Legislative Agenda of the Kenney Government
Youth in Calgary participate in climate strike actions, March 15,
2019, demanding that governments take measures to protect the natural
environment and their future.
Making Alberta workers and resources
open for
private profit
of the financial oligarchy
The Kenney Conservative government in Alberta began to
lay out
its legislative agenda for the spring and fall sessions with its
May 22 Throne Speech, making clear it will intensify the
neo-liberal anti-social offensive. Four bills followed in short
order.
Bill 1, the Carbon
Tax Repeal Act
Bill
1, introduced May 22, will eliminate the Alberta carbon tax. In doing
so, Kenney
promises a court challenge to the federal carbon tax, which the
Trudeau government is expected to apply to Alberta immediately
following the repeal of the provincial tax.
Kenney vows to launch a constitutional challenge despite
the
ruling from the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal upholding the
federal government's right to impose such a tax. This indicates
the increasing hostility and animosity among competing sectors of
the ruling elite, which with Kenney at the helm in Alberta can
only grow more rancorous.
Bill 2, an Act to
Make Alberta Open for Business
Bill 2, tabled on May 27, reduces the minimum wage for
young
workers from $15 to $13 an hour. The bill cynically calls this
reduction in wages something that promotes job creation for young
workers.
The bill also reverses legislation from the previous NDP
government providing for automatic certification of a union when
65 per cent of workers in a workplace sign union cards. On this
issue, the Throne Speech suggests that more will be coming,
continuing the project of the former federal Harper government to
obstruct the right of workers to organize effectively in their
defence collectives. Expected as well is legal permission for
employers to pay out all banked overtime hours as straight
time.
Bill 3, the Job
Creation Tax Cut Act
 Introduced the following
day, May 28, Bill 3 reduces the nominal
corporate tax rate on net enterprise profit from 12 per cent to 8
per cent, becoming the lowest provincial rate in Canada.
Corporate income tax at 12 per cent provided only a
small
fraction of the total revenue collected by the Alberta
government. In 2017-2018, total government revenue was $47.295
billion, with only $3.448 billion coming from corporate income
taxes or about 7.2 per cent of the total budget. Assuming the
reduced rate of 8 per cent had been applied in that fiscal year,
this would have resulted in about $1.138 billion less collected
for a total of $46.157 billion. The corporate income tax revenue
of only $2.310 billion would have been just 5 per cent of the
total provincial revenue collected.
The Throne Speech postulates the reduced corporate tax
on net
enterprise profit will "generate 55,000 new full time jobs, and
increase the size of our economy by $12.7 billion." How this
rabbit will be pulled out of the hat is, one can assume, a
mystery of imperialist economics. However, making up for this
lost revenue is no mystery as it will come out of lower
investments in social programs and attacks on the wages and
working conditions of workers in the public sector and job
cuts.
Bill 4, the Red Tape
Reduction Act
In rapid succession the next day, May 29, Bill 4 was
introduced.
The
government wants this bill to speed up approval of resource
projects, reduce the cost to corporations seeking regulatory
approval, and generally provide a free hand for the monopolies to
do whatever they please without restrictions on their actions
regardless of the social and natural consequences.
Many would say this is a recipe for disaster given the
reality
that making as much money as fast as possible is the motive and modus operandi of
companies within the imperialist economy. The
profit motive leads big companies routinely to ignore their
social responsibilities. This often results in reckless
adventures and disasters -- such as the 300,000 orphaned oil and gas
wells in Alberta, along with abandoned mining sites and polluted
air, water and soil -- for which no company wants to be accountable,
as that would damage the bottom line.
Additional Legislation
 Another bill, the Appropriation
Act
will provide interim estimates
for public services, to be followed by a full budget in the fall
sitting. The Throne Speech states, "That Budget will be informed
by the report of the Fiscal Review Panel chaired by former
Saskatchewan Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon, which will make
recommendations on how to restore balance to our province's
finances so that we stop encumbering future generations with
debt. My government will also engage in widespread public
consultations on how best to end deficit spending while
protecting front line public services."
Government deficit spending and debts are integral to
the
imperialist economy. For the cartel parties to use their
existence as an excuse not to fulfil their social
responsibilities exposes their role as toadies of the financial
oligarchy and unfit to govern. The cartel parties block the
working people from finding, proposing and implementing a
pro-social direction for the economy that would guarantee the
well-being and rights of the people, humanize the social and
natural environment and eliminate the destructive class privilege
of the rich oligarchs.
