Premier Jason Kenney on Friday warned proponents of Alberta separation that they could make the province’s situation much worse by creating investor uncertainty similar to the exodus of head offices and jobs from Quebec after the Parti Quebecois won power in 1976.
Kenney was asked about comments, made by UCP MLA Drew Barnes who sat on the Fair Deal panel, that the report doesn’t go far enough in pushing Ottawa to change Alberta’s status within Confederation.
But Kenney reminded people who want to use the threat of separation as leverage that major companies pulled out of Quebec in the late 1970s in the face of the PQ’s threat to hold a referendum on sovereignty.
“They went from Montreal mainly to Toronto. Real estate prices collapsed overnight and hundreds of thousands of Quebecers left the province,” Kenney said in response to a reporter’s question.
“So no, I don’t think this is a clever tactic. At a time when we’ve got to focus on economic growth, restoring investor confidence and creating jobs, making that kind of threat that would destabilize investor confidence would be hugely counter-productive.”
Kenney’s comments follow the release of the Fair Deal panel’s report on Wednesday.
Shortly after the report was released to the public, Barnes, who is the MLA for Cypress-Medicine Hat, broke away from the consensus expressed by his fellow Fair Deal panellists and wrote his own minority opinion.
“We should be clear with Ottawa and the other provinces, that if the people of Alberta vote for a fair deal of constitutional equality within confederation, but these proposals are rejected, that Albertans will be given the opportunity to vote on their independence,” Barnes wrote.
“A free people must be willing to at some point of injustice without rectification…draw a line and make a stand.”
Kenney said he understands why some Albertans are frustrated, but that talk of separation will not help.
“Look, you don’t make a threat that you’re not prepared to keep,” Kenney said.
“And I have not seen a single public opinion poll which indicates we’re anywhere close to a majority of Albertans voting to leave Canada. And so I regard it as an empty threat.
“The answer to a campaign to landlock Alberta energy is not for us voluntarily to landlock Alberta energy by separating from this federation.”
Barnes’s comments provoked a rebuke from his fellow panellist, former PC MLA Donna Kennedy-Glans, who called into CBC call-in show Alberta at Noon on Thursday to put a question to the UCP MLA.
Kennedy-Glans reminded him the report represented a consensus by the entire panel. The fact Barnes wrote a separate opinion after the fact raised concerns for her “about what that means for the ability of MLAs in the future to contribute to panels like this.”
Joe Ceci, the NDP MLA for Calgary-Buffalo, called musings about Alberta independence “disturbing” and “absurd.” He said Kenney needed to squash the separation talk within the UCP caucus and focus on more important issues.
“We’ve got a job to do in this province and it’s not talking about separation,” Ceci said. “It’s talking about getting people back to work, getting our economy firing again.”
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
