Who cost Albertans more?

As an election looms in Alberta, people are starting to do the math.

Anyone who frequents social media has likely seen the first wave of coordinated messaging by the current Alberta government: “NDP raised taxes* 97 times!” (*Includes taxes, premiums, fees, and licencing).

Sure, 2014 brought in the most sustained drop in oil prices the province had seen since the 1980’s, but Albertans have been warned for decades that eventually someone was going to be left holding the bag.

Spoiler alert: it’s us — we’re the ones going to be left holding a big, smelly bag of Alberta Advantage.

How many times did the respective parties increase costs for Albertans, though? I tried to count them up using the Tax Plan page provided in each year’s provincial budget’s Fiscal Plan from 2014 (needed a base) to 2023.

It became a little tricky after that, but, well, you’ll see.

After winning the election, the NDP implemented the first corporate tax increase in over two decades, and moved personal tax from a flat rate to an embarrassingly generous progressive tax structure consisting of four new brackets: $125,000 to $150,000, $150,000 to $200,000, $200,000 to $300,000, and over $300,000. The rate remained unchanged at 10 per cent for all personal income below $125,000.

The new rates were applied over two years (that’s counted as eight increases in UCP math (insert laughter from “the Count” here).

In comparison, the UCP deindexed personal income tax from inflation for three years (called bracket creep), which counts as 12 increases (mwaahahahahaaa), because we get to use the same math.

Next up, education property taxes.

The NDP increased these once in 2018 (nine), and the UCP increased them twice, first in 2020 and again in 2022 (14).

Each get one for increasing tobacco tax; the NDs in 2015, and UCP in 2019 (10-15).

NDP introduced taxes on cannabis in 2018 (page 12), (11), UCP raised taxes on loose tobacco (and a one) and cigars (and a two) in 2019 (page 150), and introduced a tax on vape products (and a three) in 2021 (page 84), (18).

In 2015, the NDs increased the fuel tax for locomotives (12), brought in a carbon tax in 2016 that increased the following year (14), and increased the tax on life and other insurance premiums (page 103), (16).

The UCP sought to apply the tourism levy (tax) on short-term rentals in 2021 (19) page 149.

Fun fact:

On April 1, 2021, the Tourism Levy Act was amended to extend Alberta’s tourism levy to short-term rentals (STRs) listed on online marketplaces (e .g ., Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking .com) .

This measure, announced in Budget 2019, was intended to level the playing field among Alberta’s temporary accommodation providers. To minimize red tape, these amendments also authorized online marketplaces to voluntarily collect and remit the levy on behalf of their Alberta hosts .

However, while the government has been working closely with online marketplaces to facilitate their collection and remittance of the levy, to date none have taken on these responsibilities, despite collecting taxes in other provinces (page 179).

Businesses… not voluntarily making more work for themselves… even in the name of red tape reduction? Gasps. Clutches pearls.

Moving along.

The NDs introduced 44 increases (60) to fees and fines in 2015 under Environment and Parks, Justice and Solicitor General, and Service Alberta (pages 114-115) and one increase to liquor sales markups (61).

In 2016, 11 increases (72) were made to fees under Culture and Tourism as well as Environment and Parks again (page 124), and 23 new fees (95) were added in 2018 to Culture and Tourism and Treasury Board and Finance (page 154).

Meanwhile, the UCP increased seven fees (26) in Health and Service Alberta in 2019 (page 191) and 21 (47) within Culture, Environment and Parks, and Labour and Immigration in 2020'; one (48) to Environment and Parks in 2021 (page 183 and it’s not the Kananaskis Pass), and again (but also not the Kananaskis Pass) (49) in 2022 (page 213).

Not-so-fun fact from Budget 2019/20:

“With the need to control spending, continuing to index (personal income tax exemptions) is unaffordable for the time being. As a result, Alberta will pause the indexation of non-refundable tax credits and tax bracket thresholds, with the 2019 amounts carried forward for the 2020 and future tax years. Alberta will resume indexing the tax system once economic and fiscal conditions can support it (page 149).”

In less than ten months following this declaration — and two years before our “economic and fiscal conditions (could) support” Albertans — the UCP government slashed corporate tax rates from 10 to 8 per cent. But I digress.

It would appear that the UCP raised taxes* (*includes fees, permits, and licencing) around half as many times as the NDP, except…

The K-pass, a $90/year fee to have your vehicle in K-Country, wasn’t in Budget 2021,even though most people would agree that the K-pass would constitute a fee increase (50).

Removing the post-secondary education tuition credit (51), and the cap on tuition fees (52), combined with the cuts to post-secondary grants (53), are also increases — an average of 33 per cent since 2019, to be exact.

Deindexing AISH (54) from inflation was an increase.

Changing the date of AISH and Income Support payments to make the year-end finances look better is why people think politicians are scum.

Removing the five per-cent cap on auto insurance rate increases (55), and electricity (56) was an increase.

Those reversals led to Albertans paying the highest auto insurance rates in Canada.

One might think that increased individual costs can’t really be called a government increase — until they realize that school bus contractors were on the verge of not being able to insure their buses, forcing the Alberta government to fork over an additional $414 million for student transportation over the next three years.

So, yeah, that would qualify as an increase.

The NDP’s cap on electricity rates cost Albertans $74 million in 2018.

In 2022, the UCP’s direct-to-donor/provider rebates cost $600 million — more than eight times higher even though rates are only three to four times higher than the NDP’s original 0.068/kj cap.

Someone please help me with that math.

Thanks to the UCP omitting increases from publicly available documentation, I cannot say with any certainty that they have increased taxes* (*includes fees, licencing, and permits) fewer times than the NDP.

If we want to talk about affordability, though, I don’t think I’m going to ask the UCP for their hot-take.