ATHABASCA - The fall session of the Alberta Legislature started with a debate on economic recovery last week — a theme that is sure to come up again and again and again until the Christmas break and beyond.
MLAs reconvened in Edmonton Oct. 20 for the fall sitting of the second session of the 30th Alberta Legislature, and as promised, the first item of business was indeed the economy.
“A lot of it is going to be focused on the province’s economic recovery and trying to influence and get investment back into the economy and create jobs, so that’s the big focus of what we do nowadays,” said Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken in an Oct. 23 interview.
He said he expects about 20 bills to be introduced during the fall session. About half-a dozen of those came forward just last week.
The Job Creation Tax Cut, which will lower corporate tax to eight per cent in an effort to regain some of the thousands of jobs that have been eliminated due to COVID and the slumping price of oil, was squarely in the sights of the opposition NDP, in the first day of the new session.
“Before the pandemic, the plan doubled the deficit, shrunk the economy and cost 50,000 jobs,” NDP leader Rachel Notley said during Question Period, and continued on to suggest there was no evidence the government plan to create jobs by offering tax cuts will succeed.
“Presumably, this government should be able to provide us some evidence beyond the musings of one UCP academic.”
Premier Jason Kenney responded by saying the opposition was misrepresenting the Job Creation Tax Cut.
“The NDP’s deliberate misrepresentation of the Job Creation Tax Cut has become even more ridiculous in the context of this global recession,” said the premier. “What it does is send a message to investors around the world, as they make their plans in a post-COVID economy, that Alberta is the place to invest and create jobs.”
Albertans can also expect changes to child-care legislation and amendments to justice statutes to make the forfeiture of assets for victim restitution and compensation quicker.
Expanding the province’s access to geothermal energy is also on the agenda.
The overall focus will be kick starting the economy, said van Dijken, and much of that will involve reducing the amount of regulatory red tape to encourage investment.
“I think we’ll start to see movement on red tape reduction, we see that in the bill that was introduced for the forestry industry and we see hints of that in all the other bills,” he said.
“There is going to be some more bills coming forward, one of them was on the tax statute amendments, that will allow for the reduction of the corporate income tax. There will be some movement in labour mobility, interprovincial labour mobility … we have a certain amount of need, whether it be in health field or the engineering field, we want them to be able to come and get registered under the local jurisdiction in a timely manner.”
