Good Morning, Alberta!
It’s Budget Day in Wild Rose Country!
South of the 49th Parallel, U.S. President Donald Trump is still talking tariffs, keeping everyone on the edge of their seats. Premier Danielle Smith’s efforts to persuade him to let her be the hero who ended the tariff threat went nowhere. So Canadians aren’t laughing at 51st state jokes any more, even ones that look like Alberta’s government.
Meanwhile, Alberta’s home-grown political scandal – the dodgy contracts affair – isn’t over. With the defection from cabinet of former infrastructure minister Peter Guthrie, cracks are starting to appear in the cabinet containment vessel. Rumours circulate of more disgruntled ministers plotting an escape. Everyone’s watching for signs a full meltdown is beginning. What they used to call The China Syndrome.
Oil prices? Well, let’s just say they’re not promising. Supply is up, so guess what’s likely to go down. Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which apparently hasn’t been shut down by the president’s batshit bazillionaire sidekick Elon Musk yet, forecast “prices will fall to an average of $66/b in 2026 mainly because of growing production in countries outside OPEC+ and demand growth that is less than the pre-pandemic average.”
Well, if you’ve been paying attention to Alberta politics, y’all know what happens next!
Don’t expect good news.
If the political brain trust of the United Conservative Party was putting the final touches on Finance Minister Nate Horner’s Budget Speech last night, they were probably arguing about whether to plead poverty or penury.
Alberta is the poor little rich kid of Confederation, and we’re due for another poor-kid cycle. The motto on our provincial coat of arms? When in doubt say we’re broke and blame a Trudeau. Any Trudeau will do. So, watch out, Xavier! You’ll probably be next!
Meanwhile, with Canadians – yes, even here in Alberta – responding to President Trump’s threatened depredations by booing the Star Spangled Banner at hockey games and snatching back our Maple Leaf flag from the convoy creeps, the UCP is still on sovereignty-association autopilot.
Yesterday, a cabinet order proclaimed that the so-called Provincial Priorities Act – more accurately described as the Fight With Ottawa About Everything Act – will come into force, appropriately enough, on April Fool’s Day.
Modern Canadian Conservatives are not inclined ever to waste a good crisis, though, so they’re certainly not to let the one created by Messrs. Trump and Musk go to waste. This afternoon’s budget, we can be confident, will provide plenty of evidence of this phenomenon.
Expect to be told the only way Canada can save itself from being taken over by the United States is to become so much like the United States that no one can tell the difference.
This is the economic crie de coeur of basically every Canadian federal and provincial political party, the right-wing economists they consult, Thinktankistan, and of course the so-called business community – Calgary Chamber of Commerce! C’mon down!
Thanks to them, that old Thatcherite curse is back – There Is No Alternative!
Keep privatizing public health care! Sheriffs to the border – fentanyl ho! Eliminate “red tape” and provincial “trade barriers”! TINA! TINA! TINA!
Ah, those naughty trade barriers. They’re just stuff like environmental regulations, workplace health and safely rules, language laws, Canadian songs on the radio …
They all must be swept away, we’re told. Or, as I heard one UCP minister proclaiming on the radio yesterday, “there’s no better time than right now to politically de-risk these projects.”
Politically de-risk, of course, means to make it impossible to oppose them through the application of old-timey notions like democracy.
It is all bullshit, of course.
Make no mistake, if we follow the advice of these folks, some of whom are cynically trying to deceive us, some of whom are jumping on the bandwagon because that’s the way they think the parade is going, but many of whom are just naively repeating what they hear every day on the Internet, we will be doing the thing most likely to result in Canada actually becoming part of the United States.
And never forget, joining the United States in 2025 would be a lot like joining the Soviet Union in 1975.
Never forget that the point of being Canadian on the North American continent is not so that we can say we’re not Americans, but because our country really is a better place than the United States. We made it that way.
So don’t despair when you hear the doleful news reports of Mr. Horner’s Budget speech this afternoon. They’re likely to be BS too.
Mr. Horner is scheduled to get up on his hind legs and start speechifying at 3:15 p.m. If you’re made of stern enough stuff to watch, you can find a link right here.
Its hard to predict exactly what this budget will bring, but I suspect a lot of it will not be good news with oil prices languishing so much recently. And sorry, we also foolishly over spent our past surplus on AHS private health care contracts, so probably time now to cut back on things like AHS staff and emergency hours.
