Addressing Canada’s economic challenges and Alberta’s path forward
By Lethbridge Herald on July 13, 2024.
AT THE LEGISLATURE
Nathan Neudorf – UCP MLA for Lethbridge East
Thanks to the federal Liberal-NDP government’s poor policies, Canadians from coast to coast to coast are feeling the strain on their budget. While Alberta’s government is doing its part, it is clear that Ottawa needs to acknowledge how their policies are only exacerbating the issues we face.
The housing market is under immense pressure. With Canada’s population increasing at a significant pace, thanks to Liberal-NDP’s policies, our housing market is under a great deal of pressure to keep up with demand. In turn, this is only straining Canadians’ finances.
While Alberta is building more homes than ever, Ottawa needs to play its part and implement responsible policies.
The federal Liberal-NDP government’s expanding bureaucracy and tax & spend policies are hindering the economic potential of our nation and diminish the quality of life for many Canadians. The ever-increasing federal carbon tax is continuing to be the main driver of rising costs, affecting everything from fuelling a vehicle to buying groceries.
However, despite these national challenges, Alberta is creating a brighter future. By focusing on our strengths and implementing effective policies, we are mitigating the impact of these federal missteps and ensuring a prosperous future for our province.
One of the key areas where Alberta is making a difference is through our electricity system.
By enabling the development of modern energy infrastructure and promoting Alberta’s free market as a destination of choice for investment, we can create a stable and affordable electricity supply. That’s why we are restructuring our electricity market, improving transmission regulations, and we’ve renamed and reworked the default electricity rate to the Rate of Last Resort. This will not only benefit our economy, but also ensure that Alberta remains the best place to invest, start a business, raise a family, and call home.
Regulation and policy reform are also crucial. Streamlining bureaucratic processes, reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens, and fostering a business-friendly environment will spur economic growth and innovation. Alberta has the lowest taxes in the country, with no provincial sales tax, and lower income taxes.
By making Alberta the most competitive and attractive place to do business, we are driving job creation and increasing productivity.
Strategic and targeted immigration policies that align with our economic needs can help address the labour shortages in key industries. By attracting skilled workers in sectors where there is demand, we can support economic growth without overburdening our social systems.
Alberta has always been a beacon of opportunity and resilience. By taking proactive steps to address the economic challenges we face, we can ensure that our province continues to thrive even in the face of national adversity.
We are taking charge of our future, leveraging our strengths and implementing policies that will secure a prosperous and sustainable future for all Albertans.
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Empty rhetoric Nathan. Have you been asleep at your desk again? “Governor Smith” jumped all over the feds for their efforts to provide funds to municipalities to speed up housing building starts. Instead of applauding the federal government’s efforts, which actually were intent on reducing bureaucracy, Smith insisted on complicating the program by demanding her 15 minutes of fame with her ridiculous cries of “foul”. Then the UCP legislate $5000 tax breaks to attract yet more immigrants to the province when we already have a significant housing shortage in many areas. An immediate lack of affordable housing and in some jurisdictions along with vast overcrowding of classrooms in schools is Alberta’s true greeting card for the newcomers. — (Speaking of which: when will your government fund current school boards adequately enough to employ more teachers to reduce class sizes as well as employ more teaching assistants for special needs students? To fund teacher aids for English-as-a second-language students ?!?!? Your UCP government is unbelievably (willfully?) out of touch with everyday reality of our classrooms !!! More testing ?? Teachers are struggling to maintain control of each and every classroom teaching hour due to the significant turmoil existing in so many elementary level classrooms. When will your government show enough respect to ensure these teacher assistants are paid an appropriate, and adequate salary? That same money the UCP offered to attract yet more people to Alberta could have been better spent on educational funding, such as student scholarships to support yet MORE currently under- or unemployed Albertans already struggling to survive — to allow them to attend college training programs. Increase the programs for workers in areas of employment with notable untrained worker shortages, including construction trades, by providing much needed financial aid to make such return to school decisions feasible! We certainly have enough “polytechnics” around the province to respond to this logic. If you are going to crap on the feds policies then back up your talk with actual efforts to truly deal with key issues impacting Albertans lives. These unemployed and under-employed people are caught in a hopeless vicious circle where simply paying their rent requires three part time jobs to simply pay for shared rent in a dismal apartment. Important to that discussion as well is the long-overdue recognition that people simply need “living wages” whether that be in the form of higher salaries/wages or being offered enough hours of employment per week to live a stable life PERIOD. As for the carbon tax being the main driver for the rising costs, once again another example of you spouting mythology, as the rising costs and affordability crisis is FAR more complex than your partisan rhetorical simplification; the sources of rising costs are influenced by supply chain shortages, wars, climate change impacts on a wide variety of crop disasters, and simple corporate greed and market manipulations. Your wilful ignorance of those facts isn’t the least bit helpful to achieving solutions. Wake up Nathan. Stop drooling on your desk. Come up with far more than your simple partisan indoctrination tidbits. You and your UCP cronies make as many empty unfulfilled promises as frequently as Trudeau —in a far shorter term in office. Stop feeding the chaos and start the change !
Spoken like a true nationalize everything dipper. Just ignore the charter.
truly, social minded folk are nothing but commie lazy sharing type folk that only want to steal our money. but, it is ok to give away the massive brunt of our commie pool of money to good old fashioned capitalists like big corp and the oligarchy.
The fed-bashing by the Smith/Parker UCP/TBA is more, than tiresome now.
Electricity? Second highest electricity rates in the country? The $multibillion solar energy UCP/TBA moratorium fiasco loss?
Maybe instead of b_ _ _ _ing about the federal carbon tax, the UCP should look at their own backyard fuel tax, and take their $4 something billion surplus and deal with their underfunding of education, health care, municipalities, and infrastructure, and deal with their unfair taxation.
….the usual UCP blathering goes on.
Did you conjure this monologue piece of propaganda yourself Nathan or simply copy and paste emails from Smith and or Parker?