In a tweet on August 23, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney boasted of the success of the Alberta Recovery Plan, claiming his policies have created over 170,000 “new” jobs. While the recent recovery is encouraging, it is still a far cry from where his province was before imposing strict lockdowns.
Alberta’s Recovery Plan has already helped create 170,000 new jobs thanks to:
🏗 Historic investments in infrastructure
🚀 Incentives for emerging sectors like film production and tech
👨💻 Hiring and training grants for businesses➡ Read more: https://t.co/PVplftEhim pic.twitter.com/IaK7PjLbSu
— Jason Kenney (@jkenney) August 23, 2021
Indeed, as his tweet says, Kenney has made historic public investments with taxpayer money, spending more than any Alberta Premier in history, well over $14 billion in 2020. The bulk of this spending went towards federal and provincial projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline, tax and utility deferrals, site rehabilitation, and a great deal of healthcare spending.
However, only 2 percent of this monumental spending plan, $232 million, was allocated to 36,000 small business owners who were hit hardest by his lockdown policies. This is roughly what was dished out for utility payment deferrals and adds up to $6,444 per business to cover the loss in income resulting from a year of operating at half or no capacity.
“They’re rejecting a much-needed injection into our local economy,” said NDP Labour Critic Christina Gray in January. “These workers have been going all out for months now and they deserve the same support that has been given to other essential workers across Canada.”
Here, Gray brings up an important distinction that was made during the pandemic: who is and is not essential and who gets government subsidies. Walmart, as we have learned, is essential. The mom-and-pop shop down the road is not.
Overall, the initial goal of this spending bill was to recover over 30,000 jobs in 2020 — a benchmark impossible to miss as the province had lost over 196,000 jobs during the initial lockdown and, then, lost some of these jobs again as the second and third wave of lockdowns rolled in.
Lying again eh!? pic.twitter.com/IRvDpKR5Rq
— Igs’ full vaxxed (@ign8ius) August 23, 2021
Additionally, while most of the spending went towards federally regulated industries within the goods sectors, this is not where the most job loss occurred. It occurred in the services sector, which includes retail, transportation, distribution, food services, and healthcare — though healthcare employment was not significantly affected.