Horner himself said a few months ago if oil was under $70 we would likely have a deficit, but perhaps the UCP has been busy frantically cutting enough over last few months to avoid that for now. Or maybe they will do what several other Alberta conservative governments did in similar situations in the past, just make overly optimistic revenue projections that ignore the current reality and desperately hope things improve soon.
Smith may fondly remember those rising oil prices when she won her leadership that held up fairly well until after the election. Smith may also remember a similar situation that happened to former Premier Redford who was sailing along nicely until a bitumen bubble hit her hard. March is an particularly dangerous month for Alberta Premiers facing weak oil prices, the other difficult months are the ones whose names contain the letters a, r or u.
Danielle Smith/ Keystone=Facebook….
“Agreed president trump @realdonaldtrump trump. That project should never have been canceled.
Lower fuel costs for American families is a big win.
Let’s also scrap these inflammatory tariff ideas right away and focus on getting shovels in the ground right away. ”
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There’s too much to dissect there. Is she watching different news from the rest of us? My main question to her would be
” why do you think it’s a great idea when he keeps saying he doesn’t need anything from Canada…not oil, or lumber or anything else?”
“D O I ” (thanks Debrah)
CorruptCare scandal
•deny= I know nuthing
•deflect = involuntary drug treatment
•distract =”Carrot Tax Cut”
•divert= (quietly) $11 billion into loan guarantee for* …?
•divest= taxpayers of more money.
*press progress
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Cattle ranchers in Alberta, should be happy. She’s not only shearing the sheep, she’s doing it in a humane way, by blindfolding them while she does it. Those s**tkickers are going to have to be traded in for high top wellies at this point.
And for the Mayor and residents of Bowden, our sympathies that the Premier gave such a wishy washy response to your concerns. Don’t feel alone, AFF has your back!!
P.S. DJC— pretty please post a warning….what’s that old expression about faces that could curdle milk ….uuuugh!
Monopoly Day in Alberta: who ends up in jail, who gets the get out of jail card and who ends up being railroaded??
The game continues.
“YOU can always blame a Trudeau” The kid is only 16, but yes even if he doesn’t go into politics and stays a musician he’ll be blamed. You’d think the right would think up something else.
Even though we are told by the right there is no alternative, that is not true. There is always an alternative and a whole lot of them. It just takes work to get the correct one and a lot of people don’t want to do the work. They just want the solution which is best for them and their financial backers.
There is something from back in the day, like I was young, it was explained the “trade barriers” were in place so businesses didn’t go all to one or two provinces and leave the rest of the country without manufacturing and all sorts of other jobs. Taking booze from Alberta to B.C. coming back from vacation could be a problem. The RCMP would take it away from you. This way liquor would be produced in more than one province, thus spreading the ability to tax and produce in more than one province.
Removing “trade barriers” between provinces will benefit big corporations only. Small businesses can’t afford to buy up smaller business and centralize. Its going to create unemployment in smaller provinces. This will not end well.
Yesterday I ran into a chart which listed the amount of money you had to make in each State to be considered “well to do, financially well off, etc.”. Cracked me right up. Some were just over a $100K. The starting salary for the VPD is higher than that as is the salary for teachers, trades people, etc.” yes in the U.S.A. our starting wages in many occupations is “hitting the big time in the U.S.A.” Add in the cost of health care. Saw a chart which listed the number of people going bankrupt due inability to pay their medical bills. The chart listed all the G7 countries, Japan, most western european countries as NO BANKRUPTCIES. The U.S.A. had over 300K bankruptcies due to medical bills each year. Some time ago I also saw an article about people loosing their homes in the U.S.A. Number one cause, taking out mortgages on their homes to pay their medical bills and then being unable to pay the mortgages. Back in the 1960s an Uncle living in Seattle died of cancer. When all the bills came in our Aunt had a bill for blood used for him of $25,000. Back then you could purchase a home in Richmond, B.C. for a lot less than that.
Yes Canada is different and I’m very glad it is.
Racing to the bottom to create an advantage in business and whatever is never a good idea. We saw what happened when Thatcher did that and privitized hospitals or rather awarded contracts to corporations to take care of them. Yes, that did not work out well. It actually was funny. Some corporations did not maintain the hospitals and when they were totally run down the corporation would walk away from them leaving the government with nothing.
I think there are more troubling times ahead for the UCP. They are going to break apart at the seams. There will be more hardship for people, but their rich friends will be taken care of.
April 1 is also known as Danielle Smith’s birthday, or the day Donald Trump is so superstitious about that he won’t even use it to start a trade war.
AB Budget today: Probably a Public display of UCP legerdemain, deflection, oh, & lies? For every ONE DOLLAR DROP in World oil price, Alberta loses $630 MILION in revenue. Still welded to big_oil.