Also announced are the Tax Statutes Amendment Act
that
is expected to revert to a flat tax regime for personal income
tax, which entrenches its regressive nature; and the Royalties
Guarantee Act to "provide certainty that the royalty structure
in
place when a well is drilled remains in place for the life of the
well."
The Choice in Education Act will restore and
expand
"the choices available to parents and children," which is code
for continued privatization of education, as well as an attempt
to attack the right of students to privacy and the responsibility
of teachers to respect that privacy.
Perhaps the most cynical claim of all is the promise to
enact the Saving the Girl Next Door
Act, which would introduce measures against human trafficking.
This comes from Jason Kenney who as federal Minister of Immigration
during the Harper regime launched particularly vicious assaults on
migrant workers, including live-in caregivers and temporary foreign
workers. Such treatment of these workers by Canadian governments is
considered by many as tantamount to human trafficking.
The Throne Speech repeated the Kenney government's
assertion
to repeal the Carbon Competitiveness Incentive Regulation and
replace it with a Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction
Fund to "ensure investment in new emissions-reducing technologies
which can be exported around the world."
 The previous NDP government
provided extensive pay-the-rich
schemes to the energy cartels for "emissions reduction
technology." Oil sands companies are eager to introduce such
technology, as it reduces fuel use and therefore the price of
production of their commodities. They also want to be paid from
the public treasury to do what is in their self-interest and to
attract global investors. Kenney's pledge to reduce emissions
should be considered within the context of a pulling back by certain
sections of the financial oligarchy from investment in carbon
products and their use, and the growth of private investment and
public pay-the-rich schemes in green energy and related actions,
such as carbon capture.
The Kenney government also proclaimed the Preserving
Canada's
Economic
Prosperity
Act, legislation
passed
by the previous NDP government but never given Royal Assent.
This
gives
the government authority to require companies to obtain a licence
before transporting energy products from Alberta via pipeline,
rail or truck. The legislation is a threat to the BC government
that the authority in Alberta will "turn off the taps" should the
BC government or others "obstruct" the building of the Trans
Mountain Pipeline Expansion.
The BC government responded with a court challenge to
the
legislation calling it unconstitutional. Former Alberta Premier
Rachel Notley said Kenney's action weakened Alberta's fight with
BC. She said her government's intention in passing the bill was to
wait until it was "necessary to turn off the taps," quickly
proclaim the bill and use its provisions within three hours
before BC could file a legal challenge. "He [Kenney] is a bit
like a gunslinger who's swaggering down the streets waving his
gun after intentionally taking the bullets out of it," Notley
said.
The Alberta Throne Speech signalled that the Kenney
government
will continue the opposition mounted by the Notley government to
two federal bills. Bill C-48 turns into law the current
ban on tankers loading and unloading on BC's west coast, north of
Vancouver Island. Bill C-69 revises the regulatory
regime for approval of projects such as pipelines and mines. The
Alberta Throne Speech states that Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment
Act "threatens Alberta's exclusive jurisdiction over
non-renewable natural resources, and is damaging investor
confidence."
Jason Kenney Then and Now
Jason Kenney was a prominent member of the Harper
Conservative
federal government that used every means at its disposal to
impose the will of powerful private interests Canada-wide to
carry out nation-wrecking, attack the rights of working people
and the Indigenous nations, and to attempt to crush all
opposition, declaring that you are either with us or against
us.
Kenney has now morphed into a defender of particular
private
interests in Alberta and provincial powers, although the private
interests of the supranational financial oligarchy that own and
control the energy, construction and other dominant cartels in
Alberta do not stop at or even recognize any border unless it
serves their narrow interests.
The Throne Speech repeated Kenney's declaration of
war
against anyone who stands up against the demands and direction of
the ruling elite regarding bitumen and other carbon-based
production in Alberta. A public inquiry will be held into "the
foreign sources of funds responsible for the campaign to landlock
Alberta's energy." This does not, of course, refer to the words,
deeds and huge sums of money spent by the Canadian Association of
Petroleum Producers -- an organization largely made up of foreign
entities -- other organizations of Big Oil, or the mainly foreign
corporations that dominate the energy sector in Alberta, to
promote their private interests and block any discussion or
thinking of an alternative direction for the economy, to wean the
province off its one-dimensional, crisis-prone and
foreign-controlled economy.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number
20 - June 1, 2019
Article Link:
Legislative
Agenda of the Kenney Government
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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