Days after delivering the provincial budget, Alberta's finance minister told a crowd of St. Albertans he is optimistic the province is in good shape to deal with a looming economic downturn that may affect other parts of the country.
On Monday morning, Travis Toews paid a visit to the St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce to talk about provincial finances, noting Alberta is battling inflation rates not seen since the 1980s.
“Those were very hard days in the early '80s. And we have affordability and we have inflation challenges today,” Toews said.
However, the finance minister sounded a positive note.
While economists predict a recession rolling in this upcoming year, Toews said he believes Alberta might be spared from financial pain.
“We have a strong resource sector, whether it's agriculture, energy or even forestry and during times of inflation, an energy-based economy is not a bad thing to have,” Toews said.
Provincial demographics also play to Alberta’s favour, the minister said, with a young and highly educated population driving economic growth.
He said diversification is happening in Alberta at the fastest rate he has seen in his lifetime, noting there was a record $729 million in venture capital invested in the province in 2022.
“We're winning on tech. Financial services are exploding,” Toews said, adding he is losing some of his best staff to the private sector.
The film industry in Alberta is also booming, growing 10-fold in just a few years from $100,000 to close to $1 billion in the past three years.
Hydrogen is also starting to take off in the province, with tens of billions of dollars lined up for hydrogen investment, Toews said.
“That's an area where I believe Alberta can really be competitive. And if I'm totally transparent, I can't say with certainty whether hydrogen will truly be the fuel of the future. But … we have to position Alberta so that if it is we can be global leaders,” Toews said.
Right now the world is short on energy and food supplies, and Alberta is in a position to supply both food and energy to the globe, Toews said.
“Canada has the most responsible energy industry in the world. We have the most responsible oil and gas sector in the world, hands down.”
With the diversification happening in the province, Toews said it is a good time to get a job in Alberta. In 2022, 92,000 new jobs were created in the province and 20,000 jobs were created in 2023. Nearly a quarter of the jobs created in Canada last year were in Alberta.
And the new jobs are bringing in new residents every day, Toews said, with 60,000 new people moving into the province in the third quarter of last year alone.
“We're leading the nation in net [immigration], by far and away,” Toews said, noting many new Albertans are coming from the Toronto area. One developer in Calgary estimated 100 families a week are coming to the region from Toronto alone and Toews said they are coming for the low tax rate.
The influx of new residents meant education and health care were other key themes in the budget.
New Albertans are driving the need to fund education, he said, noting this budget increased education funding by five per cent for the upcoming year.
And after years of wear and tear on health care workers during the pandemic, the province is focused on supporting front-line staff.
“It's been a hard few years on our front-line health care professionals. Some of them are retired early, some are working fewer hours, some are on stress leave,” Toews said.
“All of that has ultimately resulted in the fact that we don't have enough capacity and it's not a bricks-and-mortar issue so much. It's an issue of a lack of front-line health care professionals.”
As a result, the province is funding 2,000 new training spaces for nurses and health care aides, and Toews said right now some five out of six Albertans who attempt to get into nursing programs are rejected.
Another $30 million in the budget will go to spaces in medical schools, which will increase the programs by 120 seats, which results in an almost 40 per cent increase in medical schools, the minister said.
Toews tabled the provincial budget in the legislature on Feb. 28.
