EDMONTON – It was a speech that symbolized Alberta’s pandemic politics in 2021: Premier Jason Kenney’s boastful, bullhorn-loud, first-out-of-the-gate victory whoop over COVID-19 preceding a crushing hospital crisis.
In 2022, Kenney and his United Conservative government aim to forge ahead on the economy and catch up on the thousands of surgeries cancelled when hospitals were overwhelmed during the fourth wave of COVID-19 in the fall.
Health Minister Jason Copping said it will take some time. The goal is to catch up on the pre-pandemic surgery waiting list of 68,000 by the middle of next year.
“That is my job No. 1 apart from the response to COVID, of course,” Copping said earlier this month, announcing that the number of cancelled surgeries had stabilized at about 81,000. “We are going to bring that waiting list down.”
The wind is in the UCP’s sails, at least in the short term, with a late-year bounty of oil and gas revenues slashing the projected budget deficit by two-thirds to under $6 billion.
There was other good economic news.
Tech-giant Amazon Web Services announced in November it had broken ground on a $4.3-billion cloud-computing server hub in Calgary.
Alberta’s unemployment dropped below eight per cent.
Big budget film productions leveraged tax credits to shoot in the province — including HBO’s “The Last of Us” — and pumped millions of dollars into local economies.
“Albertans are natural optimists. They just need a reason for their optimism. Well, there are lots of reasons right now including the fact that we are leading Canada by far in economic growth,” Kenney told the Calgary Chamber of Commerce this month.
There was a $3.8-billion deal with the federal government that will see daycare costs start to drop in January and fall to $10 a day by 2026.
Doug Schweitzer, minister for jobs, economy and innovation, announced: “This was the year that Alberta got our swagger back.”
Kenney struck a similar triumphant tone on June 18 in his speech on a sunlit day near Edmonton’s river valley.
He announced Alberta would end almost all COVID-19 health restrictions as of July 1 — in time for Alberta’s signature Calgary Stampede rodeo and festival.
It was the fastest reopening in Canada, but one Kenney said was justified by sufficient vaccination rates.
Kenney said his government wasn’t planning for a worst-case scenario and chided reporters and medical experts for suggesting it could even happen. His party sold it as “the Best Summer Ever” and marketed hats trumpeting the feel-good slogan.
COVID-19 didn’t get the memo.
The government then failed to act as cases spiralled in August and didn’t change course until September. Deaths mounted, officials scrambled to double the intensive care unit capacity, army medics were called in and 15,000 reported surgeries across the province, including cancer operations, were delayed.
Kenney introduced a form of vaccine passport and other restrictions that boosted vaccinations and reduced hospital cases. It seemed to help pull the system back from the brink.
The premier took responsibility, saying “the buck stops with me.”
But the mea culpa had asterisks: other provinces had problems, too; he didn’t act sooner because he wasn’t sure COVID-19 weary-Albertans would follow the rules; he would have acted sooner, but he was waiting for Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the chief medical officer of health, to propose changes.
COVID-19 conflicts and controversies sent Kenney’s popularity numbers plunging and opened deep and, at times, public rifts within his caucus and party.
Critics said Kenney was late to impose health rules for the last three waves, endangering health-system capacity, because he feared alienating anti-vaccination elements in his party.
Kenney tried to contain the internal strife. Dissidents Todd Loewen and Drew Barnes were voted out of caucus. Cabinet minister Leela Aheer became an ex-cabinet minister.
Kenney, under pressure from cabinet and later by about two dozen constituency associations, agreed to move up a review of his leadership to a one-day vote April 9 in Red Deer from late 2022.
Problems remain, starting with his former UCP leadership rival Brian Jean.
Jean, one of the party’s co-founders, won the nomination to represent Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche in an upcoming byelection. He’s running on a platform to end Kenney’s time as leader, saying Kenney’s top-down style and bungled decisions on COVID-19 can’t be redeemed and that the party needs a new leader if it hopes to win the 2023 election.
