Say what you will about the big strategic brains behind Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government, at least they didn’t repeat their midsummer “energy rebate” bungle.
Mind you, they’re bringing in so much money thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump’s war of choice on Iran, which was only supposed to last a week or two, that they don’t need to.
So, starting on Oct. 1, the Alberta government said on Tuesday with a great deal of fanfare, it’ll stop collecting its 13-cent-per-litre fuel tax on gasoline and diesel until the end of the year, trotting out several of the usual suspects to crow about how this is going to make a meaningful difference in Alberta families’ budgets in a press release.
Well, fair dinkum as they say Down Under, gas will cost 13 cents a litre less at the pump, so it will only cost you about $140 to fill up your Ford F-150 or Dodge Ram pickup truck instead of about $153 – assuming you were running on fumes and you have the model with the small 87-litre tank, that is.
So you might save about $183 between now and New Year’s Day if you gas up every week, less if you drive a more efficient vehicle or can squeeze two weeks out of a fill-up. Challenge my arithmetic if you like – math is hard, after all – but readers will get the idea.
That’s still a lot to pay every week or two just to get around, and $13.05 less per fill-up is insignificant enough to make some of you dream of driving a nice EV from China no matter what the premier and her finance minister think about that.
“This will save hard-working Albertans hundreds of dollars over the next few months and save millions for people and businesses across the province,” Premier Danielle Smith said in the government’s news release. This is pretty hyperbolic, but we’re used to hyperbole, not to mention outright balderdash, from her now.
“This is the right move by Finance Minister Jason Nixon – lowering the cost of fuel makes things more affordable and that’s exactly what people need right now,” the premier’s canned quote piously concluded.
As a general rule, performative tax cuts are a bad idea no matter what the taxpayers’ federation or even the Opposition have to say about them, but in this case the government’s bringing in so much extra dough thanks how long it’s taking President Trump to admit he’s lost his illegal war that it’s hardly worth an argument.
“If the 13 cents fuel tax was lifted today, Albertans would see average pump prices in the province drop to around 162.5 cents/litre, almost 20 cents less than the next-lowest province,” the news release said Tuesday. (Go figure, I paid 1.6 cents less than that in Stony Plain yesterday.)
Anyway, this takes us back to last June when the same Alberta government announced that under its fuel-tax quarterly review program, which is supposed to take into account North American benchmark oil prices over the previous three months, instead of cutting taxes at the pump as they were supposed to they’d give everyone 18 and older who’d filed a tax return the in 2025 and had household income under $225,000 a measly $100 payment.
Alas, the intensively bureaucratic application process was so complex that many eligible Albertans simply threw up their hands and didn’t bother to ask for the insignificant payment.
Quite a few also didn’t trust putting more their personal information in the hands of a government that they’d learned just the month before had allowed the entire provincial voters list with the personal information of 2.9 million voters to leak to ne’er-do-well operators associated with the Alberta separatist movement.
The “Alberta Energy Rebate” was almost universally reviled, even by the government’s closest allies. Right-wing columnists dumped all over it. Cynics suspected the government was making it hard to get the money in order to shave a few dollars off the $9.4-billion deficit the UCP was expecting at the time. Phone lines to UCP MLAs’ constituency offices were burning up with angry calls. No doubt UCP MLAs who have been stoking the grievance fires literally for years were shocked, just shocked by what was being said to them.
Only about 40 per cent of the eligible taxpayers applied for the rebate – although there are still seven more days to apply.
Well that was then. With its war lotto winnings, the UCP now expects to post a $2-billion surplus – an $11.4-billion turnaround since last April that, unfortunately, is unlikely to do much to improve the lives of working Albertans.
Officials may also have warned the Smith Government that oil prices could rise fast enough that the savings would never appear at the pumps, so they’d never get the credit for the revenue sacrifice. And that was before The Peace President’s Pearl Harbor negotiating strategy was revealed.
That’s basically what happened to the federal government decision in April to suspend its 10-cent-per-litre fuel tax until Labour Day. Ottawa announced the day after the Sept. 7 national holiday that it was extending its fuel-tax holiday to Jan. 31, 2027, and only applying half that rate from Feb. 1 to March 31, 2027.
When the 5-per-cent rate cuts in, if the Carney Government doesn’t delay it again, the Smith Government can distract us from its own incompetence by screaming about Ottawa’s perfidy.
Here’s our great European ally in the war against Drumpf, the man who made the gas so expensive: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ufqWQ1INuak
As this man who heads NATO says, it’s about time people stopped paying pensions and welfare, and got behind the plough! “…one big platform of power projection…
Elbows up!
