Alberta Premier Danielle Smith moves ahead with $2.4 billion Inflation Relief Act, Alberta ‘sovereignty act’

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced plans that include a $2.4 billion inflation relief package and a move towards her sovereignty act in a prerecorded address Tuesday.

Smith plans to provide a $600 payment over six months for each child under 18, as well as every senior as part of the Inflation Relief Act.

She said that families are having to choose between buying food for their children and making mortgage payments. The premier also says seniors are “choosing between filling their needed prescriptions and fuel for their vehicles.”

“As a province, we can’t solve this inflation crisis on our own, but due to our strong fiscal position and balanced budget, we can offer substantial relief so Albertans and their families are better able to manage through this storm,” Smith said.

The funding is targeted for household incomes below $180,000.

Some of Smith’s other plans are a continuation of former premier Jason Kenney’s plans from earlier in the year.

To further help Albertans, the province in the spring stopped collecting its 13 cents-per-litre tax on gas at the pumps. The government has since started adding some of that tax back, as oil prices receded.

Smith is now suspending the entire provincial fuel tax for “at least” six months and is making the current fuel relief program permanent after that.

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The province is going to provide $200 per home in rebates on consumer electricity bills. Residences, rural farms, and businesses have received a monthly rebate of $50 on their electricity bills since July.

The Alberta government is also going ahead with indexing all provincial tax brackets retroactively to 2022. She says this will result in larger rebates when taxes are filed in the spring.

Smith says they are going to index for inflation, which includes re-indexing for Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH), Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD), Seniors Benefit, Alberta Child and Family Benefit, and Income Support programming in January.

She says the province is going to continue the natural gas rebate program and will invest in food banks and low-income transit passes.

Smith’s plans for healthcare

The premier also went head-on with the healthcare crisis, having gone ahead and already axed 11 members of Alberta Health Services (AHS), and replaced them with an administrator.

Smith has started a “health reform action plan” and criticized actions that the NDP would do if they were in their shoes.

“The answer is not the opposition’s plan to throw billions more into the system. They already tried that once. It failed and almost bankrupted the province,” Smith said.

She says the reform plan means more health professionals in emergency rooms, less wait times for ambulances, and wait lists decreased and more surgeries being done.

Smith wants to see healthcare decisions made at a local level.

“This will take time and patience of course. But I am confident that it will result in better health care for Albertans, when and where you need it most,” Smith said.

The next general election is just six months away, set for May 29, and recent polls suggest Smith is lagging behind the Opposition NDP.

All of the province’s plans last for at least six months.

Alberta’s ‘sovereignty act’ sees life

Smith is going ahead with the sovereignty act, renamed the “Alberta Sovereignty within the United Canada Act,” she said Tuesday.

She attacked the federal government, saying its treatment of all provinces, including Alberta, is “unacceptable.”

“The government in Ottawa is intentionally and systematically attempting to control and regulate all aspects of our province’s economy, resources and social programs through equalization and transfers,” Smith said.

“They funnel billions of your tax dollars away from you and into a black hole of federal bureaucracy and vote-buying arrangements in other parts of the country.”

She says the Liberal federal government is equal to the provincial government and cites the Constitution of Canada.

“We both have sovereign areas of exclusive federal and provincial jurisdiction,” Smith said. “Albertans, not Ottawa, are in charge of developing and exporting our resources, growing our economy and delivering health care, education, childcare and other programs in the manner that we as Albertan’s choose.”

Smith said the act will be introduced a week from Tuesday.

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Smith concluded the speech by speaking of her new role as premier and seemingly responding to controversies that have spun up around her.

She has been criticized for comments embracing alternative views to COVID-19 and the healthcare response from the province and AHS, and for past musings embracing pro-Russia talking points in its war with Ukraine.

“I know that I am far from perfect, and I make mistakes,” Smith said in the address.

“Having spent decades in media and hosting talk shows, I discussed hundreds of different topics, and sometimes took controversial positions, many of which have evolved or changed as I have grown and learned from listening to you.

“I know I’m not a talk-show host or media commentator any longer.

“My job today is to serve each and every Albertan with everything I have and to the best of my ability, however imperfect that may be at times.”

NDP opposition leader Rachel Notley spoke in an address shortly after and says she’s not “buying it.”

“Many people won’t remember but the six months prior to the last election, the UCP voted to increase benefits for vulnerable Albertans only to then break that promise within weeks of taking office. Here we go again.”

She says the province is only reversing many of its “bad decisions,” ones that have cost $2 billion.

“We couldn’t trust the UCP then and we definitely can’t trust them,” Notley said.

“The UCP is causing real damage to Alberta’s economy right now with Danielle Smith’s proposed sovereignty Act, a policy that is completely out of step with growing a modern economy.”

The NDP said Smith needs to directly reassure Albertans, given that in her policy paper, written in June 2021 for the University of Calgary, Smith said Alberta can no longer afford universal social programs funded wholly by taxpayers.

-With files from The Canadian Press