Alberta Minute: Western Alienation, Recall Legislation, and a new Carbon Tax

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

This Week In Alberta:

• The Legislature will likely continue debating the government's budget for most of this week, though it's possible some other bills on the order paper will get some time as well.
  
  
• There are no less than eleven Committee meetings scheduled this week, almost all dedicated to discussing Estimates (the budget).
  
  
• The only non-budget related Committee meeting will be the Standing Committee on Private Bills and Private Members' Public Bills which will likely finish debating Bill 204 (Election Recall Act) and send the bill back to the Legislature for passage in the coming weeks.

Last Week In Alberta:

• With talk of western alienation and separation at a high, Jason Kenney re-asserted his plan to hold a referendum on equalization in 2021 but has faced calls from across the province to act more urgently and move up the timeline to early 2020.
  
  
• The UCP introduced a $30 dollar a tonne carbon tax. Sound familiar? Unlike the NDP's carbon tax, the UCP tax only applies to "heavy emitters", but taxes on industry usually just get passed on to the consumer. Didn't we vote to get rid of the carbon tax, not just change it slightly?

• Unions called for a six to eight percent pay hike in their upcoming negotiations with the government. That's on top of the annual experience-based pay increases government workers usually get each year. Utterly insane.

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