Ian Hussey

Envisioning Alberta’s Economy: The UCP and NDP Platforms on Jobs, Investment, and Diversification

With Alberta’s election approaching, the UCP and the NDP have both released platform planks on the key issues of job creation, business capital spending, and economic diversification. While the two parties’ platforms present very different visions for Alberta, neither seem to be offering anything revolutionary for the province.

Alberta’s Next Government Should Increase and Index the Minimum Wage

At a time when many families are struggling to pay their bills, the party that wins Alberta’s 2023 election could lend support to minimum-wage workers by immediately raising the minimum wage and then indexing the minimum wage to increase each year in line with inflation.

• minimum wage

Whose Future?: What the Alberta Budget Says About the UCP’s Priorities Pre-Election

A deeper reading of Budget 2023 suggests that multiple futures are being claimed and contested: political and electoral futures, as well as ideological and existential ones. How each of these future battles is playing out matters significantly for Alberta’s future, not least in the unanswered question: “Whose future?”  In this article, Parkland Institute’s research managers Ian Hussey and Rebecca Graff-McRae break down the possible futures at stake in the lead-up to the spring election and its political aftermath.

• Budget

No Worker Left Behind: A Job Creation Strategy for Energy Transition in Alberta

The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) recently published an industrial blueprint on how to create 200,000 energy jobs in Alberta as we build a sustainable economy by 2050. This report weaves together key points of the AFL’s plan with insights from financial institutions and policy research groups, as well as contextualization and information provided by Parkland Institute’s February 2022 conference, “Implementing a Just Transition.”

• environment
• energy policy
• job creation

Alberta Minimum Wage Workers Need and Deserve a Raise

Alberta’s new premier Danielle Smith is taking the reins of government at a time when many families are struggling to pay their bills. Inflation is high. The wages of many Albertans are not keeping up. Alberta’s minimum wage has been frozen at $15 since October 1, 2018. Premier Smith could give minimum-wage workers a hand up during these difficult times by raising the minimum wage. The UCP government should also legislate annual increases to the minimum wage that align with the annual rate of inflation.

• minimum wage

Job Creation or Job Loss?: Big Companies Use Tax Cut to Automate Away Jobs in the Oil Sands

This report explains how the four biggest oil sands companies received $4.3 billion in tax cuts from the UCP government since 2019 through the so-called “Job Creation Tax Cut,” while at the same time eliminating thousands of employees from their payrolls. The research shows the Big Four used the tax giveaway to increase executives’ pay and boost cash transfers to shareholders, while accelerating automation and cutting jobs.

• oil & gas
• tar sands
• corporations
• job creation

Alberta Budget 2021: Tax Giveaways for Corporations, Service Cuts for Albertans

The compounded impact of years of cuts will be catastrophic. The United Conservative government is cutting or privatizing services that Albertans rely on in order to pay for their 33 per cent tax giveaway to large profitable corporations and for their mistakes of cancelling the crude-by-rail contracts and gambling on Keystone XL. On par with Premier Klein’s massive cuts in the late 1990s, the result will be deep structural changes and a legacy of lasting damage. 

• Budget

Fact checking Premier Kenney on Keystone XL

Ever since U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled the border-crossing permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, Premier Jason Kenney and others continue to spread misinformation about KXL, the oil sands industry and the energy transition. Ian Hussey takes a look at oil sands operations and pipelines, the energy transition and possibilities for economic diversification in Alberta.

• Keystone
• KXL
• Premier Jason Kenney

A Feminist Approach to Alberta's COVID-19 Response

Women in Alberta are suffering the triple blow of bearing the brunt of the governing United Conservative Party’s austerity agenda and the COVID-19 economic and public health crises. In this blog Ian Hussey makes the case for an evidence-based COVID-19 response and recovery plan for Alberta that includes feminist considerations, and makes some suggestions for what such a plan might include.

• gender
• education
• economy
• health care

Alberta's Keystone XL investment benefits oil companies more than Albertans

On March 31 Premier Jason Kenney announced that the Government of Alberta will invest $1.5 billion and provide an additional $6 billion loan guarantee to facilitate the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Research manager Ian Hussey looks at the deal to determine just who benefits from this investment and in what measure.

• Corporate Mapping Project
• oil & gas
• energy policy