Alberta Minute: Advance Voting, Policy Survey, and Corporate Tax Increase

Alberta Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Alberta politics.

This Week In Alberta:

• The election campaign continues, but advance voting starts tomorrow! If you’ve already decided who to vote for, you can cast your ballot early, between May 23rd and May 27th. To find your advance polling station, use this tool from Elections Alberta. If you need any help, just send us an email, and we’ll do our best to assist you!
  
  
• Wildfires continue to burn in Alberta, leading to extremely poor air quality in several cities. Several Provincial Parks are closed for the long weekend to minimize fire risk, and fire bans and off-highway vehicle bans remain in effect.
  
  
• Our second annual Alberta Policy Survey is now open. We’d like to understand what kinds of issues are the most important for you today and what types of solutions you would like to see proposed in the future. Filling it out will only take about 5 minutes and will give our researchers insight into where we should be focusing our attention as an organization. Click here to fill it out.

Last Week In Alberta:

• The long-awaited debate between Rachel Notley and Danielle Smith took place. If you missed it, we have the full debate available on our website. After the debate, many journalists called it a win for Danielle Smith. The Edmonton Journal's David Staples summed it up by saying: “Rachel Notley came to attack. Danielle Smith came to rally people around her.”
  
  
• The UCP promised new measures to deal with the mental health and addictions crisis. If re-elected, the UCP would draft and pass the Compassionate Intervention Act, which would allow a family member, doctor, psychologist, or police officer to petition a judge to issue a treatment order. Danielle Smith said that providing more drugs to people is not a way to address public safety, nor is it a compassionate way to treat people suffering from addiction. Instead, she promised to build a series of five mental wellness centres, each with 75 beds, as well as add 700 new addiction beds at 11 existing treatment centres.
  
  
• The NDP made some campaign promises revolving around taxation. Rachel Notley promised that, if elected, her party would eliminate the small business tax (from its current 2% rate). She also promised that personal income taxes would not increase, nor would the NDP consider a PST. The NDP also released what they called a “fully costed plan” that involves raising the corporate tax rate by 38% - from 8% to 11%. Economist Trevor Tombe pointed out a more than $1 billion error with the NDP’s math, while the Alberta Chambers of Commerce, and local economist Jack Mintz, have said that this policy will cripple businesses in the province.

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