“Kenney’s pinning everything on (oil and gas prices),” said political scientist Duane Bratt of Calgary’s Mount Royal University. “The other story of 2021, obviously, is COVID.
“At almost every step of the way, the government acts later than anybody else in the country and responds weaker than everybody else in the country, is defiant about what they’re doing, and then gradually reverses course. We’ll have to see what occurs in January if Omicron (variant of COVID-19) does become as serious as some believe.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Dec. 29, 2021.
OTTAWA – Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says the government is making some changes to mortgage rules to help more Canadians to purchase their first home.
She says the changes will come into force in December and better reflect the housing market.
The price cap for insured mortgages will be boosted for the first time since 2012, moving to $1.5 million from $1 million, to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
On Aug. 1 eligibility for the 30-year amortization was changed to include first-time buyers purchasing a newly-built home.
Justice Minister Arif Virani is also releasing drafts for a bill of rights for renters as well as one for homebuyers, both of which the government promised five months ago.
Virani says the government intends to work with provinces to prevent practices like renovictions, where landowners evict tenants and make minimal renovations and then seek higher rents.
The government touts today’s announced measures as the “boldest mortgage reforms in decades,” and it comes after a year of criticism over high housing costs.
The Liberals have been slumping in the polls for months, including among younger adults who say not being able to afford a house is one of their key concerns.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales rose 1.4 per cent to $71 billion in July, helped by higher sales in the petroleum and coal and chemical product subsectors.
The increase followed a 1.7 per cent decrease in June.
The agency says sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector gained 6.7 per cent to total $8.6 billion in July as most refineries sold more, helped by higher prices and demand.
Chemical product sales rose 5.3 per cent to $5.6 billion in July, boosted by increased sales of pharmaceutical and medicine products.
Sales of wood products fell 4.8 per cent for the month to $2.9 billion, the lowest level since May 2023.
In constant dollar terms, overall manufacturing sales rose 0.9 per cent in July.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
TORONTO – Strength in the base metal and technology sectors helped Canada’s main stock index gain almost 100 points on Friday, while U.S. stock markets climbed to their best week of the year.
“It’s been almost a complete opposite or retracement of what we saw last week,” said Philip Petursson, chief investment strategist at IG Wealth Management.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 297.01 points at 41,393.78. The S&P 500 index was up 30.26 points at 5,626.02, while the Nasdaq composite was up 114.30 points at 17,683.98.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 93.51 points at 23,568.65.
While last week saw a “healthy” pullback on weaker economic data, this week investors appeared to be buying the dip and hoping the central bank “comes to the rescue,” said Petursson.
Next week, the U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its key interest rate for the first time in several years after it significantly hiked it to fight inflation.
But the magnitude of that first cut has been the subject of debate, and the market appears split on whether the cut will be a quarter of a percentage point or a larger half-point reduction.
Petursson thinks it’s clear the smaller cut is coming. Economic data recently hasn’t been great, but it hasn’t been that bad either, he said — and inflation may have come down significantly, but it’s not defeated just yet.
“I think they’re going to be very steady,” he said, with one small cut at each of their three decisions scheduled for the rest of 2024, and more into 2025.
“I don’t think there’s a sense of urgency on the part of the Fed that they have to do something immediately.
A larger cut could also send the wrong message to the markets, added Petursson: that the Fed made a mistake in waiting this long to cut, or that it’s seeing concerning signs in the economy.
It would also be “counter to what they’ve signaled,” he said.
More important than the cut — other than the new tone it sets — will be what Fed chair Jerome Powell has to say, according to Petursson.
“That’s going to be more important than the size of the cut itself,” he said.
In Canada, where the central bank has already cut three times, Petursson expects two more before the year is through.
“Here, the labour situation is worse than what we see in the United States,” he said.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.61 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The October crude oil contract was down 32 cents at US$68.65 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down five cents at US$2.31 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$30.10 at US$2,610.70 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents US$4.24 a pound.
— With files from The Associated Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