“And never forget, joining the United States in 2025 would be a lot like joining the Soviet Union in 1975. ” Nailed it 100%.
Only a masochist would put themselves through the torture of listening to Horner and Marlain-a-Lago lie to us. Besides, you’ve already told us what the budget will say and I would venture to say that it will be almost exactly as you’ve predicted.
Neoliberalism. The worldview that is practically incomprehensible and indescribable to most of us. May I direct fellow readers to an excellent 1-hour doc on Kanopy entitled The Invisible Doctrine. Access to Kanopy is free if your municipal library is affiliated (Calgary). There are other free sites that may serve your city.
Try this: classical neoliberalism was about profiting from imperialism, modern neoliberalism is about profiting from globalization, both ostensibly capitalistic. The former manoeuvred around the world balance of power in the “Great Game” and therefore was deferential to state (or empire) sovereignty, the latter angles for stateless corporatocracy, therefore is detrimental to state sovereignty. Neutering a state’s capacity to protect, preserve and promote its own enterprises and employment (including retirement pensions) through subsidies and tariffs is what modern neoliberalism is all about—that’s why today’s neoliberals are fundamentally anti-democratic.
IMHO, anyway. Thnx for the link.
I will not be watching the speech (it’s more BS, as you say). Instead, I will wait for your analysis, which is always adroit and accurate.
“Expect to be told the only way Canada can save itself from being taken over by the United States is to be so much like the United States that no one can tell the difference.” Want to die a pauper and sooner? Try private health insurance with refused claims and medical bankruptcies. In the same ratio of more guns than people, we’d have 46 million firearms and the right to open carry in churches, supermarkets and libraries. Like the song, Trump gets the gold mine, we get the shaft!
Musk: unfortunately, we can’t revoke his citizenship, he gets it from his Regina born mother. Treason charges though … beginning to wonder about that.
Trump: he is revoking Chevron license to import Venezuelan heavy crude. This would be the crude Midwest America refineries are configured to process. Which leaves Alberta crude as sole supply? Any way I read this, the orange shit gibbon is reducing his crude oil supply. So what is going to happen to crude prices?
Jagmeet Singh suggested we dis-invite the donvict to the upcoming G7 meeting. Since he is convicted felon, pretty easy for a prime minister to say “sorry, you’re not allowed to enter Canada”. Tell him he can participate remotely.
Small request: Instead of a photo of the orange pretend human currently occupying the American white house, please use court sketches. K? Thanks, bai!
Has anyone knowledge of how much drug traffic there is from the Excited States into Canada? Other than Fentanyl of course, since we are [accused of] swimming in the stuff!!
Begging your pardon but parts of Canada are south of the 49 parallel including all of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and parts of Quebec and Ontario
Rich: Well, you know, it’s an expression. Indeed, I was born in a part of Canada south of the 49th Parallel – and not in any of the four provinces you mentioned. Can you guess where? DJC
Manitoba or Victoria?
Gerald: Victoria. Six days before King George VI died. Or maybe is was five days. Whatever. I didn’t realize, now that you mention it, that there was a point south of the 49th in Manitoba. One can learn something every day, even at my age! So thank you for that. I do remember that the southernmost populated point in Canada is snaky Pelee Island in Ontario and that Windsor, Ont., is south of the United States. DJC
It’s just a pet peeve of mine.
Hi David. Rumor has it that Dani is going to go full DOGE on AHS and other government employees. I guess we will see next week
Does “Dani” know this isn’t the U.S.A. and she isn’t Trump in a skirt?
I’m sure she will try but this isn’t the U.S.A. We have H.R. Commissions. We have Unionized workers, the Alberta Labour Federation, a federal government who might be unhappy what she is going to do with the money Ottawa sends Alberta, an Opposition Party which is although quiet these days, does get things organized. Labour Federations and Unions do from time to time lend support to others in other provinces. Best of all we have a court system which works well. Just ask Harper and PP. when they passed 9 pieces of Legislation which they were advised were not lawful, people took it to court and all 9 pieces of Leg. were over turned by the Supreme Court of Canada. Yes, the Canadian Supreme Court has requirements to be appointed to it, aren’t on the take, haven’t been accused of sexual assault or harassment.
If Smith starts to fire nurses, doctors, radiologists, shrinks, etc. B.C. still needs a bunch. Teacher will also be able to find jobs in B.C. Some of the positions are in areas which are not as expensive to buy a home as Vancouver.