The News Rundown

As Alberta fuel tax paused, expert says prices in line with market

2023 begins a countdown that leaves many in the province’s media and activist crowd salivating, it’s election season in Alberta.
Many UCP members and people from Calgary are wondering what’s ahead under the new Premier, Danielle Smith, who has been a huge departure from the consistency of Jason Kenney.
The electoral scene is a wash in that both Danielle Smith and Rachel Notley have made persuasive blunders over the past few days but also have tapped into language that can make one of them successful.
Here is where we diverge from reality though: effective new years day the provincial fuel tax was fully suspended.
As of recording, Edmonton and Calgary have the cheapest gas out of any of the large cities in Canada.
Vancouver sees prices of 170.9, Regina 147.9, Toronto 131.9, Quebec 156.9, and St. John’s 166.3.
While Calgary and Edmonton sit in the high teens from 115.9 to 120.9.
Shortly after the cut came into effect, NDP leader Rachel Notley tweeted: Gas stations hiked prices right before the fuel tax came off. This means Albertans aren’t saving a dime and the government is foregoing revenue for no reason that could be reinvested to help families. Your move, Danielle Smith…
This tweet is interesting because it speaks volumes of what the NDP would do in power.
First it underscores a deliberate attempt to sensationalize at best and at worst it shows a horrible misunderstanding in how fuel prices work.
On January 1 a 12% increase in refinery margins came into effect. This combined with the storms in the US that shutdown some American refineries led to the increase in prices. This was mirrored by Vijay Muralidharan, a fuel market analyst in the Calgary Herald.
Economist Trevor Tombe has been following the effect of Alberta’s suspended gas tax and in the past has found that almost all the savings were passed on to the consumer and early data this time suggests the same is happening.
Secondly, “the government is foregoing revenue for no reason that could be reinvested to help families” implies that if prices are going to be high anyways, the province might as well take a cut!
Nobody asked the NDP leader to elaborate on this. Does this statement mean that if prices don’t go down, the NDP would bring the tax back or increase it?
Dale Nally, Associate Minister of Natural Gas issued a statement that the government is monitoring the situation and business can not price gouge.
Any businesses that does can be fined for up to $300,000 and may receive up to 2 years jail time.
Then the final sentence of the Tweet: “Your move, Danielle Smith…”
Oppositions that are governments in waiting and candidates in the strong position will lead with their own policy and often ignore the other candidate or party.
This shows us that the campaign in the spring will be one of sensationalism, media not vetting candidates, and another where the NDP leader is auditioning for the role of opposition leader.
We saw what the result of the media coverage in 2015 was and what could have been in 2019 despite the efforts put forth in terms of trying to make that campaign one tied to the issues of social media.
We will be watching and highlighting all of the missing information and context that the people of Calgary, Edmonton, and all of Alberta need as we head into the next election.
Supplementals:

Almost a month ago, the federal government announced a back-to-the-office order for federal public servants, in a move that would see employees have to transition from a full work from home model to a hybrid model that would see them in the office two or three times a week.
Treasury Board President Mona Fortier announced the move back on December 15th, saying: "In-person work better supports collaboration, team spirit, innovation and a culture of belonging. We're not going back to the way things used to be. We're reimagining our workplace." Fortier, who oversees the administration of the public service, told reporters last week that while remote work was a necessity during the pandemic, it created inconsistencies that need to be addressed to ensure consistency across the board. When pressed about why the decision was made, Fortier said that it was to ensure "fairness and equity" across all departments.
At the time, employees in the core public service across all departments were told they must begin phasing in a return-to-office plan in mid-January, with the plan complete by March. This is intended to give employees a 3 month leeway for employees to arrange things like childcare. Well, upon our return to Western Context, it's getting closer to mid January, so we have to ask, how is that phase-in going?
Well, there has been a fair amount of backlash from workers that have gotten used to working remotely for the past two and a half years due to the challenges of the pandemic. Public sector unions have also strongly opposed the mandated return to the office.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada, which represents nearly 230,000 workers, said on Twitter the move "flies in the face of workers' rights and their proven record serving communities remotely--for YEARS. Our position on remote work for federal public service workers remains the same: it's an issue for the bargaining table."
PSAC President Chris Aylward says the return to the office proposal is a "poorly planned and a kneejerk reaction" from the Liberal government. He says: "Arbitrarily announcing that workers are to come back to the workplace two to three days per week, right before the holidays with zero consultation with the unions is an absolute disrespect to workers who've made sacrifices for Canadians. We are currently reviewing all of our options that we have on the table."
These words have been echoed by other unions as well. The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which represents 70,000 scientists and professionals in the federal and some provincial governments, says telework is on the table in new contract negotiations with Treasury Board and is accusing the federal government of choosing to "bulldoze through a bad plan that sets themselves up for an unnecessary fight."
A backgrounder document from Treasury Board says exceptions "may be warranted in a very limited set of circumstances" and must be approved by management.
Those possible exceptions include:
Employees hired to work remotely before March 16, 2020
Indigenous public servants
Exemptions on a case-by-case basis such as illness, short-term operational requirements or other extenuating circumstances
If there's a relevant business case for the employee to work remotely
Employees who are working remotely 125 kilometres or more from their designated worksite
A business model was previously established and not influenced by the remote-by-default COVID-19 arrangement
Employees who are unable to work onsite can request accommodation on a case-by-case basis through their department, the backgrounder says. Looking at the document, it's odd how the federal government is giving special treatment to indigenous public servants simply due to their race. One wonders if that is part of what Fortier calls "fairness and equality".
While unions have panned the back to the office plan, Ottawa and Gatineau's mayors, who run cities that see the federal government being the largest employer in each city by far, applaud the plan, calling it a boon for downtown businesses and transit planners.
Ottawa mayor Mark Sutcliffe said: "The federal government is the largest employer in Ottawa, and having clarity around the future of its workforce is critical for our local economy. When public servants return to government offices, it will be beneficial to both our public transit system and our downtown."
Ottawa's public transit system is operating with less than 60% of pre-pandemic ridership this fall, in part due to the federal government's work-from-home setup for public servants.
Some say that the work from home orders contributed to many businesses failing during the last couple of years, especially restaurants that did not have as many customers to serve. Jeff Bray, CEO of the Downtown Victoria Business Association says the back to office plan is “very good news for our restaurants and our retailers” as “some of them just didn’t survive because there were no customers. For others, they’ve had to reduce their hours.”
So while there are benefits to work from home, such as reduced carbon emissions from less commuters, less need for childcare, and less working time wasted being on the road to and from the office, there are also drawbacks, such as dying downtowns, and a perceived lack of cohesion amongst teams, as well as reduced services for those trying to access government resources.
One thing not mentioned in this debate is that this push for full remote work in white collar industries will have more companies realizing they don’t need to pay high local salaries, choosing either lower wage areas within the country or outsourcing to other countries, unless certain people have specific skills that make your job hard to outsource.
There seems to be little recognition that public servants' sky high salaries are related to the high cost of living where their offices are located, specifically near to downtowns. I’m sure a full remote worker in a rural BC or prairie town would be happy to work remotely for less than a worker based in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto or Ottawa which needs a higher salary to offset the cost of living.
At the end of the day, remote work can be seen as a benefit to some, but it's not something that everyone should be expected to have, as it would represent a shift against workers that big companies will eventually learn to take advantage of. Right now, workers have the advantage in many sectors, but that will not be the case forever. People and unions will have to decide if this is their line in the sand.
Supplementals:

Canada's economy added 104,000 jobs in December, blowing well past expectations

Recession, recession, recession was the word that we were hearing would be the primary malady of Canadians in 2023.
Surprising everyone, Canada added 104,000 jobs in December. These jobs were also in the full-time private sector suggesting that they were not holiday part-time retail or government created positions.
In Alberta, employment rose by 25,000. Employment in BC rose by 17,000. In total employment rose in Ontario, Alberta, BC, Manitoba, Newfoundland, and Saskatchewan.
This brought the national unemployment rate down to 5%.
The general trend shows unemployment continuing to decline.
There was some question about what would happen in Alberta given the uneven nature of our economy but the unemployment rate has continued to decline in Alberta too.
The jobs data also shows a working age employment rate of 75.57% which sets an all time record.
Our labour market changes also mirror what happened in the US suggesting something different is happening than what many expected.
There has been discussion of another interest rate hike to cool the economy and combat inflation.
If the economy keeps growing and unemployment remains low, we’ll have many questions to ask.
One of those questions is: how much of the 2023 recession predicting was driven by bank interest rate hikes?
And how many of those rate hikes were then due to inflation?
As we know, for the last 30 years or so the role of central banks in Canada, the US, and several other countries has been to keep inflation at or around 2%.
The central banks also have to add money into the economy whenever the economy slows.
This is fine as most economists will agree and say this works most of the time.
But the problem comes in when governments spend and stimulate the economy and then a situation arises (like 2008 or 2020) where the government has to spend more and then the central bank has to step in adding more money into the economy.
The US has been doing this for years with perpetual budget deficits. They can seemingly get away with it and the thoughts on this is that it’s due to the country being the world’s reserve currency.
That means, there’s always someone willing to buy a US dollar and that economy is expansive.
Not true for the Canadian dollar and our economy isn’t as large.
This is striking because no one in the Canadian media pointed out what this means.
The realization that the economic slowdown that everyone was anticipating now more than ever looks like it was entirely self inflicted.
Self inflicted in the sense that interest rates rising will cool the economy and the reason for rising interest rates was that the economy was too hot due to the huge amount of government spending and money that was introduced into the economy over the last almost 3 years.
If the anticipated downturn was self-inflicted we can also draw the line backwards and say that the rise in inflation was self-inflicted at the demand of the conventional pillars of wisdom “to do something” to protect people when the economy contracted.
But then we can ask, if we go back to March/April of 2020, did the economy need to contract? That’s a question for the ages.
The US and other developed countries are in the same boat as us. We must admit this freely and realize that not everything is Trudeau and Biden’s or said world leaders fault.
But Trudeau’s administration does deserve criticism in many places.
One that it really needs work on is managing of the economy when it comes to spending and stimulating the economy when our economy was doing fine from 2015 to 2019.
At this point no one has connected these dots that the incoming recession was going to be self inflicted.
No one has also connected the dots that it’s due to the resilience of our economy, specifically in the natural resources sector but also in Canadian’s willingness to spend in Q4 of 2022 that our economy is currently not headed towards recession.
That could change throughout this year but given this huge mismatch of expectations, one really has to ask if the media and our institutions can be trusted to accurately predict.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Canadians are right to worry about immigration levels

