Western Standard - May 03, 2023


AB REPORT： Smith's big tax cut


Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

167.96231

Word count

3,637

Sentence count

187

Harmful content

Misogyny

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this special edition of The Alberta Report, host Derek Fildebrand is joined by Western Standard's Sean Polzer and Dave Naylor to discuss the latest tax cut announcement from Premier Rachel Notley and her campaign team.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 G'day, I'm Derek Fildebrand, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching
00:00:14.840 the Alberta Report, our special daily coverage of Alberta's 2023 election campaign. I'm joined
00:00:22.940 as usual by the Western Standard's news editor, Dave Naylor, and also Nigel Hannaford, our opinion
00:00:30.220 editor, is away at the moment, but we're joined, no worry, by Western Standard's Calgary energy
00:00:36.960 reporter, Sean Polzer. How are you doing, Sean? Good, thanks. Welcome. Okay, we're going to jump
00:00:42.440 right to it. Smith's big tax cut promise, Smith promising a massive cut in personal income taxes,
00:00:52.820 particularly for lower and lower middle income earners, but will affect all Albertans.
00:00:59.100 We're going to talk about that big promise right off the top.
00:01:03.660 Notley had a big campaign stop in Calgary.
00:01:07.020 No real promises made, but kind of setting the tone of the tenor of what her campaigns are going to be.
00:01:14.500 And no surprise, Alberta NDP leader, Rachel Notley, continuing to refuse to take questions from all reporters who are not funded by the federal government.
00:01:27.940 So we're going to jump into it, beginning with Smith's big tax cut.
00:01:32.280 For that, we're going to bring in Western Standard Alberta reporter, Jonathan Bradley, who was at Smith's tax cut announcement.
00:01:41.440 But Jonathan, why don't you tell us what are some of the details of Smith's tax cut promise from yesterday?
00:01:50.540 So Smith announced yesterday in Southeast Calgary that she would be committed to lowering taxes.
00:01:56.400 She said the only direction taxes would be going under her leadership would be down.
00:02:00.700 There were three main points that she made.
00:02:02.560 So first, she said it would be lowering income taxes. 0.84
00:02:05.980 she would create a new 8% income tax bracket. And this would save anyone earning more than $60,000
00:02:13.500 per year $760. And anyone earning under $60,000 would see a 20% tax cut. She spoke about how she
00:02:22.320 would re-index tax brackets to inflation to ensure that people are able to keep up. And
00:02:27.620 she promised to suspend the fuel tax until December 31, saving people 13 cents at the pump
00:02:34.580 every time per litre, and this adds up to a savings about $10 every time people go and fill
00:02:39.080 up their tank. Yeah, so this is, yeah, so it's a 20% tax cut on all income earned under $60,000.
00:02:50.380 So that means, yeah, if you're at $60,000 or less, you're going to see 20% less taxes,
00:02:55.980 proportionally see less of a tax cut, I suppose, if you're above $20,000, but your first $60,000
00:03:02.160 provincially will be taxed at a lower rate.
00:03:04.020 So it's a tax cut that will affect everyone, but not everyone equally.
00:03:09.160 It's the University of Calgary economist Trevor Toome said it was a progressive tax cut
00:03:15.720 because it disproportionately helps lower income Albertans.
00:03:22.020 But I want to talk about kind of the politics of this.
00:03:25.180 Dave, it comes at a cost to the Treasury of $1 billion.
00:03:32.160 I always, you know, Rachel Notley responding to this said that's going to cost the government money.
00:03:38.740 That's, you know, it's just money the government doesn't get to take.
00:03:41.720 That's not the way taxes work.
00:03:43.680 All money doesn't just start being owned by the government until they get to rebate it to us.
00:03:50.600 But targeting lower income people here rather than kind of the, you know, upper and middle class taxpayers,
00:03:59.860 how do you think this plays politically on the campaign trail?
00:04:01.640 Well, anytime you hear the word tax cuts, it's a good thing.
00:04:05.460 And I think you have to look where the Premier held the press conference,
00:04:08.960 the deepest suburbia that Calgary can get down in Auburn Bay, basically, on somebody's driveway.
00:04:15.860 So this is the message she's trying to send to Alberta families that, you know, elect me and I'll cut your taxes.
