Other Issues

Over time, FA will also highlight and educate citizens regarding other issues where federal policies disproportionately penalize Alberta.  In many instances, these issues also penalize other parts of Canada.  These include the ongoing failure to meet various obligations to Indigenous peoples, energy and trade policies, and procurement and funding programs.

Federal government policies also adversely impact Alberta in many ways, including the following:

  • Federal energy policies that unfairly impact Alberta, including the offshore tanker restrictions off the West Coast that do not exist on the East Coast or St. Lawrence Seaway to name. The pending federal Clean Fuel Standards are a further area of concern.
  • Federal trade policies that favour certain regions while harming efficient export-oriented Alberta industries, and impact Albertans negatively. These policies include supply management (and the detrimental impact on Albertans’ household incomes of inflated costs for such staples as milk, eggs and cheese) and automotive quotas (limiting cheap imports). As well, trade negotiations lead to trade-offs that adversely impact Alberta export oriented agricultural sectors as the federal government protects the supply management sector, largely based in Quebec.
  • Federal procurement practices and policies that favor certain provinces and industries, amplified by the concentration of federal employees in certain parts of the country.
  • Various funding practices and decisions (technology and university grants, EDC loans, Labour Market Development Agreements, auto sector bailouts, and others) that effectively extract funds from the pockets of all Canadians, including Albertans, to favour certain regions, specific industries, and individual companies (such as Bombardier).
  • The failure of the federal government to fulfill its constitutional obligations related to negotiating First Nations treaties and the failure to adequately fund various social programs, effectively downloading costs to the Province.
  • Other federal policies – such as the impact of federal transportation monopolies that lead to limited competition, such as rail and pipelines, and which adversely limit the viability and the growth opportunities available to Alberta’s natural resource and processing export-oriented industries.