GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alta. — Premier Jason Kenney says his government’s blueprint to reboot Alberta’s distressed economy will be announced Monday in Calgary.
“It will be a bold and ambitious plan to make strategic investments to get people working right now when we need it most, but also to invest in the long-term productivity of our economy,” Kenney said Friday.
He said it will involve the largest ever spending on public infrastructure, including areas such as health care and transportation.
There will be also be a focus on diversifying the economy in critical growth sectors while buttressing the existing oil and gas industry.
It will be a plan for a province that was looking at a $7-billion budget deficit this year before the COVID-19 pandemic drained away jobs and business activity, and a global oil price war collapsed profits for its wellspring industry.
The budget deficit for this year is now pegged at $20 billion.
In March, Kenney announced a 12-member economic advisory panel, including former prime minister Stephen Harper, to provide guidance on the relaunch.
Kenney has been sharply criticized by the NDP Opposition for pursuing growth strategies in oil and gas while ignoring emerging industries such as high-tech and artificial intelligence.
Kenney’s government, when it took power, cancelled tax incentives designed to grow high-tech. He said those programs were ineffective as they reached a small percentage of the tech market.
On Thursday, Kenney said part of Monday’s plan will include the outline of a new program to incentivize job-creating investment in the information technology, digital and innovation sector.
“We will be outlining a number of sectoral strategies in areas of our economy that we need to grow in order to diversify while also articulating policies that ensure a strong future for the oil and gas sector.”
Kenney won last year’s election on a promise to galvanize Alberta’s economy, struggling even then with low oil and gas prices. He promised a pan-economic, less-is-more approach, championing broad incentives and then letting the free market take its course.
To that end, his government cut the corporate income tax rate, reduced the minimum wage for those under 18, and scrapped the provincial consumer carbon tax, though that levy was later replaced with a federal version.
Albertans have the lowest overall tax burden among Canadian provinces, and Albertans do not pay a provincial sales tax.
Since then, as the oil and gas economy has continued to struggle, Kenney has assumed a more direct interventionist approach.
In March, his government agreed to provide $1.5-billion to Calgary-based TC Energy Corporation, enabling the completion of the KXL pipeline to ultimately take Alberta crude across the United States to refiners and shippers on the Gulf Coast.
The $1.5 billion in equity investment will be followed by a $6-billion loan guarantee next year.
Kenney has said Alberta will be able to sell its shares for a profit after the pipeline is built and it will generate a net return of more than $30 billion through royalties and higher prices for its oil over the next two decades.
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.