00:04:23.680 And, you know, it's a heck of a promise to make and it's usually a winner.
00:04:31.220 And I don't discount that gas tax thing, too.
00:04:33.980 You know, if you're, you know, a big truck like you, if you're filling up once, you know, once every 10 days or so, it's going to save you a lot of money between now and the end of the year.
00:04:42.660 So Daniel Smith is promising more money in people's pockets.
00:04:46.880 And as she said, and as you just said, it doesn't belong to the government.
00:04:50.160 It belongs to us.
00:04:51.660 Jonathan, did Smith say how long the fuel tax would be asked?
00:04:57.540 I know that was she she's eliminated the provincial gas tax here largely as a way of kind of negating the federal carbon tax.
00:05:06.500 It just means that Ottawa is keeping the money instead of Alberta.
00:05:09.340 But at least for the person driving their vehicle, it kind of nets out closer to zero.
00:05:14.840 Did Smith say was this going to be temporary or permanent?
00:05:19.140 Did she say anything about the cut to the gas tax being permanent?
00:05:22.440 She said that the fuel tax would be suspended until December 31.
00:05:26.180 No further details are provided about that.
00:05:28.920 I suspect that it quite possibly could be extended further because Smith has been vocal about the carbon tax and that this fuel tax has offered relief to Albertans, given that Alberta has some of the lowest gas prices in Canada right now.
00:05:42.060 I suppose my best guess would be, so if Smith and the UCP win, we're likely to see that gas tax stay at zero provincially as long as oil prices stay high.
00:05:53.040 because that means the provincial coffers are full and prices are already high.
00:05:58.120 So if gas taxes come down, people might not at least recognize they feel it as much
00:06:02.720 because then you have the tax on it.
00:06:04.220 It just feels like it didn't change rather than went down.
00:06:06.800 It's a good thing we've got our oil expert here.
00:06:10.180 How high is oil going to go for the rest of the year, D.A.?
00:06:13.480 What's the forecast?
00:06:15.220 A lot of the consensus depends on what happens in Asia and China recovering from the pandemic.
00:06:21.160 But there is a pretty broad consensus that barring a recession or a slowdown in the U.S., that prices could hit $100 by the end of the year. 0.68
00:06:32.520 And as long as they keep flooding in Ukraine as well, I'm sure. 1.00
00:06:35.800 That's fairly supportive, too. 0.52
00:06:37.660 At her rally yesterday.
00:06:40.200 Well, we're going to get into Notley.
00:06:41.920 Okay.
00:06:42.400 Yeah, we're not into there yet.
00:06:45.340 Smith also talked about continuing the re-indexing of income taxes here.
00:06:50.020 That was something that Kenny had gotten rid of quite bizarrely when he became premier.
00:06:55.620 It was one of his first axioms to de-index income taxes so that even as inflation went up, people would be artificially pushed into higher tax brackets just by inflation.
00:07:07.020 He had actually built his career at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation fighting so-called bracket creep.
00:07:11.800 And then the first time he was given the reins of power, he immediately erases what he had fought for the first 10 years of his own career for.
00:07:20.020 But there's a big implication in here
00:07:22.380 that I don't think has been discussed.
00:07:23.680 And that is that, is this the final death of the flat tax?
00:07:27.960 The flat tax, everybody pays one flat 10% rate
00:07:32.920 of income tax provincially.
00:07:35.260 That was brought in by Ralph Klein.
00:07:36.660 It was actually Jim Prentice that killed it.
00:07:38.520 I know Rachel Notley likes to take credit for killing it.
00:07:42.100 And a lot of conservatives don't,
00:07:43.420 and conservatives are happy to let Rachel Notley
00:07:45.340 have credit for killing it.
00:07:46.700 But it was actually Jim Prentice that killed the flat tax.
00:07:49.600 He was just quickly defeated and replaced by Notley
00:07:52.180 who maintained the death of it
00:07:53.640 with a so-called progressive income tax.
00:07:55.200 But if Smith is now gonna introduce,
00:07:59.140 add another tax bracket and even lower,
00:08:03.560 do you think this means that just any hopes
00:08:05.240 of returning to the flat 10% tax bracket,
00:08:08.140 flat for everybody,
00:08:09.900 it's now gonna be true and well dead at this point, right?
