"If Alberta had the same taxes as Ontario, for example, it would collect an additional $14.4 billion a year. The same as Saskatchewan: $15.1 billion. British Columbia: $17.5 billion. On all the way up to Newfoundland: $25.5 billion."

On Thursday, Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews, seen here speaking in Edmonton in May 2019, would only talk vaguely about getting his spending in line with other provinces, writes Graham Thomson. (Codie McLachlan/Star Edmonton)

On page 169 of the new Alberta provincial budget is a chart that drips with irony.

It is an illustration that succinctly points out what’s right with the province … and what’s so very wrong.

It is titled “Alberta’s Tax Advantage” and points out in a province-by-province comparison how much more money Alberta could collect each year if it had the same tax regime used in other provinces.

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If Alberta had the same taxes as Ontario, for example, it would collect an additional $14.4 billion a year. The same as Saskatchewan: $15.1 billion. British Columbia: $17.5 billion. On all the way up to Newfoundland: $25.5 billion.

The idea behind the chart, which has been included in provincial budgets for years (including when the NDP was in power), is to point out how fortunate Albertans are to live in a province with the lowest-charging tax system in the country. Alberta is the only one not to have a provincial sales tax.

However, the chart also points out very neatly how the province could solve many of its fiscal woes.

Even if Alberta simply introduced a provincial sales tax comparable to BC’s it could generate an extra $7 billion a year.

That amount would be enough to balance this year’s Alberta budget — and allow the province start to paying down the province’s accumulated debt that will hit a record $77 billion this year. But the thought of a sales tax is so unpopular in Alberta that its acronym is jokingly called the Political Suicide Tax.

Instead, Alberta will cling to its status as not only the lowest-taxing regime in Canada, but also one that is doggedly continuing to cut its corporate tax rate in hopes of attracting new investment.

As critics have pointed out, if corporations aren’t willing to invest in the province when it already has the lowest taxes in Canada, they probably aren’t going to invest if the taxes are cut by a few more percentage points.

Those critics include, not surprisingly, the province’s NDP opposition that happily complains the government of Jason Kenney is handing out a $4.7-billion tax cut to corporations but hasn’t seen any benefit. Not only that, the province lost 50,000 jobs the past year.

Kenney disputes that amount, saying the tax cut will actually cost $2.4 billion but will eventually spark enough investment to create an extra 55,000 jobs one day.

But even if that’s true, those jobs aren’t being created now — and that’s a major problem for Kenney, who campaigned in last year’s provincial election campaign on jobs, the economy and pipelines.

That’s why Kenney’s new budget comes with the impossible to misunderstand title “A Plan for Jobs and the Economy.”

As he declared when the legislative session opened on Tuesday: “Ours is a government obsessed with job creation.”

Unfortunately for Kenney, that came two days after Teck Resources abruptly announced it was killing its application for the massive $20-billion Frontier oilsands project in northern Alberta.

The project would have created 7,000 jobs during construction and 2,500 full-time jobs when up and running. And it would have also generated an estimated $70 billion in taxes over 40 years.

Teck never pointed the finger of blame at anyone in particular, but said the country needs “a framework in place that reconciles resource development and climate change.”

Predictably, Kenney blamed the federal Liberal government’s policies for scaring investment away while Alberta NDP leader blamed Kenney’s overheated rhetoric for scaring investment away.

Kenney doubled down on his attacks against the federal government by titling one chapter in the new budget “A Fair Deal for Alberta.” In it he attacks the federal equalization program as unfair to Alberta and repeats his demand for an additional $2.4 billion from the federal Fiscal Stabilization Program, calling the province’s treatment by Ottawa “a serious failure of Canadian fiscal federalism.”

If nothing else, the federal government presents a handy scapegoat for Kenney as his government struggles to fulfill its elections promises of more jobs.

Finance Minister Travis Toews says the province is “turning the corner” this year and is forecast to finally claw its way out of the recession that hit four years ago.

But that forecast is based on higher oil prices, getting more oil to market and seeing increased investment.

Alberta is once again placing many of its eggs in the notoriously unstable oil basket.

Toews has said if the province doesn’t see a recovery, he will have to look at more restraint and more cuts — restraint and cuts that will already see an estimated 1,400 job reductions in the public sector this year. Thousands of workers, including teachers and nurses, staged a protest outside the legislature on budget day. Based on the rhetoric from union members, the province seems to be teetering on the edge of major labour unrest.

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Kenney insists his budget is not slashing or burning, that it amounts to a 2.5-per-cent cut in spending over three years. But departments are cutting. On Friday, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees announced the government-funded Southern Alberta Institute of Technology is slashing 230 jobs.

The government takes great pains to point out it is not cutting spending on health and education (two ministries that account for 60 per cent of the budget) but because of inflation and population growth, the freeze amounts to a cut, according to teachers, school boards, nurses, doctors and the Alberta Medical Association.

Kenney says he has no option but to cut.

Of course, there is another option.

Kenney need only look at page 169 of his own budget to find it.

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