises up to the maximum of what oil they hope will be, and they just don't plan.
00:08:17.020So there's a part of me that would just like to see the parties have to readjust their promises because they do this, every party does this every time.
00:08:25.760If they'd only got it right a couple generations ago, we'd be like Norway.
00:08:29.300Anyway, we would have so much money, we wouldn't know what to do with it.
00:08:35.140You know, actually, okay, so thank you for joining us, Arthur.
00:08:38.280There's one point I want to touch on from Rachel Notley's appearance on the Shay Gannam show with Chorus today.
00:08:44.220She was asked about, you know, she was going after Smith, saying, well, you know, Smith might not have a mandate to privatize health care, but she might do it anyway.
00:08:55.360And Jay Gannam had a pretty good question for her then, and I said, well, you did have a mandate for a carbon tax, but you did it anyway.
00:09:02.820And Rachel Notley danced around it a bit, but effectively came to the position, to paraphrase her as fairly as I can here, I think, that, well, I had a mandate to do it because I didn't say I wouldn't do it.
00:09:16.000So I guess there's positive campaign promises and negative campaign promises.
00:09:20.980So does this mean if you don't promise to do anything, if you make no promises whatsoever during the campaign and you just don't say anything and you get elected, you could do anything you want?
00:09:34.360And when it boils down to it, we're happy when the party we support does things that we like without a mandate, and we don't like it when another party does things that we don't support without a mandate.
00:09:45.980That's really what it boils down to, but that was her justification for how she brought in the carbon taxes.
00:11:31.240So it's people that don't like Daniel Smith, probably, voted for Jason Kenney, voted for Ralph Klein, you know, the traditional UCP conservative leaders.
00:11:42.640Now they don't like Daniel Smith, so they're wavering.
00:12:02.100Rachel Notley has hired you as her speechwriter for today, and you're going to write this speech, and you get to lay out...
00:12:09.100What is the pitch you're making to people who have voted conservative in the past?
00:12:14.480Let's call them, like, a bit more mushy, centrist, progressive conservatives.
00:12:19.720I doubt she's really making a pitch for Wild Rose-type conservatives here, but let's say she's making a pitch to more progressive conservatives here.
00:12:26.820What are the actual, I guess, two things.
00:12:33.980What are you putting forward in the shop window policy-wise to say, okay, we could be a place that moderate, progressive conservatives can vote for?
00:12:44.460And then second, what are you putting forward in the messaging, the language used to make those kinds of red Tory conservatives comfortable enough to vote for Rachel Notley and the NDP?
00:12:55.000So here's the thing that comes back to me through the Gossip Channel, that people who you would expect to be voting for the UCP, as a matter of course, are saying something, well, I don't like the NDP, and I kind of can't imagine ever voting for them, but I don't like Daniel Smith.
00:13:12.380So there's nothing about the UCP policies that they're rejecting.
00:13:16.120It is the personality of, or shall I say, the portrayal of the personality of Daniel Smith that the NDP has been very effectively making.
00:13:26.140So I know what I would say to them if I were writing for Daniel Smith, but if I were actually composing something for Rachel Notley, I probably wouldn't go much into policy side of it.
00:13:40.040I would go on the feelings end of it and say something like, my friends, we all want the same thing, don't we?
00:13:51.660Our policies are not so destructive that we're going to take anything away from you, but you need a leader who is going to lead in the same direction and not get her facts wrong.
00:14:05.820So, you know, Reagan did this when he did his famous speech asking the blue dog Democrats to come over to the Republican side in the 1984 U.S. presidential election.
00:14:18.600She would model herself on that speech.
00:14:21.300Well, it's no wonder Stephen Harper paid you those big bucks.
00:14:33.160Okay, Nigel, Dave, thank you very much for joining us.
00:14:35.420And thank all of you for joining us on today's Alberta Report.
00:14:38.260Remember, if you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, go to westernstandard.news, click on membership.
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00:14:53.480Thank you very much for joining us today.
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