In the Leg
Bill 207: Primary Provincial Industries Recognition Statutes Amendment Act, or; The Who The Hell Gave Women Another Day?! Act
Pfft “Galentine’s Day”— who’s ready to celebrate FOSSIL FUELS DAY?!?
As of January 1, 2027, with special thanks to Grande Prairie MLA Nolan Dyck, February 13 will now be known as Fossil Fuel Recognition Day in Alberta!
On this day, we shall be mandated to “(a) recognize the beginning of the modern era of Alberta’s fossil fuel industry, and (b) increase the public’s awareness of the important contributions of fossil fuel resource development to Alberta’s economy.”
Also, amending the Education Act to include: “(a) the role of primary provincial industries in advancing the economic prosperity of Alberta, including the economic contributions made by primary provincial industries and the public revenues generated from primary provincial industries; (b) the potential career opportunities in primary provincial industries, including information about the skills necessary for employment in those careers; (c) Fossil Fuel Recognition Day, including its observance and purpose.”
I’m already in marketing mode.
Oil change specials, discounts on steel-toed boots… Fossil Fuel Day cards with an extra layer of plastic wrap! Best of “Dallas” marathons! Official letters of congratulations commemorating the amount oil royalties have paid into public services instead of taxation! By request of course— stamps are not free… or petrochemical based to the best of my knowledge.
Oh, but think of the children’s book opportunities!
James and the Giant Automated Dump Truck; Little Rig on the Prairies; Petroleum Engineer’s Daughter; You Don’t Need High School to Make 80 Grand a Year, Son; and the classic Frog and Toad Shouldn’t Swim There.
I kid, of course.
The book would be called Petroleum Engineer’s Son.
Fine. All of the kidding actually aside, this feels like more of a memorial day/remembrance day sort of thing and I doubt that’s what they were going for. I’m pretty sure they just wanted to piss off the left. And women. Every year; the day before Valentine’s Day. For families.
Bill 19: Appropriation Act (2026) or; Confessions of a Shopaholic
I made the mistake of looking up a credit rating and now I have to share.
TLDR: long term fiscal planning on volatile resources is bad for credit ratings.
December 2015 AAA to AA+: “concerns of weak budgetary performances and rising debt… and the bleak outlook on energy prices”
April 2016 AAA to AA1: “blaming ‘deep deficits and long return to balanced budgets forecasted by the province, and the resulting rapid and substantial rise of provincial debt levels’. Alberta's plan for recovery is marred by overly-optimistic oil-price forecasts.”
April 2017: AA to A+: “Our assessment of the province's budgetary performance ... has significantly deteriorated and is materially weaker compared with that of both domestic and international peers.”
June 2018: AA stable: “The downturn in its natural resource markets, an area of economic concentration for the province, lowered both GDP and provincial revenue sources. Broad economic growth, assisted by improving natural resource prices, resumed in 2017 and the province recorded GDP growth ahead of the Canadian average. Fitch expects economic growth to continue, albeit at a slower rate than 2017, although the economy remains in a weaker position as compared to 2014.”
December 2019 AA1 negative to AA2 stable: “weakness in the provincial economy that remains concentrated and dependent on non-renewable resources, mainly oil.”
July 2020 AA to AA-: “the rating drop is due to the ‘expectation that sharply higher provincial borrowing during the pandemic-driven economic crisis and in the recovery to follow will result in a debt burden relative to GDP that is incompatible with an AA rating’.”
May 2021: AA- stable: “with ‘considerable risks’, including the success of the provincial COVID-19 vaccination program, changes to commodity prices and the ability for Alberta to keep its spending in check; ‘Alberta’s economy was severely impacted by the dual shock of the coronavirus pandemic and the significant decline in oil prices in 2020’.”
May 2022 AA- stable: “sharp economic and fiscal turnaround from the pandemic is curtailing the rapid accumulation of debt expected just a year ago, although longer-term risks from energy price volatility and decarbonization concerns remain unchanged.”
September 2023 AA (low) to AA: “Although Alberta faces continued economic volatility, DBRS Morningstar has increased confidence that the Province’s fiscal performance can be maintained in the coming years, supported by the new fiscal framework.”
