From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

United Conservative Party MLA Jason Stephan told the legislature that most Albertans agree there should at least be limits on abortion.

Red Deer South UCP MLA Jason Stephan called on the public to rally to bring forth a referendum for a vote to ban late-term abortions. 

Stephan spoke in the Alberta legislature on November 19 about late-term abortions, calling for a citizen-led referendum to ban the practice.

“Many Albertans do not want a society that is best at late-term abortions, and many of these Albertans feel that they are ignored on this matter sacred to them,” Stephan said.

“But Alberta has a Citizen Initiative Act, and most Albertans, regardless of faith or background, agree that it is reasonable to have some limits on late-term abortions. That is the case in most democratic jurisdictions.”

Stephan said that Canada is founded on “principles that recognize the supremacy of God.”

“Judeo-Christian principles recognize that men and women are children of God, each having a divine nature and destiny,” he said.

“They affirm the family as ordained of God and that children are a blessing. This is the opposite of Canada’s failure to do nothing about abortion, in particular late-term abortions.”

In Alberta, the Citizen Initiative Act allows the people, should they get 178,000 verified signatures, to call for a referendum, which Stephan said would allow “Albertans to judge for themselves” on the issue of late-term abortion.

“Seeing things as they really are will result in less abortion not by force of law but by the exercise of moral agency informed by truth,” he said

“It will be good for Albertans to have a referendum with honest conversations on late-term abortion, speaking the truth in love as each best understands it, with respect to all. Thank you.”

According to Prolife Alberta, Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government under Premier Danielle Smith “has the authority to rewrite AHS policy to require that infants born alive after a failed abortion receive the same degree of care as any other newborn child.”

The group is urging Albertans to sign up to support its “Left to Die” campaign and contact their local Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) to “support” a “policy revision” of AHS guidelines, saying it “should be common-sense and bipartisan.”

Prolife Alberta has exposed the fact that late-term abortions happen in the province.

The ruling UCP party’s grassroots members will be debating restricting abortion funding at its upcoming AGM to be held November 28-30.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, People’s Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier has called late-term abortions “disgusting.”

Bernier recently called for an end to “infanticide” after another RightNow video exposed late-term abortions in Canada.

Smith has done well on some points but has been relatively soft on social issues of importance to conservatives  such as abortion and has publicly expressed pro-LGBT views, telling Jordan Peterson earlier this year that conservatives must embrace homosexual “couples” as “nuclear families.”

Late-term abortions often result in live births, as the baby is not completely killed during the abortion procedure. As reported by LifeSiteNews recently, 150 babies were born after botched abortions in 2023-2024 in Canada, but it’s not known how many survived.

Similarly, reports from 2018 indicated that 766 babies were born alive after late-term abortions in Canada between 2013 and 2018 and presumably left to die.

There were 368,928 babies born in Canada from 2024 to 2025, a number that would be much greater if not for abortion. For context, in 2022, 97,211 Canadian babies were killed by abortion.

This article supplied by Troy Media.

By Lennie Kaplan

Alberta is banking on oil to erase rising deficits, but the province’s budget can’t hold without major fiscal changes

Alberta is heading for a fiscal cliff, and no amount of oil revenue will save it this time.

The province is facing ballooning deficits, rising debt and an addiction to resource revenues that rise and fall with global markets. As Budget 2026 consultations begin, the government is gambling on oil prices to balance the books again. That gamble is failing. Alberta is already staring down multibillion-dollar shortfalls.

I estimate the province will run deficits of $7.7 billion in 2025-26, $8.8 billion in 2026-27 and $7.5 billion in 2027-28. If nothing changes, debt will climb from $85.2 billion to $112.3 billion in just three years. That is an increase of more than $27 billion, and it is entirely avoidable.

These numbers come from my latest fiscal analysis, completed at the end of October. I used conservative assumptions: oil prices at US$62 to US$67 per barrel over the next three years. Expenses are expected to keep growing faster than inflation and population. I also requested Alberta’s five-year internal fiscal projections through access to information but Treasury Board and Finance refused to release them. Those forecasts exist, but Albertans have not been allowed to see them.

Alberta has been running structural deficits for years, even during boom times. That is because it spends more than it brings in, counting on oil royalties to fill the gap. No other province leans this hard on non-renewable resource revenue. It is volatile. It is risky. And it is getting worse.

That is what makes Premier Danielle Smith’s recent Financial Post column so striking. She effectively admitted that any path to a balanced budget depends on doubling Alberta’s oil production by 2035. That is not a plan. It is a fantasy. It relies on global markets, pipeline expansions and long-term forecasts that rarely hold. It puts taxpayers on the hook for a commodity cycle the province does not control.

I have long supported Alberta’s oil and gas industry. But I will call out any government that leans on inflated projections to justify bad fiscal choices.

Just three years ago, Alberta needed oil at US$70 to balance the budget. Now it needs US$74 in 2025-26, US$76.35 in 2026-27 and US$77.50 in 2027-28. That bar keeps rising. A single US$1 drop in the oil price will soon cost Alberta $750 million a year. By the end of the decade, that figure could reach $1 billion. That is not a cushion. It is a cliff edge.

Even if the government had pulled in $13 billion per year in oil revenue over the last four years, it still would have run deficits. The real problem is spending. Since 2021, operating spending, excluding COVID-19 relief, has jumped by $15.5 billion, or 31 per cent. That is nearly eight per cent per year. For comparison, during the last four years under premiers Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford, spending went up 6.9 per cent annually.

This is not a revenue problem. It is a spending problem, papered over with oil booms. Pretending Alberta can keep expanding health care, education and social services on the back of unpredictable oil money is reckless. Do we really want our schools and hospitals held hostage to oil prices and OPEC?

The solution was laid out decades ago. Oil royalties should be saved off the top, not dumped into general revenue. That is what Premier Peter Lougheed understood when he created the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund in 1976. It is what Premier Ralph Klein did when he cut spending and paid down debt in the 1990s. Alberta used to treat oil as a bonus. Now it treats it as a crutch.

With debt climbing and deficits baked in, Alberta is out of time. I have previously laid out detailed solutions. But here is where the government should start.

First, transparency. Albertans deserve a full three-year fiscal update by the end of November. That includes real numbers on revenue, expenses, debt and deficits. The government must also reinstate the legal requirement for a mid-year economic and fiscal report. No more hiding the ball.

Second, a real plan. Not projections based on hope, but a balanced three-year budget that can survive oil prices dropping below forecast. That plan should be part of Budget 2026 consultations.

Third, long-term discipline. Alberta needs a fiscal sustainability framework, backed by a public long-term report released before year-end.

Because if this government will not take responsibility, the next oil shock will.

Lennie Kaplan is a former senior manager in the fiscal and economic policy division of Alberta’s Ministry of Treasury Board and Finance, where, among other duties, he examined best practices in fiscal frameworks, program reviews and savings strategies for non-renewable resource revenues. In 2012, he won a Corporate Values Award in TB&F for his work on Alberta’s fiscal framework review. In 2019, Mr. Kaplan served as executive director to the MacKinnon Panel on Alberta’s finances—a government-appointed panel tasked with reviewing Alberta’s spending and recommending reforms.