OMG, the Haters of Alberta. & TDSers are unbelievable. We live in the Lowest cost Privince in Canada, lowest Taxes, No PST, lowest Debt, largest Job Creator, growing population & affordable compared to all the other poorly run provinces in Canada. But even Giving away A $100 is BAD, with Dummies who can’t figure it out, my Autistic Son got his Rebate! Now making Gas cheaper is also BAD! These leftist Haters need to go live elsewhere and see the difference & find out what Failures the Tax & Spend NDPERS & Liberals do to your Life. Taxes are always their answer, with ZERO SOLUTIONS.
Brad Den: Everything you said is false.
We’re apparently going to hear prog-derp for some time attributing the war to Drumpf. Here’s what the Carny Banker said about the opening salvos, which entailed the massacre of the little Persian school girls: “Carney expressed strong support for the initial strikes when they launched a week ago, arguing for the value of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and its regime “from further threatening international peace and security”. Now the Carny Banker is, by any reasonable estimation, a lying, degenerate scumbag. The United States has bombed and/or invaded at least a dozen countries during my lifetime, and overthrown the democratically-elected governments of many, many more. So for this odious stufffed suit to use that kind of language about Iran there is an affront to the intelligence and dignity of anyone who hears it. The fact is that the assault on Iran is the culmination of four decades of US policy. The Drumpf is the moron seen in the cockpit as the US imperialist airplane slams into the mountain as they fail yet again, but nevertheless this is just continuation of US policy. This little hymnal is seventeen years old, but it’s consistent with the spirit of the thing since the US puppet, beloved by the Canadian state and oilmen, had to flee, leaving behind the dungeons of his Israeli-trained security apparatus, replete with metal frames for electrocuting anyone who opposed the regime of the man who saved the US military industrial complex by purchasing all their crappy toys: “WHICH PATH TO PERSIA?
Options for a New American
Strategy toward Iran” https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf. Maybe if you wear a mask it will make the fuel cheaper?
in that they put his daughter out to speak so well of him before the election, about his commitment towards the environment and carbon reduction, I think it is only fair to ask him what his daughter thinks of him now.
poor girl.
(sorry, but when you lie to us with your daughter standing beside you the question begs to be asked)
Murphy, thanks for sharing this paper. As I look at, I can’t help but think, that the U.S. has a paper on every country including Canada. I think Canada is right, on pulling away from the U.S. and that we may want to protect the Artic and our Southern border a bit more, than what we’re doing now.
Carney banker vs Trump bank robber?
OMG, what drivel, name those Democratic Countries the US invaded??? Iran & their Proxies (HAMAS, HEZBOLAH, ISIS, ICADA, TELIBAN, HOUTHIS, SYRIAN & Iraqy militias) have killed & Slaughtered more Muslims & others than all Western countries by Millions! Iran needed to be stopped & maybe now that there Neighbors see no one is save from these Extremeist, they would use a Nuclear Weapon & already had the Material for DIRTY bombs with actual Nuclear Weapons months away. It’s not popular but admit it these people in the Middle East don’t value LIFE & will let there people Suffer. HAMAS could have stopped the war at anytime but NO, they wanted to kill Jews and used there own people for Sheilds, IRAN KILLED 20,000 PLUS of Iranian Protestors before the War & the workd doesn’t care or even talk about it, it’s all about Trump & high Oil prices. Even though under Biden it was over $5.00 because of the Ukraine War & we were told it was for the Good of yhe World to Fight Russia, but not Now, HYPOCRACY!
you and your ilk of attitudes are responsible for these wars, for the desertification of the middle east, and for the destabilization of the middle east, you are the problem.
DJC, as you point out, isn’t the UCP government mandated to do this under the fuel-tax quarterly review program they themselves set up? So they are congratulating themselves for doing what they are mandated to do. My how expectations have fallen.
On a side note, I was in Toronto in July, and ironically gas prices were lower there than in Calgary. One more case of the fictional Alberta Advantage at work.
Dave: But don’t they only sell woke gas in Toronto? Makes your F-150 think it’s a Prius. Made from unethical oil from … never mind that part. DJC
Kenney’s removal of the 13 cent gas tax resulted in big_oil raising the gas price OVERNIGHT by….13 cents. UCP rinse. Repeat. Bozos
As I recall from before the UCP, not just their Federal colleagues, were pressuring the Feds to cut gas taxes, while Alberta resisted the same. For a while, the hypocrisy was incredible.
No doubt the brainiacs around Smith thought they could get more political credit by doing rebates instead. Although perhaps that would have worked better if they didn’t set up such a cumbersome and glitchy process so many of the rebates are still unclaimed. Even Ralph could figure out how to just send people cheques. It’s not that hard.