Jun 2024 : AA- to AA: “Alberta's revenue base is comparatively less diverse than that of other Canadian provinces and highly sensitive to its cyclical energy sector, supporting the 'Midrange' assessment.”
May 2025 AA- stable: “Alberta's economy and, in turn, the province's operating revenues will be negatively affected by lower oil prices. However, we expect Alberta to produce near-balanced results or modest operating surpluses and manageable after-capital deficits of about 6% of total revenues, on average, through to fiscal 2028. With the province's continued focus on cost containment, we also project that tax-supported debt will represent about 152% of operating revenues in fiscal 2028.”
Bill 20: Appropriation (Supplementary supply) Act (2026), or: About Last Year
Millions of additional spending to add in.
Bill 21: Interprovincial Trade Mutual Recognition Act, or: Why Measure Twice?
It’s cutting red tape; if a good or service has been approved for sale/use in another province, we’ll take their word for it and not bother putting it through our own approvals. Not necessarily a bad thing, so long as all provinces have the same standards. Not that we’d want to make it the same across the country, of course, but, like, you could.
Ministerial Order can exempt the “mutual recognition” part, and the Government of Alberta, Crown, or Minister assumes no liability nor responsibility if this happens.
In the news
Surely some Albertans want UCP in government forever
Gerrymandering: the manipulation of an electoral constituency's boundaries so as to favor one party or class.
It’s almost as if the UCP government can’t do anything without making it a complete dumpster fire.
There are people who take their skills, achievements, and reputations seriously who have found themselves partaking in something that they are happy to lend credibility to, only to have the United Conservative Party undermine them at every turn. Economist Trevor Tombe comes to mind, as we watched him sit through the Premier’s grotesque manipulation of “public engagement” with their horribly torqued questions and topics on the Albert Next Panel tour.
Last week, it was the Electoral Boundaries Commission where the Chair, a respected member of the judiciary, had to respond to a rogue “minority report” released by the two UCP appointed members suggesting that electoral districts should be redrawn to favour rural voters and their blind loyalty to branding.
I’m certain there are a few people in rural who would consider this type of blatantly unconstitutional partisan political interference necessary for their own “cultural” survival that is somehow intricately tied to the sign colour of those elected to office in our province and not at all reflective of their character, lack of integrity, or incompetence. Pardon me; I just had a flashback of a university student winning a seat in Calgary Bow and the intense pearl clutching that ensued... but I digress.
I wish to clarify that I do not consider all of the minority’s hybrids to be unreasonable, even the ones the majority did not adopt.
Indeed, had the minority chosen to advocate for them, instead of insisting upon an otherwise unreasonable and unconstitutional map, I may well have agreed with them.
This is unlike the other hybrids the minority has proposed in Airdrie, Calgary, Chestermere, Cochrane, Red Deer, and St. Albert.
The minority’s radical about face and substantive unreasonableness regarding these hybrids, to say nothing about the many other administrative and constitutional law problems with their report, is not something that I can condone.
Perhaps worse than the fact that Hon. Miller had to write that, was the fact that he proposed a fifth recommendation— almost out of resignation that the government might actually prefer the minority report offered by the very people they chose to participate— should they decide to go with the heavily gerrymandered map instead.
Note: Hon. Miller did not use the word “gerrymandering”, but that’s what the UCP is proposing, from the minority, to the minority, in hopes of enabling the next generation of unchallenged majorities and a never ending feast for their friends at the trough.
Once again, I’m more bothered by the fact that the UCP is so desperate to push unconstitutional and partisan political interests on the public as a whole that they consistently put the reputations of those who are willing to be involved in these non-partisan processes at risk. The end result of course will be that experts no longer agree to lend their knowledge to the process and we end up further down the path toward Idiocracy.
My now regular reminder that the PCs took decades to reach this level of alleged corruption and the UCP got there in less than half of one.
Oh no; not information (another MAiD rant)
Before I had my first child, I was full of bravado and decided I was not going to take any drugs when I went into labour. After being in pretty spectacularly hard labour for about six or seven hours, showing up at the hospital at midnight and having them tell me I was nowhere near close to actually having a baby, they gave me a couple of options. They said I could go home— where I probably wouldn’t sleep or have any reprieve at all— and come back later, or they could give me some morphine and a bed at the hospital.
