Different strokes for different folks

John Short

Published

4 years ago

4 minute read

Different strokes for different folks.

A day or so before superstars Bryce Harper and Blake Snell told of their reluctance to play an abbreviated 2020 major-league baseball season unless they get all of their multi-million dollar contracts, a young guy in Alberta spent long minutes talking about how much he wants to play.

For 21-year-old pitching prospect Jesse Poniewozik of Spruce Grove, money is no object. These days, when he isn’t working to complete a degree at Okanagan University in Kelowna, B.C., the righthander spends as much time as possible in an empty park, working toward the next chance he gets to climb the ladder toward a successful long-term career.

Like many other young players, this young man has a dream. He discovered baseball as a four-year-old and has been captivated by the sport ever since. It’s extremely easy to pull for Poniewozik. He’s bright, well-spoken and thoughtful.

It’s even easier to pull for him if you know a little about his single season with the Edmonton Prospects and the frightening incident that sidelined him only days before the end of last season.

Those in the seats when a line drive off the bat of a Medicine Hat Mavericks player hit Poniewozik on the head, literally knocking him off the mound. He struggled to his feet and made a brief gesture toward the rolling baseball before going down again. At that point, his mom and dad, Karen and Jim, made their way to the clubhouse and from there to hospital. Almost immediately, they learned that “Jesse had a concussion, a serious one.”

When he was allowed to go home, restrictions were serious: plenty of rest, especially at first; limited physical activity; a responsible diet. Now, months later, the young man sees that difficult time as a positive one.

“I did so much sitting around, you know, that I put on some weight. I had to work a little later to take some of it off.”

As a result of a new routine that lasted a couple of months, his playing weight climbed from about 185 to about 200 pounds, good size for a man who’s six-foot-two. Coincidentally speed on his fastball – the sport’s beloved “velo” – is about four miles per hour better than last year’s best level. Like every young pitcher, Poniewozik realizes the game is easier if you can throw the ball past a rival hitter. “I’m sure I’ll get faster, I’ll be able to stay in the 90s.”

With both the Prospects and his university team inactive because of COVID-19, “Ponie” is happy to look back at some early appearances against U.S. College teams in and around Las Vegas. There, overcoming some understandable nervousness from last year’s injury, he discovered that his improvement from the start to the end of the 2019 season is continuing.

That’s where confidence comes in, something that developed for him as a Prospects. where he opened as an occasional reliever before growing into crucial situations. By season end, his value as a starter was obvious. “At first, I wondered about some things: a lot of good players from big American schools play in our league and I had to find out what I could do.”

Now, he knows he can prosper competitively in the WCBL. One day, he hopes to prosper financially at baseball’s higher levels.

But, first, he just wants to play.

John Short

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Alberta government should eliminate corporate welfare to generate benefits for Albertans

Published on May 2, 2024

Todayville

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:

Spencer Gudewill

Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute

and

Tegan Hill

Associate Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute

Alberta

Official statement from Premier Danielle Smith and Energy Minister Brian Jean on the start-up of the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Published on May 1, 2024

Government of Alberta

Alberta is celebrating an important achievement for the energy industry – the start-up of the twinned Trans Mountain pipeline. It’s great news Albertans and Canadians as this will welcome a new era of prosperity and economic growth. The completion of TMX is monumental for Alberta, since this will significantly increase our province’s output. It will triple the capacity of the original pipeline to now carry 890,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to British Columbia’s Pacific Coast.

We are excited that Canada’s biggest and newest oil pipeline in more than a decade, can now bring oil from Edmonton to tide water in B.C. This will allow us to get our energy resources to Pacific markets, including Washington State and California, and Asian markets like Japan, South Korea, China, and India. Alberta now has new energy customers and tankers with Alberta oil will be unloading in China and India in the next few months.

For Alberta this is a game-changer, the world needs more reliably and sustainably sourced Alberta energy, not less. World demand for oil and gas resources will continue in the decades ahead and the new pipeline expansion will give us the opportunity to meet global energy demands and increase North American and global energy security and help remove the issues of energy poverty in other parts of the world.

Analysts are predicting the price differential on Canadian crude oil will narrow resulting in many millions of extra government revenues, which will help fund important programs like health, education, and social services – the things Albertans rely on. TMX will also result in billions of dollars of economic prosperity for Albertans, Indigenous communities and Canadians and create well-paying jobs throughout Canada.

Our province wants to congratulate the Trans Mountain Corporation for its tenacity to have completed this long awaited and much needed energy infrastructure, and to thank the more than 30,000 dedicated, skilled workers whose efforts made this extraordinary project a reality. The province also wants to thank the Federal Government for seeing this project through. This is a great example of an area where the provincial and federal government can cooperate and work together for the benefit of Albertans and all Canadians.