Alberta
The world is full of options
The world is full of options.
Keep dreaming or cut your hopes? With opinions dominating every aspect of life, whose judgment can you trust? Should we step outside or wait until the siren stops wailing?
Right now, almost at this moment, the National Hockey League is asking those questions: push aside all obstacles and restart the abbreviated current season, or accept that games without fans won’t provide the answer, and the emotional, fan-driven thrills, that supporters truly want? Those questions are front and centre for commissioner Gary Bettman and his paid advisers, as well as for all of us who count on sports – especially hockey, even in what should be baseball season – to fill essential blanks in our schedules. Another group waits more anxiously than ticket-buyers or big-screen addicts possibly could.
The players, of course.
For many, their future next season – even beyond whatever shape their game takes in the short term – is transcendent. Those who have endured a difficult partial season obviously have more concerns than those whose team standings and personal statistics are beyond rebuke. But that, in every sport, is a minority. Far more common are those who cannot tell what next year will bring.
It’s entirely possible that one such man will be Mark Pysyk, the former Edmonton Oil Kings captain who became a first-round draft choice of the Buffalo Sabres in the 2010 entry draft and later was traded to the Florida Panthers, where his career has been solid but, as he would clearly admit, not spectacular.
Pysyk holds a high place in Oil Kings junior history. Although his profile never reached the level of Hall-of-Famers Johnny Bucyk or Norm Ullman, nor Al Hamilton and coaching great Pat Quinn and Hall-of-Fame builder Glen Sather, he was the first prospect to don an Edmonton uniform when the franchise returned to organized hockey in 2007 after a long period of ugly sports politics kept this community on the outside looking in.
Pysyk played only 14 Western Hockey League games that season but was a junior star from then on. After Buffalo grabbed him, he played part of one season in the American Hockey League. Since then, he has been fully employed, except for three games in Rochester while recovering from an injury in the 2015-16 season, shortly before he became part of a draft day trade that sent him to the Florida Panthers.
In the next two seasons at his sunny South home, Pysyk performed almost exactly as before: go to work, do the job, get ready for practice tomorrow. seven goals and 33 points in 164 regular-season games; impressive enough, he was, to remain protected in the Las Vegas expansion draft. Then, last season, it was down to one goal and 10 points in 70 games. Word leaked that he would be available for the right trade offer.
Some idle time at the start of this season could not have been unexpected. New head coaches – Joel Quenneville, in this case – always bring change. Blueliners Aaron Ekblad and Anton Stralman played longer minutes. Mike Matheson and MacKenzie Weegar contributed to Pysyk’s extra rest. Then came the change that provided a whole new picture – at least potentially.
Pysyk became a right winger. He scored nine goals – easily his best ever – and the Panthers remained, somehow, as playoff possibilities. His defensive abilities helped keep opposition scoring chances down while this third (sometimes fourth) line improved the offence.
That happy collection of events certainly has presented new possibilities. Will he be a Panther next season? Will he be a forward or a defenceman? Is there any chance that the astute Quenneville saw something other analysts missed before Pysyk arrived.
Eventually, this quality young man will use his ability and his character to answer those questions.
From the Fraser Institute
By Spencer Gudewill and Tegan Hill
Last November, Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government will give up to $1.8 billion in subsidies to Dow Chemicals, which plans to expand a petrochemical project northeast of Edmonton. In other words, $1.8 billion in corporate welfare.
And this is just one example of corporate welfare paid for by Albertans.
According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, from 2007 to 2021, the latest year of available data, the Alberta government spent $31.0 billion (inflation-adjusted) on subsidies (a.k.a. corporate welfare) to select firms and businesses, purportedly to help Albertans. And this number excludes other forms of government handouts such as loan guarantees, direct investment and regulatory or tax privileges for particular firms and industries. So the total cost of corporate welfare in Alberta is likely much higher.
Why should Albertans care?
First off, there’s little evidence that corporate welfare generates widespread economic growth or jobs. In fact, evidence suggests the contrary—that subsidies result in a net loss to the economy by shifting resources to less productive sectors or locations (what economists call the “substitution effect”) and/or by keeping businesses alive that are otherwise economically unviable (i.e. “zombie companies”). This misallocation of resources leads to a less efficient, less productive and less prosperous Alberta.
And there are other costs to corporate welfare.
For example, between 2007 and 2019 (the latest year of pre-COVID data), every year on average the Alberta government spent 35 cents (out of every dollar of business income tax revenue it collected) on corporate welfare. Given that workers bear the burden of more than half of any business income tax indirectly through lower wages, if the government reduced business income taxes rather than spend money on corporate welfare, workers could benefit.
Moreover, Premier Smith failed in last month’s provincial budget to provide promised personal income tax relief and create a lower tax bracket for incomes below $60,000 to provide $760 in annual savings for Albertans (on average). But in 2019, after adjusting for inflation, the Alberta government spent $2.4 billion on corporate welfare—equivalent to $1,034 per tax filer. Clearly, instead of subsidizing select businesses, the Smith government could have kept its promise to lower personal income taxes.
Finally, there’s the Heritage Fund, which the Alberta government created almost 50 years ago to save a share of the province’s resource wealth for the future.
In her 2024 budget, Premier Smith earmarked $2.0 billion for the Heritage Fund this fiscal year—almost the exact amount spent on corporate welfare each year (on average) between 2007 and 2019. Put another way, the Alberta government could save twice as much in the Heritage Fund in 2024/25 if it ended corporate welfare, which would help Premier Smith keep her promise to build up the Heritage Fund to between $250 billion and $400 billion by 2050.
By eliminating corporate welfare, the Smith government can create fiscal room to reduce personal and business income taxes, or save more in the Heritage Fund. Any of these options will benefit Albertans far more than wasteful billion-dollar subsidies to favoured firms.
Authors:
Alberta
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