Alberta, it’s time for a sales tax.

We all know the story.

From the early ‘90s until 2014, Alberta lived off the fat of the land, spending more on social services per capita than any other province while maintaining its “tax advantage.” Our so-called Progressive Conservative provincial government kept us happy by spending oil extraction royalties rather than collecting enough taxes to pay for our way of life. We responded by electing them over and over again.

But then 2014 happened. Oil prices plummeted internationally. Our cash cow had run dry. The crisis only deepened the growing angst felt toward the Progressive Conservatives brought on by an expense scandal involving then-Premier Allison Redford. Anger over their foibles led to the rise of the libertarian-esque Wild Rose Party and the election of the NDP in 2015. (Full disclosure: I moved to Alberta mere weeks after the NDP government was elected.)

The New Democrats inherited a hot mess. With the province’s economy chained to a crippled industry, they had an enormous public sector they believed in and the people of Alberta relied upon with no way to pay for it. They responded by raising taxes, pushing for pipeline construction, and going into debt. The majority of Albertans didn’t appreciate their approach and when the PCs and Wild Rose Party joined hands to form the United Conservatives for the 2019 election, the NDP was ousted.

The UCP did what you’d expect them to do: cut taxes and spending. But few of us have paid attention to just how aggressive these cuts have been. 

To give an example: before the NDP was elected, the province had a 10% corporate tax rate, Canada’s lowest. The NDP raised this to 12%, bringing Alberta closer to the middle of the pack, nationally. The UCP government has not only dropped it to its original rate, but this past June brought it down even further, to 8%. 

At the same time, the current government has gutted healthcare spending and cut funding for public schools by over 100 million while simultaneously pulling the plug on grants for supporting growing schools. Even amidst the current pandemic, the UCP has merely slowed their healthcare cuts rather than postponing them. These decisions might help balance the province’s budget, especially since we’ve completely dismantled any reliable source of income, but they will not come without a severe human cost.

I think part of the problem we’re in is the result of buying into the fantasy the Progressive Conservatives sold us. Even their name reveals the contradiction we believed was possible for all those years. They wanted us to think of them as progressive because of the world-class social service sector they created, but they also wanted to identify as conservative by keeping our taxes low. Oil royalties allowed them to construct this illusion, but now that we can’t rely on that revenue, we feel forced to choose.

The reality is that the Progressive Conservatives were never truly conservative. They may have looked conservative and sounded conservative and aligned themselves with the federal conservatives, but the services they provided us far surpassed what other provincial governments offered their constituents. That makes them socialists - democratic socialists, mind you -  but socialists all the same. They simply cloaked themselves in the posture and rhetoric of conservativism. And they got away with it because they shielded us from the check. We didn’t have to pay premiums for healthcare, our income taxes were lower than in any other province, and most clearly on a day-to-day basis, we never paid a provincial or harmonized sales tax. In a sense, we’ve been treated like children by the government. 

This problem is ongoing. Despite two changes in government, we have yet to elect a government with the guts to deal with reality. Part of the blame lands on the cash-cow-as-sacred-cow mentality we have toward the oil industry. It makes sense, since so many of us made our fortunes from it, whether as workers or investors. We want to keep believing it will turn around and so the government acts like it believes it will, too. But it’s becoming increasingly clear, no matter how you feel about it in terms of the environment or its fiscal potential, that we can’t count on oil the way we used to. It’s too volatile. There are too many factors impacting it that are out of our control. Whether BC allows a pipeline to be built on its soil is up to BC and the people who live there. Whether one is built in the USA is up to the USA. And don’t get me started on the price of the stuff. Do you really want the Russians and the Saudis to have a say in whether your province can pay its bills? Me neither. But right now, that’s where we seem to be at.

So, how do we fix it?

First we need to decide what the source of the problem is. Is there a hole in our bucket, or do we not have enough to fill it? There are a lot of opinions about this, and our last election kind of hung on one party (the UCPs) arguing for the former and the other party (the NDP) arguing the latter. Kind of. In reality, the issue is more complicated than that. But one aspect that neither side is willing to tackle is the perspective of the issue in our eyes. Both parties want to reinforce the crumbling façade that our tax advantaged, socially supported system is sustainable. It’s not. And that’s a good thing. It allows us to find a new way, one that makes we the people responsible for our own society. 

It’s not like we’re completely in the dark on how to do this. We can look to our right or our left to get other perspectives. Canadians have access to education, healthcare, and other infrastructure in every province, which means that other provinces have similar bills to pay. Their sources of revenue have similar names to ours, with a few glaring differences that we’ve already gone over. But the one we haven’t tapped that literally every other province has is a sales tax. And no matter what side of the aisle they sit, economists say a sales tax is the least destructive way to increase our revenue. There isn’t really an argument against the idea except for the one we’ve been using—that we don’t want one.

It’s time to stop acting like babies. For the last five years, we’ve complained about Trudeau or BC or Obama or Biden or the Saudis or China - whichever outsider it seemed easiest to point the finger at in the moment, rather than look at the obvious problems with our own way of doing things. And despite our economic downturn, we are still easily the most wealthy province in Canada, per capita. It’s so tiring to hear Albertans complain about equalization payments for this very reason. We pay equalization payments because we are rich. If we weren’t rich, we wouldn’t pay them - they’d be given to us. That’s how it works. But I digress. Simply put, a sales tax would be the easiest way for us to increase our revenue and, more importantly (in my opinion), to help us start shifting away from the spoiled attitude we’re stuck in. 

What do you say, Alberta? Ready for a little responsibility? We like to think of ourselves as tough, free-spirited people. Let’s start acting like it.