Education Archives - AB Pol Econ

28Oct

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Education, Politics

Opening of the Fall Sitting- Conversation with Graham Thomson

Last Thursday morning I had the opportunity to speak with Graham Thomson, a 30-year veteran of covering the Alberta Legislature to discuss the fall sitting which commences on 28 October. In addition to his coverage of the "Leg" as a public affairs columnist for the Edmonton Journal, he writes a column for Alberta Views and his analysis of Alberta politics is found in the The Tyee and Toronto Star. In this 30-minute discussion, Thomson emphasized that the upcoming session was basically about the UCP's leadership review which is occurring on 1-2 November 2024 in Red Deer. On Friday 25 October, Joseph Schow, UCP House Leader and Minister of Tourism and Sport briefed the media on the upcoming session. “Alberta’s government is heading back to the legislature with a laser-focus o...

NDP Leadership campaign- policies compared

31May

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Education, Energy, Environment, Health, Opinion/Research, Politics

NDP Leadership campaign- policies compared

Introduction Every voter in Alberta’s NDP leadership race has their own set of public policy interests. Some of these voters have few if any interest in politics and have few policy issues except those involving their pocketbooks. Pocketbook issues include being able to eat, own a cell phone, have a place to call home, access a family doctor and affordable transportation. Whether this is the typical NDP voter is another question, but at the end of the day if the successor to Rachel Notley is to defeat Danielle Smith’s UCP they will need to understand these pocketbook issues. NDP leadership policies can be found at these websites: · https://voteforjodi.ca/jodis-leadership/# · https://teamganley.ca/policies · https://www.sarahhoffman.ca/priorities ...

17Mar

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Credit Ratings, Education, Government Finances, Politics

Budget 2024- 13th Post-mortem- Panelists’ presentations

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...

7Aug

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Education, Environment, Health

Mandate letters- Education, Environment and Health

Accountability Mandate letters are incredibly valuable instruments giving interested members of the public and policy analysts a more informed view of what cabinet ministers and their senior officials are expected to do. The degree of transparency and accountability that goes with it give the Premier (and the public) a ready way to assess performance of ministers and their departments. Whether the policy initiatives cited in these letters correspond to what the public thought they were going to get is, of course, another matter. For instance, the Alberta Revenue Agency and the resurrection of the Alberta Pension Plan and Health Spending Accounts were non-issues during the campaign for the UCP at least. In this post, I explore the mandates for the ministries of Education, Environment and...

6Jun

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Capital Spending, Economic Data, Education, Energy, Government Finances, Investment

Ideas, Thoughts, Experiments- Alberta 2023 Conversation with thought leaders Episode 3- Lindsay Tedds

To watch the conversation go to Youtube This conversation was recorded at 1 p.m. on Thursday 18 May, before the leaders' debate with Professor Lindsay Tedds Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Calgary. Her research interests are eclectic and range from tax policy and public policy design and implementation involving a trans-disciplinary approach to harnesses the strengths of economics, law, public administration, and intersectionality. Our talk ranged widely from income inequality, building an inclusive workplace, the importance of policy stability for investment, societal values, contradictions between the UCP's socialistic spending promises and its free markets' position, education policy, municipal property taxes, environmental liabilities, the challenge of fu...

11Mar

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Education, Government Finances

Post-mortem on the Provincial Budget

Updated 14 March 2022 On Thursday, Abpolecon.ca and three sponsoring organizations hosted an expert panel of the 28 February provincial budget. The expert panel consisted of Ken Kobly, CEO of the Alberta Chambers of Commerce, Professor Lindsay Tedds of the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy, Jonathan Teghtmeyer, Executive Staff Officer, Government, Alberta Teachers' Association, and Professor Jared Wesley of the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. The presentations led to a spirited discussion on such subjects as: the province's new swagger; the "care economy, missing in action;" misalignment between rural municipalities and provincial policy initiatives; and the symbolism of Larry the pipefitter who played a cameo role in the 2022 bud...

21Feb

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Education

Student Protest

On Thursday 17 February, I joined about 500-700 students, faculty, staff and labour supporters in a march from the University of Alberta campus to the steps of the Alberta Legislature. At the bottom of the post are two handouts received at the demonstration At the main quad, marchers gathered. The speakers included representatives from the Students' Union, the Association of Academic Staff University of Alberta (AASUA). and the Non-Academic Staff Association (NASA). Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) flags also blew in the air. The crowd began to march in lines of four or five across though campus towards the High Level Bridge. I chatted with two women from a Philippines association and a contract instructor. Contract instructors live from term to term contracts with no job secu...

20Jun

By albertarecessionwatchNo Comments

Education, Uncategorized

Education

Originally posted 20 June 2016 As the provincial budget approaches, various education lobby groups are seeking to influence (at the last minute since all key decisions have been made by now - 8 March 2017) the government to support their sector's priorities. The articles below highlight the desire of private schools to head off government veering to de-fund home-schooling and private charter schools and to place the money into public education. Another perennial request is funding for new schools. (more…)