Alberta NDP announce plan to drive jobs, investment

Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley. Jim Wells/Postmedia

An expedited regulatory process, consultations with First Nations communities and an expansion of several tax incentives highlight the NDP’s plan to attract jobs and investment to Alberta should they form government next year.

Opposition Leader Rachel Notley announced the NDP’s Competitiveness, Jobs and Investment Strategy for Alberta in Calgary on Wednesday, with revoking Premier Danielle Smith’s Alberta sovereignty act being a priority.

“First, we will repeal Danielle Smith’s and the UCP’s job-killing sovereignty act. This act is only creating instability and uncertainty in our economy at a pivotal time. We simply cannot afford this,” said Notley. “Second, we will maintain the most competitive general tax rate in the country while establishing and re-establishing and enhancing tax incentives focused on new growth and new jobs.”

Those tax incentives include reinstating the Alberta Investor Tax Credit and the Interactive Digital Media Tax. Notley said her government will also create a “future tax credit” aimed at luring large capital projects to Alberta in “emerging industrial sectors.”

“Alberta’s future tax credit is estimated to cost $250 million annually, which will leverage a projected $10 billion in incremental investments in emerging sectors and will create an estimated 20,000 jobs,” said Notley.

Notley is also planning to expand the Alberta Petrochemical Incentive Program by 30 per cent and consult with Indigenous communities on how to grow the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation. The fifth part of the plan would see a sped-up regulatory process for proponents who have a good record when it comes to protecting workers, paying taxes and following environmental compliance, among other criteria.

“We believe this program will help us get good projects that will create jobs and get them off the ground faster, while also providing new incentives to keep workers safe. Pay off the millions and millions in unpaid taxes owed to municipalities,” said Notley.

The presentation of the plan comes a day before Notley is scheduled to present a keynote speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce on Thursday afternoon.

Calls for Smith to apologize for comments on sovereignty, Indian Act

Notley also called for Smith to apologize for comments she made in the legislature this week comparing the way Alberta is treated by Ottawa to the treatment First Nations communities endured under the Federal Indian Act.

“The way I have described it to the chiefs I have spoken with is that they have fought a battle over the last number of years to get sovereignty respected and to extract themselves from the paternalistic Indian Act. We get treated the exact same way by Ottawa,” Smith said in the legislature on Tuesday.

Notley called the comments “ridiculous.”

“To suggest that Albertans have been subjected to a genocide at the hands of the federal government is not only ridiculous, but it is deeply diminishing to the real-life experiences of Indigenous people across our country,” said Notley. “Danielle Smith must immediately stand and apologize for the insensitivity and the outrageousness of those comments.”

Smith said in the legislature Wednesday she did not intend to compare First Nations’ fight against oppression to the relationship between the province and Ottawa. She apologized if that is how her statements were received.

“My intention was to demonstrate that the process that our First Nations have gone through to develop sovereignty over their own affairs and extract themselves from the Indian Act is the process that we are following in going through and asserting our rights under the Constitution,” said Smith.

[email protected]

Source link