Immigration has been the topic of the news lately, as Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced that Canada exceeded a record-breaking target for admissions of permanent residents in 2022. IRCC stated that Canada welcomed over 437,000 new immigrants for the calendar year of 2022. For perspective, that's more people in one year than the entire metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, Canada's 12th most populous area.
Canada’s admission targets are set out in the annual Immigration Levels Plan. The plan for 2022 was released in February 2022, with the highest admission targets ever, until the 2023-2025 plan was released. Looking ahead, the immigration levels plan 2023-2025, which was released in November, has an even more ambitious target of 500,000 new permanent residents each year by 2025. The target for 2023 is 465,000.
Immigration minister Sean Fraser said: “Today marks an important milestone for Canada, setting a new record for newcomers welcomed in a single year. It is a testament to the strength and resilience of our country and its people. Newcomers play an essential role in filling labour shortages, bringing new perspectives and talents to our communities, and enriching our society as a whole. I am excited to see what the future holds and look forward to another historic year in 2023 as we continue to welcome newcomers.”
Canadians are increasingly worried about immigration. A recent Leger Poll found that 49 per cent of us think the federal government’s new target of 500,000 immigrants a year is too many, while fully 75 per cent are concerned the plan will result in excessive demand for housing and social services. For his part, the immigration minister, Sean Fraser, tells us we need not worry: immigrants themselves will provide the labour needed to build the housing stock they’ll need.
The majority of Canadians have always welcomed immigrants and believe they benefit the economy and themselves. What worries them today is the prospect of mass immigration that they believe the housing market cannot absorb without much higher prices. They know the minister’s soothing reassurance is not supported by experience. Past immigration did increase the labour force but did not prevent high housing costs. Excessive regulations and rent control are the main reasons housing is so expensive, not a shortage of labour.
Immigrants not only add to the demand for housing, they also increase congestion for a wide range of public services: doctors, hospitals, schools, universities, parks, retirement homes, and roads and bridges, as well as the utilities that supply water, electricity and sewers. In theory, the supply of all these things could be expanded reasonably rapidly. In practice, expansion is slow. But the main reasons for that are, not a shortage of labour, but inadequate planning, insufficient financial resources and, as a result, construction that lags demand.
The case for keeping annual immigration at traditional or even somewhat lower levels rests on more than the effect on house prices and public services, however. Immigration also depresses the wages of low-income workers, which results in greater income-equalizing transfers and the higher taxes required to pay for them. It also reduces employers’ incentives to adopt labour-saving technology, an important source of growth in labour productivity and wages, and it allows employers to avoid the cost of operating apprenticeship programs to train skilled workers.
Japan’s widespread success in using robots to deal with labour shortages caused by its aging population illustrates what could be done in Canada. In Germany employers operate apprenticeship programs to train skilled workers in the numbers industry needs. In this country, such programs could relieve the shortage of skilled labour while benefiting people already here, rather than new immigrants brought in specially to take highly paid skilled jobs.
Despite the Leger numbers suggesting many Canadians have concerns about big increases in the rate of immigration, the debate about it tends to be one-sided from the mainstream media. We hear from the many groups that benefit from mass immigration: employers, immigration lawyers and consultants, real estate developers, political parties that traditionally do well in immigrant communities, idealists who want us to “imagine there’s no countries” and so on. On the other side, is a majority that is not at all opposed to immigration in principle but begins to inform itself on the subject and maybe even become politically active only when the costs become so large they can’t be ignored any longer.
In Canada, changes in policies come through Parliament and the election of politicians. Numbers like those in the Leger poll may begin to suggest to politicians that they can increase their election chances by catering to the majority who would prefer somewhat reduced immigration but also a fundamental reform of the system currently used to determine the number and characteristics of immigrants.
On the other hand, the ruling Liberals seem to be catering to a minority of Canadians that want vastly increased immigration, in doing so, increasing the tax base so they can continue to spend recklessly, and are also catering to immigrants who they hope will then vote for the Liberals in the future.
Who exactly in the Trudeau government decided that this was a good idea for Canada and Canadians? Well, a Radio-Canada investigation has published allegations that the surge may have been heavily influenced by a U.S.-founded consultancy that has collected more than $60 million from the Trudeau government.
McKinsey & Co. — a multi-billion dollar global consultancy firm with five locations in Canada —only scored the occasional contract with the Canadian federal government in the years preceding the 2015 election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In the seven years since, Radio-Canada investigators uncovered $66 million in mostly sole-sourced McKinsey contracts, including $24.5 million to provide “management advice” to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
IRCC sources identified by Radio-Canada fingered McKinsey’s influence as a key driver behind the Trudeau government’s decision to dramatically ramp up immigration rates. They also accused McKinsey of “opaque” operations within the federal bureaucracy, and said: “These people, these firms forget the public interest, they’re not interested in it. They’re not accountable.”
Immigration rates were already hovering at historic highs when Trudeau first took power. The number of new Canadians coming in each year had steadily risen throughout the 2000s, ultimately peaking above 250,000 in 2015, the last year of the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.
But that figure has since expanded considerably, reaching 431,645 new permanent residents in 2022. It’s a quantity of immigrants that surpasses even the meteoric heights seen during the years immediately preceding the First World War, when hundreds of thousands of European immigrants were moved in to homestead the prairies.
The Trudeau government didn’t campaign on a dramatic rise to immigration rates – and it’s not clear they had any intention of doing so upon taking power.
But according to Radio-Canada’s IRCC sources, it was McKinsey – and particularly its then-global head Dominic Barton – who successfully pitched high immigration as a means to boost economic growth.
Notably, Barton is a co-founder of The Century Initiative, an advocacy group pushing for Canada’s population to surpass 100 million by 2100. “Growing our population to 100 million by 2100 would reduce the burden on government revenues to fund health care, old age security, and other services,” reads part of the initiative’s mission statement.
Barton would eventually serve as the Trudeau government’s ambassador to China from 2019 to 2021, and left amid criticisms that he had been too eager to secure trade ties with Beijing at the expense of national security.
So what does all of this mean? Well, from all the information we have, it's clear that the Trudeau government is clearly not invested in the public good of Canadians, rather having self-important interests that help rich Canadians, companies, and foreign corporations. It's time that we had a government that looked out for our own interests.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“Today marks an important milestone for Canada, setting a new record for newcomers welcomed in a single year. It is a testament to the strength and resilience of our country and its people. Newcomers play an essential role in filling labour shortages, bringing new perspectives and talents to our communities, and enriching our society as a whole. I am excited to see what the future holds and look forward to another historic year in 2023 as we continue to welcome newcomers.” - Federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, on his government’s policy that saw over 437,000 immigrants welcomed to Canada in 2022.

Word of the Week

Self-inflicted - harm or damage caused to one-self

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Show Data

Episode Title: The Balancing Act

Teaser: The Alberta NDP advocates for higher fuel prices, federal workers resist a partial return to the offices, and Canada adds over 100,000 jobs in December. Also, Canada welcomed a record number of immigrants in 2022.

Recorded Date: January 7, 2023

Release Date: January 8, 2023

Duration: 57:29

Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX