Red Deer City Budget 2025: An Opportunity for Council to Step Up for Taxpayers

Opinion on Red Deer City Budget 2025

By Al Poole

I have lived in Red Deer for 45 years and loved every year. So happy to be here.

Having said that, I see things, patterns over time, that worry me. When I worry I dig deeper – I just need to understand.

Budget 2025: Wow – a massive document. I can only imagine what it cost to build this document. Even more concerning – the amount of time and effort for council members to understand. Crazy!

I will say up front – I wonder if anyone on council has a good grasp on operations performance
based on the budget – as presented. If I am correct, what does that say for citizens of Red Deer
understanding? [note: I do not equate understanding with agreement]

This could be so much easier. Council needs to insist this becomes clearer and easier to understand. (I can help).

As in the past, generally, I find this another document reads from a position of fear and defensiveness – simply looks like justifying “what we do is already the best”. Why would you do that to yourselves?

It starts at the top – the City Manager message is not inspiring. It lacks the leadership that says I got this and here is what I am going to do to correct our current course.

Upfront, an area that confuses me is the reserve transfers. I find it hard to get a real good grasp on spending. I will work to close that gap soon.

Back to the document, a couple of things that caught my attention and I find encouraging. In the
Executive Summary, item 4 on page 5: establish expectations of Administration to achieve a positive variance to budget. I presume this means a fair budget that requires Administration to be more effective and efficient in executing its work (i.e. not only from more tax revenue). I applaud you writing it down – achieving it is akin to retained earnings in my work world (for City – healthy reserves). Second, the citizen surveys in the spring and then the fall. They serve as a great guide for Council and Administration.

The City’s current financial situation is not great. If you understand and accept how we got here – the path forward becomes clearer. Based on what I see in the document you have not understood or accepted. It still appears it’s the taxpayer who is carrying most of the load.

It is interesting that the citizen surveys point to reducing the size of City organization. That tells me everyone, without knowing the details, has a good sense that the City Operations are not as effective or efficient as they could be. I know some of you know it to be true, as well.

Ok – let’s delve into the budget. I like the breakout in TTAX sheet, page 65. I commend Administration for projecting a positive variance over 4% Good job. Now, a bold move demonstrating real leadership would be to take the projected 2024-year end outcome and make that the 2025 budget — and still deliver a positive variance in 2025. Instead, all of that seems to have been lost – the 2025 budget is 6.3% higher. Who thought this an acceptable approach.

Secondly, Considerations and Bold Moves on page 71. The title is impressive — the content is anything but bold.

If you were to assume, based on preamble, I started this review with skepticism – you would be correct. The two items above, a 6.3% increase to base budget and lack of bold moves are absolute derailers for me. Given our financial position – regardless of how we got here – I am ok with, as a taxpayer, to help improve the financial position of my city. Note: I said help – not carry it all. You totally missed it. Why would I as a tax paying citizen, or any other citizen believe we are being served by strong informed leadership? In essence you are pushing all of the fix onto us.

In closing – to keep it clear and simple: show me the math to $18,201,505 tax revenue increase. I can not find a pathway to that number. I realize MGA dictates certain rules you must follow – but it does not stop you from presenting a clear picture. Also, why would you list $512,317,612 – like it is the cash you will spend. Roughly, $89M is non-cash – it is an accounting transaction. I would like to see a summary of financials so I can reasonably assess how operations are doing — akin to EBITDA line in the for-profit world. In the absence of that summary, I have little confidence in Councils ability to reasonably assess operating performance.

I know from experience large organizations tend to grow organically and suffer from increasing
inefficiency over time unless specific actions are taken to correct the course.

You have a chance as Council and Administration to demonstrate leadership – the type that earns
trust and respect. Step up!

It is my intent to be helpful. I am happy to chat in more detail.
Al

PS: Please do not come back to me with it is a complicated operation and you do not understand.
I concede City operations have complicated elements but the nice thing about complicated – it
leads to prescriptive processes/procedures (easy to monitor and evaluate). Now on the revenue
side – there are some complexities that require more nuanced solutions.

Al Poole is a business and community leader. Former Site Leader Joffre Complex, Poole served with the United Way Central Alberta and Red Deer College.

Related Topics:#AlPoole #RedDeerCityCouncil feature RedDeerCityBudget2025

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Canada’s economic performance cratered after Ottawa pivoted to the ‘green’ economy

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Canadians paid $90 billion in government debt interest in 2024/25

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Canada’s economic performance cratered after Ottawa pivoted to the ‘green’ economy

Published on October 31, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Jason Clemens and Jake Fuss

There are ostensibly two approaches to economic growth from a government policy perspective. The first is to create the best environment possible for entrepreneurs, business owners and investors by ensuring effective government that only does what’s needed, maintains competitive taxes and reasonable regulations. It doesn’t try to pick winners and losers but rather introduces policies to create a positive environment for all businesses to succeed.

The alternative is for the government to take an active role in picking winners and losers through taxes, spending and regulations. The idea here is that a government can promote certain companies and industries (as part of a larger “industrial policy”) better than allowing the market—that is, individual entrepreneurs, businesses and investors—to make those decisions.

It’s never purely one or the other but governments tend to generally favour one approach. The Trudeau era represented a marked break from the consensus that existed for more than two decades prior. Trudeau’s Ottawa introduced a series of tax measures, spending initiatives and regulations to actively constrain the traditional energy sector while promoting what the government termed the “green” economy.

The scope and cost of the policies introduced to actively pick winners and losers is hard to imagine given its breadth. Direct spending on the “green” economy by the federal government increased from $600 million the year before Trudeau took office (2014/15) to $23.0 billion last year (2024/25).

Ottawa introduced regulations to make it harder to build traditional energy projects (Bill C-69), banned tankers carrying Canadian oil from the northwest coast of British Columbia (Bill C-48), proposed an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector, cancelled pipeline developments, mandated almost all new vehicles sold in Canada to be zero-emission by 2035, imposed new homebuilding regulations for energy efficiency, changed fuel standards, and the list goes on and on.

Despite the mountain of federal spending and regulations, which were augmented by additional spending and regulations by various provincial governments, the Canadian economy has not been transformed over the last decade, but we have suffered marked economic costs.

Consider the share of the total economy in 2014 linked with the “green” sector, a term used by Statistics Canada in its measurement of economic output, was 3.1 per cent. In 2023, the green economy represented 3.6 per cent of the Canadian economy, not even a full one-percentage point increase despite the spending and regulating.

And Ottawa’s initiatives did not deliver the green jobs promised. From 2014 to 2023, only 68,000 jobs were created in the entire green sector, and the sector now represents less than 2 per cent of total employment.

Canada’s economic performance cratered in line with this new approach to economic growth. Simply put, rather than delivering the promised prosperity, it delivered economic stagnation. Consider that Canadian living standards, as measured by per-person GDP, were lower as of the second quarter of 2025 compared to six years ago. In other words, we’re poorer today than we were six years ago. In contrast, U.S. per-person GDP grew by 11.0 per cent during the same period.

Median wages (midpoint where half of individuals earn more, and half earn less) in every Canadian province are now lower than comparable median wages in every U.S. state. Read that again—our richest provinces now have lower median wages than the poorest U.S. states.

A significant part of the explanation for Canada’s poor performance is the collapse of private business investment. Simply put, businesses didn’t invest much in Canada, particularly when compared to the United States, and this was all pre-Trump tariffs. Canada’s fundamentals and the general business environment were simply not conducive to private-sector investment.

These results stand in stark contrast to the prosperity enjoyed by Canadians during the Chrétien to Harper years when the focus wasn’t on Ottawa picking winners and losers but rather trying to establish the most competitive environment possible to attract and retain entrepreneurs, businesses, investors and high-skilled professionals. The policies that dominated this period are the antithesis of those in place now: balanced budgets, smaller but more effective government spending, lower and competitive taxes, and smart regulations.

As the Carney government prepares to present its first budget to the Canadian people, many questions remain about whether there will be a genuine break from the policies of the Trudeau government or whether it will simply be the same old same old but dressed up in new language and fancy terms. History clearly tells us that when governments try to pick winners and losers, the strategy doesn’t lead to prosperity but rather stagnation. Let’s all hope our new prime minister knows his history and has learned its lessons.

Jason Clemens

Executive Vice President, Fraser Institute

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

Business

Canadians paid $90 billion in government debt interest in 2024/25

Published on October 31, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss, Tegan Hill and William Dunstan

Next week, the Carney government will table its long-awaited first budget. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Mark Carney launched a federal spending review to find $25 billion in savings by 2028. Even if the government meets this goal, it won’t be enough to eliminate the federal deficit—projected to reach as high as $92.2 billion in 2025/26—and start paying down debt. That means a substantial amount of taxpayer dollars will continue to flow towards federal debt interest payments, rather than programs and services or tax relief for Canadians.

When a government spends more than it raises in revenue and runs a budget deficit, it accumulates debt. As of 2024/25, the federal and provincial governments will have accumulated a total projected $2.3 trillion in combined net debt (total debt minus financial assets).

Of course, like households, governments must pay interest on their debt. According to our recent study, the provinces and federal government expect to spend a combined $92.5 billion on debt interest payments in 2024/25.

And like any government spending, taxpayers fund these debt interest payments. The difference is that instead of funding important programs, such as health care, these taxpayer dollars will finance government debt. This is the cost of deficit spending.

How much do Canadians pay each year in government debt interest costs? On a per-person basis, combined provincial and federal debt interest costs in 2024/25 are expected to range from $1,937 in Alberta to $3,432 in Newfoundland and Labrador. These figures represent provincial debt interest costs, plus the federal portion allocated to each province based on a five-year average (2020-2024) of their share of Canada’s population.

For perspective, it’s helpful to compare debt interest payments to other budget items. For instance, the federal government estimates that in 2024/25 it will spend more on debt interest costs ($53.8 billion) than on child-care benefits ($35.1 billion) or the Canada Health Transfer ($52.1 billion), which supports provincial health-care systems.

Provincial governments too spend more money on interest payments than on large programs. For example, in 2024/25, Ontario expects to spend more on debt interest payments ($15.2 billion) than on post-secondary education ($14.2 billion). That same year, British Columbia expects to spend more on debt interest payments ($4.4 billion) than on child welfare ($4.3 billion).

Unlike other forms of spending, governments cannot simply decide to spend less on debt interest payments in a given year. To lower their debt interest payments, governments must rein in spending and eliminate deficits so they can start to pay down debt.

Unfortunately, most governments in Canada are doing the opposite. All but one province (Saskatchewan) plans to run a deficit in 2025/26 while the federal deficit could exceed $90 billion.

To stop racking up debt, governments must balance their budgets. By spending less today, governments can ensure that a larger share of tax dollars go towards programs or tax relief to benefit Canadians rather than simply financing government debt.