Thank you for the invitation to appear, it really is an honour to be here today before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. 

While everyone’s economies are in uncharted waters across Canada, after a 5-year downturn Alberta’s has been hit extra hard by the COVID 19 crash in energy demand dovetailing with a price war between Russia and OPEC.

It seems to most Albertans that if it was central or eastern Canada where a critical economic sector – or even a prominent company – was temporarily blown into the ditch by international storms, that the federal government would be right there with financial and other support.

Thus far all we’ve heard coming to Alberta is about $1b for reclaiming orphaned wells, as well as some nation-wide loan supports that are hard for our energy companies to access.  For perspective on that one billion, Albertans’ paid more into the $9 billion auto sector bailout in 2009. So what we’ve seen thus far feels more like a nudge into retirement than any kind of stimulus.

And as our group Fairness Alberta has shown, Albertans have contributed so much to the rest of Canada – federal revenues in particular – that we believe it is both fair, and also in the interest of the national economy, to give more consideration to the particular issues in our province as we struggle through the worst of this extended downturn.

To raise awareness across Canada, we have a Billboard right now in Ottawa on Rue St-Laurent noting that Albertans have made a net contribution of $324 billion since the year 2000.  Every time the government repeats the claim that Canada is in a fiscal position to weather this storm, I think of that $324 billion cushion provided by Albertans.

This amount works out to a $320,000 net contribution per family of four over 20 years – it’s staggering.  And for the MPs here not from Alberta, that has meant an average $42,000 benefit to the families in your ridings.

For clarity, these are not just boom-time dollars. In 2017, when we were well into this economic downturn and provincial revenues had dropped 20%, Canada still got a net benefit of $15.2 billion from Albertans, or $15,000 per family of four.

Now let me be clear – Albertans are proud of and grateful for their ability to contribute to the country – just as any province would be.

But I believe there are two things that have stoked discontent in Alberta that you should recognize as you consider strategies to pull Canada’s economy out of this Covid-induced lethargy.  

First is the many ways that federal programs, spending on goods and services, and provincial transfers unfairly direct spending to other provinces. The second is the target that seems to be on our back despite these contributions.

Regarding the first point, the annual $15-27 billion net contribution from Albertans has many elements that we at Fairness Alberta are diving into.

Consider provincial transfers: The size of the health and social transfers mean Albertans are contributing another $3 billion more than they get back, for services that are constitutionally provincial – and this on top of the Equalization program – is that fair?

Or as that Library of Parliament document I sent you earlier today shows, the Federal government spends far less on goods and services in Alberta than any province.  We fund about $11 billion of the total, but even with two large military bases and so many indigenous communities only $5 billion gets spent in Alberta – is that $6 billion difference fair?

And the second point that fuels anger and discord is of course the target placed on the diverse, integrated, world-leading energy industry that has driven our large fiscal contribution.

While competitors innovate and thrive even amidst lower prices, our industry has faced fights over pipelines, tanker bans, and GHG-related policies that create large competitive disadvantages.  The result has been investment and jobs sent to regimes with far worse environmental or labour standards. Russia recently announced a $155 billion new oil and gas megaproject – that’s almost exactly the amount Alberta has had cancelled or postponed in the last decade. This is not progress.

So to conclude, it is critical that you think long and hard about the economic impacts of policies being considered, particularly the new clean fuel standards that might cripple the natural gas sector, as well as how any stimulus funds are directed.   

But I also ask you to use the lens of: is this fair to Albertans? Is this unnecessarily undermining their children’s chance at future prosperity, when over the last two decades we have used so much of their prosperity to strengthen Canada?

We need every province operating at maximum capacity if Canada is going to recover from this Covid crisis – please remember what Albertans operating at a high capacity have meant to this country in the past, because with your cooperation we can help make Canada stronger than ever.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today; I look forward to your questions.