Alberta NDP screws up yet again

[maple leaf]

You're not very good at math, are you? An increase from 10 to 12 is a 20% increase. 2%/10% = 20%. If I pay you $10/hr and increase your wage to $12/hr, you just got a 20% wage hike. A 2% wage hike would be 20¢ and you'd make $10.20/hr.

That's why the NDP makes poor financial decisions - they just don't understand mathematics and thus they don't understand the impacts of their stupid decisions. Increasing someone's bill by 20% is disastrous in a sluggish economy.

Yea ,you righties like the sounds of 20 % more than the sound of a 2% tax rate hike.Still having a very minimal impact in Alberta, when combined with federal, way lower than USA ,equal to Sask and Manitoba and only 1 point above BC.And way lower than the 15,5 % rate they had at one time.With some fancy tax deferrals and juggling by corporate accounts ,it will have minimal impact on corporations compared to the real problem of the over supply of oil in the system and price,causing the slow down and trickle down to companies like Finning and others.Hardly Notley's fault.

[Ka-El]

Great time for Alberta to concentrate on other resources.
Tremendous untapped tourism potential.

Alberta should focus on alternatives to the way they run their energy sector - liking refining the product there for export instead of continuing to sell the Canadian economy short. The idea that tourism employment dollars would or even could ever replace resource sector employment dollars and support a provincial economy is beyond laughable. Investing in this type of energy infrastructure development, making it cleaner and safer in the process, would be visionary.

[Gone_Fishin]

Alberta should focus on alternatives to the way they run their energy sector - liking refining the product there for export instead of continuing to sell the Canadian economy short. The idea that tourism employment dollars would or even could ever replace resource sector employment dollars and support a provincial economy is beyond laughable. Investing in this type of energy infrastructure development, making it cleaner and safer in the process, would be visionary.

The only problem with your plan is that it can't be done economically. A minor detail that the left misses each time the subject comes up. Hey, no big deal, we can just subsidize them with our tax dollars like Bombardier, right?

[Gone_Fishin]

Yea ,you righties like the sounds of 20 % more than the sound of a 2% tax rate hike.

I don't like the sounds of ANY tax increase when companies are struggling and laying people off. You do, apparently, and that's why you vote NDP. Welfare states love you NDP guys. Soon, Notley can match the BC NDP's record of 1 in 10 on welfare in the 1990s.

[flamingfingers]

Soon, Notley can match the BC NDP's record of 1 in 10 on welfare in the 1990s.

Prove your point by showing the Stats Canada calculations for all the years the NDP were in power. I could ask you to also show figures from the Progress Board here in BC - you know, the one that Gordo set up but Christy killed off 'because it didn't show much progress':

http://www.policynote.ca/business-domin ... ess-in-bc/

[The Green Barbarian]

NDP employment plan robs Peter to pay Peter

You’ve heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul. But how about robbing Peter to pay Peter?

That’s what the NDP’s new job-creation fund amounts to: robbing Peter to pay Peter.

The NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley knows it needs to create jobs. And to its credit it realizes it needs to create private-sector jobs. (Public-sector job creations just don’t cut it. They consume as many or more taxes as they generate in additional economic activity.)

So in last week’s budget and again Monday in a photo-op with Labour Minister Lori Sigurdson, the Notley government pledged $178 million over the next two years for grants to businesses that hire new employees.

The plan is confusing, not least of which because the New Democrats don’t seem to have all the details worked out yet. So far the fund is more of a nice theory in search of a program.

Basically, companies, charities and non-profit groups are eligible, but not hospitals, schools, municipalities, government organizations or private contractors who are fortunate enough to be awarded one of the new debt-financed provincial infrastructure projects are not.

But here’s the complicated part. Sigurdson said on Monday that to qualify for the $5,000-a-job grant, companies need to add new jobs, not just hire back people they have laid off.

“Net new employment” will be determined by comparing companies’ 2015 corporate filings with their 2016 filings.

If a company started 2015 with 700 employees, but laid off 200, it would have to hire back 201 to qualify for a single $5,000 subsidy.

Since the price of oil is not expected to rebound fully next year (and that means oil companies will not be hiring back all of their laid-off workers, let alone any new ones), the NDP’s plan will do little if anything to help the 150,000 Albertans who have lost their jobs in the energy sector.

When asked though if McDonald’s could add a new part-time fry cook and qualify, Sigurdson said sure. “They’re a company.”

So while the NDP plan is unlikely to achieve much – economists estimate it might (might!) help create 18,000 jobs – to the extent it helps laid-off “patch” workers find new jobs, those jobs are likely to be in lower-paying service or non-profit positions.

Now here’s the robbing Peter to pay Peter part.

Back in June, one of the Notley government’s very first acts was to increase taxes on corporations by 20 per cent. You know, all in the name of fairness and justice and stickin’ it to the Big Oil and the greedy One Percenters.

That tax hike is projected to bring in about $600 million over the next two years. At the same time, the hike is expected to cost at least 20,000 jobs. Coupled with the NDP’s blind rush to raise the minimum wage by nearly 50 per cent, the toll could be closer to 40,000 jobs lost or not created.

The direct cost of the NDP job-subsidy program is expected to be $178 million in 2016 and 2017. Sigurdson insisted Monday there would be no overhead cost to administer her program. Her bureaucrats could choose which companies qualified and which did not in their sleep, to hear her tell it.

