Close to 800,000 Albertans have applied for $100 energy rebate, payments coming: Smith
Posted July 16, 2026 12:19 pm.
Last Updated July 16, 2026 1:37 pm.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says close to 800,000 people have applied for her government’s $100 energy rebate.
Smith told reporters Thursday she thinks the uptake so far is higher than it was the last time Alberta rolled out an affordability payment program in 2023. In that case, the province offered parents and seniors $100 per month, and per child, for up to six months if household income was below $180,000.
Smith’s new rebate program is for Albertans with a household income under $225,000, and applications opened on July 2. The government has estimated that 3.4 million people are eligible.
Smith said she thinks the first payments will start landing in Albertans’ bank accounts in the next few days.
She also said the government is looking at ways to streamline the application process after some reported having issues with the online portal, which will close at the end of September.
“There were some issues around validation because finance wanted to make sure that we had additional fraud protection measures on there,” Smith said.
“Some of it made it difficult for some people to access it, so we’re looking at some ways to be able to streamline that to make it easier for us to validate income without creating additional barriers.”
A spokesperson for Technology Minister Nate Glubish said about 35,000 applications were flagged in the first week for being potentially fraudulent.
Smith said it’s too soon to say whether the affordability payments will continue or if the government will revert to its previous relief program that cut gas taxes at the pump when oil prices were high, but she said the rebate system provides more direct help.
“The variation at gas stations can be as much as 26 cents, and so we wanted to make sure people knew that they were getting the rebate on the dollars that they’d spent,” she said.
“We’ll make a decision once we get through … this next quarter.”
The premier made the comments at a pancake breakfast in Edmonton hosted by Smith’s government on the legislature grounds.
