On Monday, 11 March I moderated a panel of experts who provided different perspectives on Alberta’s 2024 budget tabled by the Honourable Nate Horner on Thursday, 29 February 2024.
Our panelists included:
Shauna Feth, the CEO of the Alberta Chambers of Commerce gave her Association’s views on the Budget. See PDF of slides below. The ACA’s perspective (slides 10-15) is generally approving of the budget which supports business competitiveness, growing trade, building healthy communities, and improving government accountability. Two areas of concern regarding competitiveness were Land Titles Office fees increasing which will effect commercial real estate, and the insurance premium tax.
The Chamber was pleased with increased investment in the First Nations Development Fund and Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation as well as the TMX coming on stream which are supportive of provincial trade. The ACC supports the federal-provincial daycare plan as supporting healthy communities.
The Chamber had concerns over government accountability including “hidden: taxes, increased government employment, and municipal funding and business development.
Dr. Andrew Leach University of Alberta Professor of Economics and Law and co-Director of the Institute for Public Economics at the University of Alberta. 
His slides are below.
Leach’s five slides show the evolution of government finances over the past half century. Specifically, slide 1 illustrates the profound shift in the composition of non-renewable resource revenue (NRRR) where the preponderance of NRRR from conventional oil under Peter Lougheed shifted to a bonanza of natural gas royalties in the Klein and Stelmach era to the dominance of bitumen royalties under Kenney and Smith’s governments.
Slide 2 adjusts nominal NRRR to a per capita basis which reveals that under Lougheed royalty rents were much higher than under any of his successors. Professor Leach’s slide 3 showed the nominal growth of revenue which demonstrated a remarkable increase beginning in 2020 when revenues increased from the $50-billion range to over $75-billion a 50 per cent rise in the government’s revenue line. On a per capita basis this shows that 1980 and 2021 were the high points in government revenue per capita. Finally slide 5 breaks down government revenue per capita by NRRR and other non-resource revenue (e,g, taxes, fees) noting who was premier during this 54-year period. The clear “losers” were Don Getty and Rachel Notley and the clear beneficiaries of resource revenue- based revenue dependence have been Lougheed, Klein, Stelmach and Kenney (just before he was forced out) and Smith (so far). These slides are also available at ALeach.ca/budget.pdf
Professor Emerita of Political Science Elizabeth Smythe entitled her talk “Budget 2024: A story of a reality check and permanent austerity that ends in a fairy tale” (slides 17-25). Smythe discussed the “warm-up” to the budget which was previewed by Premier Smith in her 21 February “State of the Province address.”
Premier Smith’s chat emphasized the unsustainability of the province’s dependence on non-renewable resource revenue. Smith promised “having a slower rate increase (in spending) is going to ensure that we’re able to have it all:” Smith’s said that spending would be restrained below population growth and inflation and in certain areas like acute care with very small increases which will dramatically affect hospital care.
A key point of Smith’s address was making promises about a Heritage Fund of between $250 and $400-billion by 2050 whose investment income would replace Alberta’s “reliance on resource revenues.”
According to Dr. Smythe (slide 25) the real agenda is: to keep taxes low; to lower expectations of Albertans; to position the government as prudent fiscal managers in the context of upcoming collective bargaining; to starve major programs or services like health care of revenue so that when they break they can then be “fixed” by downloading costs on to people and turning to the private sector; and to fund the promised tax break and provide other “goodies” just prior to the next election.
Jonathan Teghtmeyer is the Associate Coordinator for Communications for The Alberta Teachers’ Association.
His presentation (slides 27-46) focused on the funding of K-12 education not just in Budget 2024 but the persistent under-funding of education over a long time period. Statistics Canada reported that per student operating expenditures in fiscal year 2020-21 in Alberta was the lowest of every other provincial jurisdiction in the country (slide 33). From 2013-14, per pupil, inflation education funding has decreased by 13 per cent. According to Teghtmeyer teacher hiring has trailed population growth for 15 years (slide 41). As a consequence the student teacher ratio has crept up (slide 45).
In drilling down to various expenditure lines, early childhood instruction or K-12 operating funding would only increase 3.6 per cent which is well below inflation and population growth. On the other hand private schools and early childhood service operators were seeing increases of almost 15 per cent. While Budget 2024 extolled building 43 new schools and school modernizations, only 12 will receive construction funding this fiscal year.
Sheila Pratt also participated in this year’s session but did not present with slides.
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