Alberta
Alberta company donating structure to AHS to expand hospital in Calgary for COVID-19 patients
From The Province of Alberta
Expanding pandemic patient capacity in Calgary
A temporary expansion to the Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary will help one of Alberta’s busiest hospitals meet patient needs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alberta-based Sprung Structures has donated a temporary structure to Alberta Health Services (AHS) that will add up to 6,000 square feet of treatment space. This will create about 100 more care spaces for Calgary-area patients.
The value of the donation from Sprung Structures is $235,000.
There have been 835 cases of COVID-19 identified in the Calgary zone as of April 8. This represents 61 per cent of all the cases in Alberta.
“Our health system is working around-the-clock to respond to COVID-19. This donation to AHS and the people of Alberta will significantly expand capacity and, ultimately, help save lives. I would like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to Sprung Structures on behalf of all Albertans.”
“This donation will greatly assist AHS with our planning and increase our capacity as we address the COVID-19 pandemic. This new space will provide more options for treatment beyond the scope of our existing facilities as our teams continue to care for Albertans and battle this pandemic. On behalf of AHS, I’d like to say how appreciative we all are for the generosity of Phil and Tim Sprung, and would like to extend our gratitude to Sprung Structures.”
“When the province needs help in a time of crisis, we want to step up and do our part. We hope the donation of this structure will help ease capacity pressures on the health-care system and give our province’s health-care providers the space they need to care for Albertans during this global pandemic.”
Planning and implementation teams from the Alberta government, AHS, and local officials are working with Sprung Structures and its partners to fast-track this initiative. The structure will be located in the parking lot next to the Peter Lougheed Centre.
AHS will invest up to $3 million to turn the structure into a site for safe, high-quality health-care delivery that meets all standards for infection prevention and control.
Quick facts
- The Sprung structure is 70 metres by 105 metres and will add up to 557 square metres (6,000 square feet) of treatment space, which will also include room for staff and physician support space and patient washrooms.
- The structure is a tensioned membrane building solution combining an aluminum substructure with highly tensioned membrane panels.
- Family-owned and operated since 1887, the Sprung Group of Companies has been manufacturing innovative building solutions for 133 years. Sprung has more than 12,000 structures in 100 countries around the world.
- AHS is working on other measures to increase the number of acute care beds in the Calgary zone and throughout the province in response to a surge of demand caused by COVID-19. These measures include postponement of all elective surgeries and procedures, and identifying non-clinical spaces in AHS facilities that can be adapted for patient care.
- In all, AHS is ensuring that more than 3,000 acute care and intensive care spaces are available for patients with COVID-19.
Alberta has a comprehensive response to COVID-19 including measures to enhance social distancing, screening and testing. Financial supports are helping Alberta families and businesses.
Alberta
Alberta government should eliminate corporate welfare to generate benefits for Albertans
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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