00:08:12.940 I would think so.
00:08:14.540 I think people are comfortable
00:08:15.500 with progressive income taxes in general
00:08:17.360 because they seem to have a better understanding of it,
00:08:20.100 even though flat taxes, you know,
00:08:22.020 you'd think would just be simpler and easier to administer.
00:08:25.540 But somehow this idea that people who make more money
00:08:28.740 pay more tax, I think is pretty ingrained.
00:08:31.600 Well, they do even, people who make more money
00:08:33.540 do pay more tax, even under flat tax.
00:08:35.600 They just don't pay a higher rate of tax, effectively.
00:08:39.620 But that's lost on most people, I think.
00:08:41.460 I think so too.
00:08:42.220 Yeah.
00:08:43.160 Okay, well, now we're gonna turn to,
00:08:45.060 oh, thank you very much, Jonathan, for joining us.
00:08:47.340 We're going to turn to Rachel Notley's big Calgary rally.
00:08:50.500 She had, I think, a pretty strong turnout there.
00:08:53.440 Very boisterous crowd you could hear.
00:08:55.440 I don't know if it was just smart microphone placement,
00:08:57.240 but it sounded like they were pretty riled up for Rachel Notley here.
00:09:03.540 Surprising for a lot of people to see that for a new Democrat in Calgary.
00:09:09.440 But, Sean, you were there.
00:09:12.140 Tell us, what was the vibe and what were the big themes Notley was touching on?
00:09:17.340 Well, it's like you said, I was surprised that a new Democrat in Calgary could get such turnout.
00:09:22.640 And no, it wasn't my placement.
00:09:24.680 It was a pretty lively crowd.
00:09:26.100 And the people that were there were definitely committed to the cause.
00:09:30.300 She hit on the main points, health care, education.
00:09:37.100 Those are basically.
00:09:38.780 Well, what was she saying, though, other than health care and education? 0.80
00:09:41.620 Well, just the usual campaign message about people are, she's going to protect the health. 1.00
00:09:46.600 She's going to be the defender of the health care system. 1.00
00:09:48.660 People aren't going to have to pay out of pocket.
00:09:51.220 The province is going to go on the biggest hiring blitz of medical professionals that it's ever seen.
00:09:56.380 They were going to spend more money to retain those people.
00:09:59.760 They were going to cut wait times, increase access, do more surgeries closer to the communities that they're in
00:10:08.560 so that people don't have to travel out to other towns to get some of these surgeries.
00:10:13.400 they were going to build more schools, hire more teachers than usual.
00:10:20.380 So Dave, Notley was asked by a reporter, and we'll get to some of the media stuff after,
00:10:28.100 but she was asked by a reporter after the main speech of her rally about Smith's promise to cut income taxes.
00:10:35.360 What would she do with taxes?
00:10:39.820 It was pretty wishy-washy, her answer, right?
00:10:41.840 It was, and that was the whole thing that surprised me about her event yesterday was that there were no announcements.
00:10:49.060 I know it seems like this campaign's been going on for months already, and it has, but you would think day one of the election campaign, you would bring out a promise.
00:10:59.160 I know Daniel Smith had the tax one, but Notley didn't.
00:11:03.360 She just covered all her speaking points that she did in the past, which surprised me.
00:11:08.880 but her she was asked about taxes and she didn't have a very firm answer she has said she's going
00:11:18.240 to raise taxes on businesses she but she did talk about that but she just said more or less I'm not
00:11:25.440 gonna raise your income taxes asked though about the Smith tax cut which disproportionately cuts
00:11:32.580 tax her answer was largely just well it's gonna cost the government a lot of money kind of again
00:11:37.740 back to that strange assumption that the money all belongs to the government to begin with and
00:11:42.700 then it decides how much people are allowed to keep afterwards but um uh do you think her her
00:11:50.300 stances on taxes are going to be a weakness in this campaign because she's for her to win she's
00:11:54.220 got to strongly outperform how she did even in 2015 when she formed government as premier because she
00:11:59.900 was relying on a vote split she was able to win support uh government a pretty big majority 0.90
00:12:03.980 government with roughly 41, 42% of the vote. Not that high. To win now, the winner's going to need 0.81
