Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews says the goal in 2021 is to get vaccines out and put the COVID-19 pandemic in the rear-view mirror, then work to fix a battered and beleaguered economy.
But with a $21-billion deficit and Alberta’s wellspring oil and gas economy still in flux, there’s a red-inked elephant in the room: Where’s the money going to come from?
“We will not cut our way out of a $21-billion deficit,” Toews said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press.
“We have to get the economy growing again. And economic recovery will very quickly become job No. 1 as we start to get past the pandemic.”
Roll the tape back to the start of 2020. Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government was busy trying to resuscitate an already wheezing economy only to see COVID-19 blow everything apart and take with it Kenney’s signature election promise to balance the deficit in his first term.
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That goal is a distant memory with a projected budget deficit this year tripling an original forecast of $6.8 billion. COVID-19 has slashed demand for energy, shuttered businesses and demanded relief aid and job supports to keep people going.
Toews said the plan is to get Alberta out of the financial ditch in February with the budget.
In November, he laid out “fiscal anchors” for the journey: keeping the net-debt to GDP ratio under 30 per cent, reducing public sector spending to match comparable jurisdictions and setting a timeline to get the budget back to balance.
University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe said Alberta is in the enviable position of having options. It’s the lowest-taxed province, and oil and gas will continue to deliver billions of dollars to the treasury for the foreseeable future, though not in the same eye-popping amounts as boom times.
“But even if (the energy revenue) is significant, it won’t be nearly enough, so we need to shift gears on how we fund public services.”
By his number crunching, Tombe said if Toews is to meet his targets, Alberta will need to find an extra $7 billion a year if it wants to get the budget out of the red and start paying off a debt now projected to reach $97 billion in 2021.
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Such talk raises again the spectre of a sales tax.
Alberta’s Social Credit government brought in a two per cent levy in 1936 and quietly dropped it a year later. After the Second World War, Alberta’s oil and gas economy exploded, allowing it to eschew the stability of a tax.
Sales tax is the third rail of Alberta politics and by law can’t be brought in without a referendum. Toews said it’s not in the cards, but he’ll strike a panel to revisit Alberta’s revenue generation.
Opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley did not bring in a sales tax when she was premier before Kenney was elected in 2019. She agrees with the UCP that it would be a debilitating blow to a fragile economy.
Notley says the solution begins with further diversifying the economy and building on Alberta’s strengths of a young educated workforce, a burgeoning tech sector and entrepreneurial business owners.
Oil and gas are key, she adds, but warns that Kenney’s blinkered focus on them to the exclusion of other opportunities will be the province’s undoing.
“If (Kenney) continues to insist on operating through an ideological lens, which is squarely focused backward by about 25 years … then we are in big trouble.”
The economy is also a political question. The United Conservatives reach the midpoint of their mandate in 2021 and early initiatives, including a deep slash to the corporate tax rate, have yet to bear fruit.
Political scientist Duane Bratt said COVID-19 and the economy are destined to again slam into each other in 2021. The government has said that after the pandemic is over it will follow through on saving money in health care including reducing or outsourcing 11,000 jobs.
“How do you say, ‘Thank you for all the hard work (during the pandemic). Here are your layoff papers?’” said Bratt with Mount Royal University in Calgary.
Broadly speaking, Bratt said, the NDP is more trusted by the electorate on the health file, while the United Conservatives own the economy. That raises future ballot box questions two years from now, if the UCP has angered Albertans with its health decisions while failing to get the economy going.
“If the economy trumped everything in 2019, does health trump everything in 2023?” Bratt said.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was higher in late-morning trading, helped by strength in energy stocks, while U.S. stock markets also moved up.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 34.91 points at 23,736.98.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 178.05 points at 41,800.13. The S&P 500 index was up 28.38 points at 5,661.47, while the Nasdaq composite was up 133.17 points at 17,725.30.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.56 cents US compared with 73.57 cents US on Monday.
The November crude oil contract was up 68 cents at US$69.70 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was up three cents at US$2.40 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was down US$7.80 at US$2,601.10 an ounce and the December copper contract was up a penny at US$4.28 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Canada’s inflation rate fell to two per cent last month, finally hitting the Bank of Canada’s target after a tumultuous battle with skyrocketing price growth.
The annual inflation rate fell from 2.5 per cent in July to reach the lowest level since February 2021.
Statistics Canada’s consumer price index report on Tuesday attributed the slowdown in part to lower gasoline prices.
Clothing and footwear prices also decreased on a month-over-month basis, marking the first decline in the month of August since 1971 as retailers offered larger discounts to entice shoppers amid slowing demand.
The Bank of Canada’s preferred core measures of inflation, which strip out volatility in prices, also edged down in August.
The marked slowdown in price growth last month was steeper than the 2.1 per cent annual increase forecasters were expecting ahead of Tuesday’s release and will likely spark speculation of a larger interest rate cut next month from the Bank of Canada.
“Inflation remains unthreatening and the Bank of Canada should now focus on trying to stimulate the economy and halting the upward climb in the unemployment rate,” wrote CIBC senior economist Andrew Grantham.
Benjamin Reitzes, managing director of Canadian rates and macro strategist at BMO, said Tuesday’s figures “tilt the scales” slightly in favour of more aggressive cuts, though he noted the Bank of Canada will have one more inflation reading before its October rate announcement.
“If we get another big downside surprise, calls for a 50 basis-point cut will only grow louder,” wrote Reitzes in a client note.
The central bank began rapidly hiking interest rates in March 2022 in response to runaway inflation, which peaked at a whopping 8.1 per cent that summer.
The central bank increased its key lending rate to five per cent and held it at that level until June 2024, when it delivered its first rate cut in four years.
A combination of recovered global supply chains and high interest rates have helped cool price growth in Canada and around the world.
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem recently signalled that the central bank is ready to increase the size of its interest rate cuts, if inflation or the economy slow by more than expected.
Its key lending rate currently stands at 4.25 per cent.
CIBC is forecasting the central bank will cut its key rate by two percentage points between now and the middle of next year.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is also expected on Wednesday to deliver its first interest rate cut in four years.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick‘s finance minister says the province recorded a surplus of $500.8 million for the fiscal year that ended in March.
Ernie Steeves says the amount — more than 10 times higher than the province’s original $40.3-million budget projection for the 2023-24 fiscal year — was largely the result of a strong economy and population growth.
The report of a big surplus comes as the province prepares for an election campaign, which will officially start on Thursday and end with a vote on Oct. 21.
Steeves says growth of the surplus was fed by revenue from the Harmonized Sales Tax and federal money, especially for health-care funding.
Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs has promised to reduce the HST by two percentage points to 13 per cent if the party is elected to govern next month.
Meanwhile, the province’s net debt, according to the audited consolidated financial statements, has dropped from $12.3 billion in 2022-23 to $11.8 billion in the most recent fiscal year.
Liberal critic René Legacy says having a stronger balance sheet does not eliminate issues in health care, housing and education.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
