Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has indicated his United Conservative government will reveal details next week about additional support to help people deal with high inflation.
Earlier this week, when Finance Minister Jason Nixon announced a $3.9 billion surplus at the end of the 2021-22 fiscal year ending March 31, Nixon said one of the goals was to examine new ways of help Albertans get through the current stretch of rising prices.
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The province already cut its portion of the gas tax earlier this spring and will soon receive $150 in electricity rebates to cushion the impact of inflation.
On Saturday, while responding to a question about inflation from a caller on his province-wide phone-in radio show on CHQR and CHED, Kenney said there will be an announcement about more support, which he believed would come this week. .
He did not elaborate on what the measures might be, and a spokesman did not immediately respond when emailed for further details.
Kenney told his radio audience that there are several explanations for the high inflation, including federal monetary policy and large federal deficits, as well as energy shortages related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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“Anyone who says there’s only one simple explanation is lying,” Kenney said.
“I think most experts expect, or project, that this will start to go away next year, but we’re probably in for a few more months of high inflation.”
Kenney said he agreed with federal Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre’s assertion that the Bank of Canada was fueling inflation, as Kenney put it, “by printing tens and tens of billions of dollars of new fiat currency.”
Poilievre has threatened to fire Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem if he is elected prime minister.
Alberta’s bread-and-butter oil and natural gas industries have exploded in recent months as global economies accelerated while pandemic measures rolled back and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted global energy supplies.
Nixon said another plan for the windfall is to boost the province’s $18.7 billion savings — the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund.
Shannon Phillips, a financial critic for the Opposition NDP, said after the windfall was announced that the government is failing to deliver promised funding for a range of public services, from education to ambulance response.
Kenney said on Saturday that the surplus would not have occurred had his government not “exercised restraint in spending.”
“One of the problems in modern Alberta is when we have an oil boom, we track our spending and spend what comes in. And then when our income goes down, the taxpayers are left with the bag of debt,” he said.
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