00:12:12.780 to have 45, 48% to be able to win, and her vote's not very efficient. So she's going after centrist
00:12:20.060 voters. How much do you think her tax stance is going to imperil her much, or is that really just 0.98
00:12:27.880 not what New Democrat voters are looking for? Well, I would think that's exactly what New 0.78
00:12:31.380 Democrat voters are looking for. I would think, you know, the average, any voter would like more
00:12:39.760 money in their pocket. And if you've got one candidate saying, I'll give you this amount more,
00:12:45.020 and you've got another candidate saying, well, we don't know what we're doing.
00:12:49.180 Obviously, that's going to play into the UCP's hands.
00:12:52.140 But every voter also wants more free stuff from government. Every voter wants more free
00:12:57.560 health care, more free welfare, more free social services, more free handouts of any kind.
00:13:04.580 The question, I guess, is what's motivating the voter? Do they value keeping more of their money
00:13:10.700 vis-a-vis taxes more or they favor more free stuff more, more spending more? And, you know,
00:13:18.820 generally, you know, the conservatives are conservative voters going to be at one end,
00:13:21.440 new democrat voters on another. But there's that roughly eight, seven, eight percent of swing voters
00:13:27.140 in the middle right now and where they stand is a i think a bit a bit more confusing about what
00:13:33.700 they're prioritizing more and you're right about that you know over the covert years everybody got
00:13:38.180 used to being given money for doing nothing uh but at the moment not he hasn't announced any
00:13:44.500 any sort of money giveaway big government plan yet uh you know maybe she's saving that up her sleeve
00:13:50.660 for later on well that was a thought that came to my mind when she was talking about all the
00:13:55.060 healthcare and all the education was how you can pay for this you're not going to raise taxes but
00:14:00.900 where is that money well temporarily i think the parties could promise virtually anything they want
00:14:05.140 because temporarily natural resource revenues are so high they can promise anything the question is
00:14:11.300 as soon as that stuff ends uh then we're going to be in huge trouble uh but but in the short term
00:14:17.460 anyone can promise a balanced budget because there's just so much money coming in it's the
00:14:21.060 long term that that stuff doesn't make sense. She made that point as well that while she was in
00:14:25.300 government uh gas revenues were about four billion dollars a year and in this latest budget they were
00:14:30.260 about 24. Yeah okay uh we're also so at not least uh launch there afterwards as we're saying she
00:14:38.900 took some questions from the media but no surprise uh she limited questions strictly to media that
00:14:46.820 are subsidized by the federal government. Sean, you were, we sent you there to ask Rachel Notley
00:14:53.380 some questions. What was the, what happened? Well, I feel like I kind of walked into something,
00:15:00.820 you know, bigger that's been playing out for a little longer that, you know, that wasn't
00:15:06.180 anything to do with me. And it struck me, she made an interesting comment about,
00:15:10.740 because one of the CBC reporters asked her when was her last conversation with Jagmeet Singh and
00:15:17.040 what did they talk about and basically her answer was that you know she didn't speak for the federal
00:15:22.800 MP and they don't speak for her and blah blah blah blah and and that's kind of how I felt as
00:15:28.200 as well you know as a reporter well then why won't you talk to me then no but what happened
00:15:34.740 You were there to ask questions. What happened? I asked to get into the queue and go for a line
00:15:40.420 and then I was told, I was given the line, it was polite that they wouldn't be taking
00:15:45.780 questions from the Western slander. The Western slander. 0.62
00:15:51.380 Because what they perceive is the wrong treatment towards some of their candidates and
00:15:56.580 passed and something. I don't even know what was written about them and that they wouldn't
00:16:01.940 wouldn't be taking any questions until they get a formal apology.
00:16:04.900 And I said, well, no, I'm not the one that's going to be able to do that for you.
00:16:09.820 Well, let me share all of you.
00:16:11.700 I will be issuing an official apology to the NDP when we all freeze in hell.
00:16:18.660 Absolutely not.