Yes, I’m using that as my analogy for healthcare professionals telling people Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) exists.
Before I got to the hospital, I only had one outcome in mind— having a baby. I didn’t know that wasn’t happening anytime soon (another 12.5 hours as it turned out) and I didn’t know what my other options might be.
The story the right is pushing now is that people are being forced into choosing MAiD against their will. Yes, that would be wrong— I’m sure even “the left” agrees— and anyone doing that should be rooted out and removed.
However, telling a patient that the option exists is not the same thing.
While I know MAiD exists, and you probably know too, do you know who doesn’t? Me either. I don’t expect everyone knows all of their options before they show up and neither should the healthcare professionals. Their job is to let patients know what their options are.
The Alberta government is not solving any problems by removing healthcare professionals from this situation.
We don’t have MAiD on demand, even as a choice; it’s not like an epidural where they have to get it done on a particularly tight timeline.
Taking away the option of MAiD for mentally ill people means that they may not even be able to notify someone that there is a problem. If a person had never had treatment for a mental illness, for example, they’re not going to get it if they don’t even know they can talk to a healthcare professional about the fact that they’d like to end their life. They could potentially be convinced to seek treatment “while they wait” even.
This manufactured hysteria that “MAiD is now the fifth most common cause of death in Canada” neglects the fact that the vast majority of people who opted for MAiD didn’t die specifically because of their disease (but very likely would have later) and also that the deaths by suicide numbers haven’t really changed since MAiD was introduced. Perhaps we could ensure those statistics are publicly available— in plain English and translatable documents— as well.
If they don’t like the fact that people in poverty might prefer MAiD, then they need to solve the problem of poverty. If they don’t want MAiD to be an option for mental illness then they should properly fund mental health care, and the lifetime supply of medication they might require to have a standard of living they would personally accept for themselves.
We don’t need to hear the moral argument against one option when the exact same people have just as many arguments against funding other solutions.
Never meet your heroes; Danielle Smith and Donald Trump
When Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Premier Danielle Smith’s X content began overtly fangirling while tagging his X account. Ms. Smith is a fan of all U.S. idealism about freedoms and constitutional rights— though few, if any of which, she actually respects here. I digress.
That guy— who she was so excited to watch drain some swamps and unleash all markets and let freedom, really, extra ring— has crapped all over every one of her high hopes.
Instead of becoming her bestest friend, she was left out in the cold while her Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen sat in the rotunda of the Capitol building in a mustard-tan suit and giant cowboy hat at the invite-only inauguration ceremony. That same Minister said he had a heads up last year that the U.S. was officially closing once easy access to Border Road; a gravel lane between Alberta and Montana that Alberta has maintained for decades. The Trump Administration said that it was due to all the illegal traffic that is coming across.
Just another slap in the face for a Premier who went to all those cocktail parties to celebrate the president’s inauguration and did podcast interviews and fundraisers with maga influencers. Especially after she found a hat with $29 million to immediately address Mr. Trump’s “leaky border” psychobabble by paying for helicopters, drones, patrol cars, and buff-looking officers with big guns to protect the U.S., too.
Yet, it gets worse.
One of the “reasons” Danielle Smith gave for making so many trips to the Middle East was to secure investment from sovereign wealth funds. The Middle East. Where Donald Trump just started a war with Iran. The Middle East where Danielle Smith was touring oil production sites on the Prince’s Royal jet.
The same sites that Iran hit with missiles in retaliation for being all buddy-buddy with the U.S. by hosting military bases from which the U.S. attacked.
Who knows if the pipeline proposal missed its deadline because those sovereign wealth funds Ms. Smith has been sniffing around have to put upwards of $25 billion into repairing their own oil infrastructure projects, but the latter happened and now so has the former. Correlation is not causation, of course.
Here’s hoping she actually met with the people she said she did in Japan.
Final thoughts
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Excellent article. I simply can't believe the UCP has actually set aside a day for Fossil fuel recognitions every Feb. 13 annually where there will undoubtedly be speeches singing the praise for the oil industry and what it's done for Alberta. Be assured there will be no mention of carbon emissions or leaking tailings ponds, uncapped derelict wells and undone sour gas clean-up.
Deidre sadly all your books would be banned. Nice twist!
“If I ran the oil sands” Dr Smith Moretta