Protecting vulnerable Albertans this winter

Alberta’s government is investing an additional $21.5 million for Albertans experiencing homelessness and family violence.

The pandemic continues to have a large impact on vulnerable people, and this funding will ensure access to services like 24-7 emergency shelter and support for victims of domestic violence while keeping clients safe.

The government announced this additional support at the Hope Mission at the Herb Jamieson Centre. Alberta’s government fulfilled a platform commitment with $4 million for the centre’s recent construction. This announcement furthers those efforts to support vulnerable people in Alberta.

Alberta’s government is also providing $1.5 million to activate up to 200 additional shelter beds at Commonwealth Stadium and will support on-site overdose prevention and treatment services.

“As we continue to navigate through COVID, one of our top priorities is to make sure all Albertans have a safe place to stay and access to the support they need. Together with the $78 million previously announced by Alberta’s government, this additional funding will help organizations on the front lines deliver the services vulnerable Albertans need.”

Jason Kenney, Premier

“Our community partners are critical to making sure people experiencing homelessness and domestic violence have safe places to stay and where they can still access the supports they need. This funding will go a long way to ensure shelters are providing Albertans with critical supports in a healthy environment.”

Jason Luan, Minister of Community and Social Services

“A quick look outside the window, and you’ll see how important this announcement is to the houseless Edmontonians who were looking for a warm place to sleep during this winter. We have identified the shelter gap in recent meetings with the Premier and his ministers, and they have responded by providing emergency funding for the Spectrum shelter, three needed southside shelters and our enhanced capacity emergency shelter at Commonwealth Stadium. We welcome this support and look forward to building on this collaboration to find more permanent and sustained solutions to end houselessness in Edmonton.”

Amarjeet Sohi, mayor, City of Edmonton

“The Calgary Drop-In Centre has been on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, working with our community partners to decrease the spread within our city’s homeless population. We are grateful to our partners at the Government of Alberta for the additional funding, which will support medical staff and overflow spaces to meet the increased demand at our main shelter.”

Sandra Clarkson, executive director, Calgary Drop-In Centre

“This funding will allow us to maintain extra capacity during the critical winter season. With the unpredictability of COVID-19, we will be able to keep people safe and socially distanced. Thank you to the provincial government for equipping us with extra capacity to serve everyone who needs safe, warm shelter during the cold of Alberta’s winter.”

Bruce Reith, executive director, Hope Mission

The $21.5-million funding package will be distributed as follows:

$13 million for emergency homeless shelters
$6.5 million for isolation facilities
$2 million for emergency women’s shelters

Emergency homeless shelters

Funding will support 14 expanded homeless shelter facilities to meet physical distancing requirements. Funding will also support, where possible, 24-7 access to regular meal service, showers, laundry services and connection to addictions and mental health services and housing.

Isolation facilities

Funding will support about 285 isolation spaces in 10 communities. These facilities are a critical component of the shelter pandemic response, and help alleviate pressure in the public health system by helping shelter clients who contract COVID-19 isolate and receive medical care if hospitalization is not required. Additional capacity may be added in some rural communities as needed.

Emergency women’s shelters

This funding will support service delivery adjustments at emergency women’s shelters. Due to the pandemic, there has been an increase in domestic violence across Alberta. This funding will help shelter operators offer more support through community outreach and virtual service delivery as well as hotel isolation, and adjust in-shelter services to align with public health orders.

Quick facts

This funding guarantees these supports will be in place until March 2022.
This funding is in addition to $78 million announced in 2020.
Funding will support emergency homeless shelters in Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Lloydminster, Drayton Valley, Leduc, Slave Lake and Wetaskiwin.
The 10 isolation sites are located in Calgary, Edmonton, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Wetaskiwin, Peace River and Lac La Biche.
With the additional capacity at Commonwealth Stadium, up to 1,280 emergency shelter beds will be available in Edmonton this winter.
- The shelter is anticipated to be operational in early December once an operator has been selected.

Government of Alberta

This is a news release from the Government of Alberta.

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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.