With oil prices that recently went up a lot again, the UCP may yet again get hoisted on their own petard, as their fuel tax reduction may not be as noticeable. No doubt they didn’t expect the Middle East war to drag on this long and to have become so irretactable. Perhaps they over estimated either the current US administration’s strength, competence or both.
I suppose if it is any consolation, the huge deficit the UCP planned for in their budget has temporarily disappeared as we ride the resource price roller coaster again. The problem is that this benefit is not being felt by most Albertans and even the energy industry here is reluctant to spend more as oil prices could quickly fall if the political problems causing the high prices are eventually resolved.
The Orange Menace continues to say oil prices will fall after the US midterm elections, which would be too late for him to benefit politically. I suppose that could happen, but he has been predicting the conflict would be resolved soon for months now, so whatever credibility he had on this has largely been destroyed. No doubt the Iranians want to deny him any political benefit by digging in long enough. Who knew killing off much of their leadership could make them so upset and difficult to deal with?
I wonder if Smith, ever the credit hog, will drive up to the pumps in a big truck for a photo op the day the fuel tax is reduced, like her predecessor Kenney did. I have to think even her own public relations staff will be reluctant to do this, as it could just serve to remind us how chaotic and drawn out their response to higher gas prices has been.
Maybe instead Smith could just have a low key visit to some reserve to celebrate reconciliation instead, like our former PM did. On second thought, that probably won’t happen either, because of her unpopular upcoming referendums.
I know this is another vote buying gimmick from the UCP and Danielle Smith. Now, the courts ordered Athana Mentzelopoulos to release her documents about the MH Care (Corrupt Care) scandal to the UCP. What a very corrupt provincial government we have in Alberta.
Is this the part, where we all get on our knees, bow and thank Smith and the UPC for doing something, they should have months ago?
This what you get from an oil industry lobbyist helping the oil industry make billions of dollars, while they destroy the green energy increases in the province.
Oilmen point out that it was the Reformers who allowed the oil industry to start charging the insane prices for Diesel, a byproduct of making gasoline, and should be cheaper, in 2006 in Alberta and that cost has spread creating a nightmare for our grocery prices, while this Reform Party idiot Pierre Poilievre tries to blame it on the Liberals that’s how stupid they are, aren’t they?
“U.S. President Donald Trump’s war of choice on Iran,”
Politicians like Trump are tools to be used and manipulated and then tossed out once they are no longer useful, similar to all other items that are used up quickly and need to be replaced often, just like any other consumable.
Referred to as a “blunt instrument” by some individuals and as a “moron” by others [“Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is said to have called him a “moron,” which was clarified later as a “fucking moron.””
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-ignorant-moron_n_68af882fe4b0d635adb3ace1 ]
Either way, by focusing on the figurehead serves to distract attention away from the real power brokers in society that Trump is mandated to serve, i.e., the invisible government that is the true ruling power. HINT:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/from-sam-altman-to-mark-zuckerberg-all-the-tech-billionaires-at-the-trump-xi-dinner/ar-AA2cY1nF
Trump knows both what the golden rule is, who it is for, and therefore who he has to humbly serve with great care and attention.
KC: I’m pretty sure in this case a lot of the power brokers warned the president against pursuing the war the way he did. DJC
It is true that there are competing interests, but whose interests have captured the ear of the figurehead and whose interests profit the most from doing so?
Smedley Butler observed long ago that, for example, “In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.”
Geostrategic interests are intertwined with the hegemon’s corporate interests, banking interests, and US dollar dominance. So it is not unreasonable to arrive at the following conclusion, “The uncomfortable truth about modern warfare is not simply that it destroys — it is that the destruction is distributed unevenly, while the financial gains accrue to a predictable set of actors who were positioned long before the first missile was fired.”
https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/the-business-of-war-who-is-profiting-from-the-iran-conflict/
See also,
https://www.flyingpenguin.com/how-palantir-pushed-america-into-war-with-iran/
For example, “The IAEA’s reports on Iran, shaped in part by MOSAIC’s analysis, were treated by member states as independent, evidence-based assessments. They were not independent.”
“They ran on software built by a company whose three most senior figures (Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and Joe Lonsdale) had all publicly argued that war with Iran was inevitable or desirable.”
“Lonsdale said he hoped to invest in Iran after regime change. Karp predicted war with Iran would prove the value of Palantir’s autonomous weapons systems. Thiel framed Iranian nuclear capability as a catastrophe requiring preventive action.”
Just my 2 cents and obviously your mileage may vary.