00:16:20.140 That's not the way it's supposed to work in a free country.
00:16:22.580 You know, political parties, governments, politicians don't get to decide who is the press.
00:16:28.320 and they certainly don't get to demand apologies from the press.
00:16:32.500 It normally goes the other way around.
00:16:33.740 And it's like you said, too, she did mention in her speech
00:16:36.840 that she is targeting a moderate swing conservative voter,
00:16:40.660 somebody that has traditionally voted conservative in the past,
00:16:43.780 and I just thought it was odd, you know, we're getting, what,
00:16:46.780 two million page hits from a...
00:16:49.280 2.5.
00:16:50.400 It seems to me if she wants to appeal to moderate conservative voters 0.66
00:16:54.380 that maybe Western Standard might be a good place to do it.
00:16:58.060 You won't apologize, but will you sell them ads?
00:17:00.780 I'll sell the NDP ads any day of the week if they're willing to pay the going rate.
00:17:05.540 Nice.
00:17:06.280 I think it's a thing that we're going to, as media, we're going to have to get used to in this campaign,
00:17:11.440 is the leaders seem to be wanting to go directly to the people, bypassing the media.
00:17:20.680 It's Tuesday, it's day two of the election campaign, and we don't know where the Premier is.
00:17:25.480 They've just issued a statement saying she's going to be meeting with volunteers in Calgary, and that's it.
00:17:31.080 You know, Sean and I have been in the game long enough that you used to get at the itinerary the night before.
00:17:35.880 You know, here, nine, here, 11, here, one, here, six, you know.
00:17:40.980 Basically, a minute by minute for the day, so you could follow them along and tell your readers or viewers what they were doing.
00:17:47.520 But they seem, both parties seem to be focusing heavily on YouTube, heavily on video town hall meetings.
00:17:54.680 So it's going to be a different campaign to cover on for us.
00:17:59.040 Yeah, I suspect, though, the parts of both Smith and Notley that this is an attempt to limit exposure to danger.
00:18:08.740 I mean, campaigns are highly scripted and choreographed events, and you can do 99 things right.
00:18:16.980 You get one thing wrong. And what's what's what are we going to talk about?
00:18:21.100 we're going to talk about the one thing you did wrong because it's not very interesting talking
00:18:24.700 about what you did right. And so it's the missteps that kill you on a campaign. So
00:18:28.860 the less you can expose yourself to unknown factors including reporters, the less luck you
00:18:34.140 are to trip up. That's why Notley does not take questions from non-government funded media outlets,
00:18:39.820 period. Smith and Notley apparently are just going to be nowhere near any press at all today
00:18:47.580 who are going to have pesky questions about things so they just they don't want to be tripped up
00:18:52.220 that's why i i expect that that would be my suspicion about why neither is telling the
00:18:57.260 press about where they are today and they're just going to pop up like gophers out of the
00:19:00.780 ground around calgary for the next month okay you know i just wanted to add one comment that's um
00:19:07.020 even with smith and uh i'll just talk about a lawsuit against cvc you know it seems to me she
00:19:12.300 still takes questions from the cvc she does even though uh she's in a legal dispute with them yeah
00:19:17.260 She is continuing to take questions from them. 1.00
00:19:19.640 Maybe we should sue Rachel Notley. 0.85
00:19:21.280 Maybe that'll solve it.
00:19:22.820 Okay, we're going to wrap it up there.
00:19:25.880 Before we want to go,
00:19:26.560 they'll just take a moment to note
00:19:28.360 Gordon Lightfoot,
00:19:30.860 folk, legendary folk singer,
00:19:34.320 of Canadiana,
00:19:35.660 dead at age 84.
00:19:39.140 I grew up just loving his stuff.
00:19:41.320 Good doc music sitting around the cottage.
00:19:45.060 He was a legend.
00:19:46.480 Thank you all for joining us today
00:19:50.480 This has been your Alberta Report for May 2nd
00:19:54.360 God bless 0.94
00:19:54.880 I can see her lying back in her satin dress, in a room where you do what you don't confess. 1.00
00:20:05.940 Some down, you better take care, if I find you've been creeping round my backstay.
00:20:14.600 The current Lethbridge feed grain prices are as follows.
00:20:17.700 Cash barley is at $4.10, feed wheat is at $4.06, and corn is at $396 per ton.
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