But that’s pure fantasy. Deciding which jobs are “net new” jobs and writing cheques to employers will cost millions each year.

So basically what the Notley government has done is take $600 million and 20,000 high-paying jobs from private-sector companies so it can give companies back $178 million and create lots of work for civil servants and maybe – maybe! – 18,000 lower paying jobs.

Much better and easier just to reverse the corporate tax increase.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/11/02/n ... -pay-peter

[Gone_Fishin]

Prove your point by showing the Stats Canada calculations for all the years the NDP were in power. I could ask you to also show figures from the Progress Board here in BC - you know, the one that Gordo set up but Christy killed off 'because it didn't show much progress':

http://www.policynote.ca/business-domin ... ess-in-bc/

When pre-tax poverty rates were as high as 19% in census year of 1996, 9.0% of the population, or 348,992
needed social assistance, of whom 126,910 were children. Since then welfare
caseloads decreased, dropping sharply after the 2002 Employment and Assistance Act
was introduced, from 249,313 in 2001 to 178, 621 in August 2003 or 4.2% of the B.C. population. Fewer children are supported in 2003 than in 1990: 53,296 versus 78, 997.


http://www.vancourier.com/news/challeng ... z2YgD52yR2


9.0% on welfare is close enough to 1 in 10 for my dislike of the NDP.

[flamingfingers]

Fewer children are supported in 2003 than in 1990: 53,296 versus 78, 997.

How to cut the number of people on welfare? Cut funding, add restrictions, THROW them off welfare:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=TuJW2a ... re&f=false

[Rwede]

Prove your point by showing the Stats Canada calculations for all the years the NDP were in power. I could ask you to also show figures from the Progress Board here in BC - you know, the one that Gordo set up but Christy killed off 'because it didn't show much progress':

http://www.policynote.ca/business-domin ... ess-in-bc/

When pre-tax poverty rates were as high as 19% in census year of 1996, 9.0% of the population, or 348,992
needed social assistance, of whom 126,910 were children. Since then welfare
caseloads decreased, dropping sharply after the 2002 Employment and Assistance Act
was introduced, from 249,313 in 2001 to 178, 621 in August 2003 or 4.2% of the B.C. population. Fewer children are supported in 2003 than in 1990: 53,296 versus 78, 997.


http://www.vancourier.com/news/challeng ... z2YgD52yR2


9.0% on welfare is close enough to 1 in 10 for my dislike of the NDP.

So now that 'fishin' has proven his/her statement to FF, will FF concede that yes, there were about 1 in 10 on welfare during the NDP's years in the 1990s?

Don't blame Gordo for whatever he did to reduce that number, just acknowledge that the NDP's time in office had an unprecedented high welfare rate.

PS - the author of your piece above is Janice Potter-McKinnon, former Minister of Finance for the Province of Saskatchewan under NDP Premier Roy Romanow. NDP. NDP. NDP.

[maple leaf]

How to cut the number of people on welfare? Cut funding, add restrictions, THROW them off welfare:

What the righties don't want anyone to know is that out of the 356,000 people reported to be on welfare in the early 90,s ,244,000 where already on welfare from the Social Credit disastrous years, driving all those people to welfare,then there was Alberta giving their welfare recipients bus tickets to BC. It was Harcourt that worked to reduce welfare claimants and it was in a steady decline since Harcourt .There where many reasons why there where so many people on welfare and none to do with NDP policy.Just one of many Liberal supporters myths .

[The Green Barbarian]

then there was Alberta giving their welfare recipients bus tickets to BC. .

and why did all of those people take the bus tickets? Because the idiot NDP jacked up welfare so much it created a giant magnet for career welfare suckers. The NDP is just the worst. What an awful party full of stupid jack-asses.

[maple leaf]

Because the idiot NDP jacked up welfare so much it created a giant magnet for career welfare suckers. .

Just perpetuating the myth are you?Good thing there is Google.

The drop in the social assistance rate after 2000 accompanied a sharp slowdown in population growth compared with the 1990s, when British Columbia led all provinces. Immigration to British Columbia tailed off sharply after the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s. After 2000 its population growth rate was half that of Alberta and Ontario, who held more appeal for immigrants from abroad. At the same time, job growth in British Columbia fell below the Canada average after 2000, after surpassing it in the 1990s.
Real benefit rates in British Columbia were reduced in line with the Canada average between 1993 and 2003.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-010-x/0 ... 14-eng.htm

[The Green Barbarian]

Just perpetuating the myth are you?Good thing there is Google.

What myth?? You said that Alberta was sending people to BC. Is that the myth you are babbling about? Why would people leave Alberta for LESS money from welfare. Good grief, you clowns can keep spinning this garbage about the NDP in the 1990's but one fact remains - they lost 77-2 in 2001. Because they SUCK.

[maple leaf]

Because they SUCK.

Yea I know the BC Christy Party here sucks.

Albertans certainly don't think the NDP suck.Alberta election 2015 results: NDP wave sweeps across province in historic win


The NDP won 53 ridings. Because the horrible CONSERVATIVE PARTY Suck.Federally they got the message now.Alberta got the message and Christy Clark is next.

[The Green Barbarian]

Yea I know the BC Christy Party here sucks.
.

And the NDP here sucks.

And that's the problem. We're stuck with two parties that suck.