Women in Alberta have been disproportionately impacted by the 2001 shift to a single rate tax regime in the province, and now face higher income gaps, unpaid work gaps, and after-tax income gaps than women in the rest of Canada, according to the findings of a comprehensive new report released today by the Parkland Institute.

The Alberta government boasts in every budget that with its “Tax Advantage” program, Albertans pay the lowest taxes in Canada, and maybe even in North America. All personal and corporate incomes are taxed at a single 10-per-cent rate – except for small businesses, which pay a low 3-per-cent rate.

It’s curious how the proponents of the “cut first and ask questions later” approach to provincial budgeting continue trying to spread the myth Ralph Klein’s cuts in the 1990s were necessary, and that somehow Alberta and Albertans are better off because of them. It’s as if they believe that singing the same refrains over and over will make them true. But the reality is that these claims are as false today as they were back in 1993.

As Alberta’s economic engine falters, now is a good time to rethink the province putting all its eggs in bitumen’s basket.

When their crops failed, Alberta’s farmers had the pluck to persevere. There’s always next year. That resilience in the face of adversity served them well. But a next-year-country optimism is misplaced when applied to Alberta’s unconventional oil.

The agricultural industry has among the highest fatality rate of any occupation in the country, and farm workers face higher risk for a range of occupational cancers. Despite that reality, the Alberta government continues to exclude tens of thousands of Alberta farm workers from the provincial workers’ compensation system.

The recent capitulation of Danielle Smith and eight of her Wildrose party colleagues to the governing Progressive Conservatives can only be understood by decoding the meaning of conservatism in Alberta and the political purposes that construction serves.

Few ever heard of an obscure problem called “deferred maintenance” before Journal reporter Keith Gerein’s groundbreaking five-part series Condition: Critical.  Thanks to the scope and calibre of his reporting, Albertans are now aware of the backlog of necessary and overdue work needed to properly maintain tens of billions of dollars worth of publicly owned schools, colleges, universities, highways, bridges, waterworks, laboratories, office buildings and hospitals.

The Saskatchewan government maintains that their proposed privatization of the province’s liquor retailing system will not result in diminished government revenues. However, a new joint study by Alberta’s Parkland Institute and the Saskatchewan Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives demonstrates that even with the existing mark-up and taxation regime in place, the government stands to lose millions in potential revenue under a privatized liquor system.
 

Parkland Institute’s annual fall conference this year will seed to address why, at a time of remarkable wealth production, the money seems to be skewing in very particular directions, and away from workers, women, visible minorities, the disabled, and the poor and towards a small minority, and what can and should be done about it.

A new fact sheet released this morning by the Parkland Institute finds that Alberta’s new energy regulator, the AER, will do very little to improve Albertans’ abilities to have a say in how the province’s energy resources, particularly its massive bitumen deposits, are developed.