UCP weighs flat tax, private health
Pledge to repeal carbon levy also up for debate by party members
The United Conservative Party will commit to returning Alberta to a flat tax on income, ensuring equal funding for private schools and increasing privately funded, privately delivered health care services if proposed draft policies are adopted by UCP members this spring.
UCP members last week received a 21-page draft policy framework drawn up by a party committee ahead of the party’s May founding convention, where policy is to be set by rank and file UCP members.
Janice Harrington, executive director of the UCP, said the ideas put forward in the document are simply there to begin a debate within the party that over the next few months will see members amend or reject the framework policies and add their own proposals.
“These are strictly starting point documents for discussion only. We want to make that very, very clear,” Harrington said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s a committee of a very small number of members, and broader member consultation needs to happen.”
Harrington said the framework was developed based on the resolutions and constitutions of the UCP’s legacy parties. The UCP was founded last summer when Progressive Conservative and Wild rose members voted to join together in a new party.
Nevertheless, some of the policies are likely to be politically contentious as they are discussed and potentially adopted by UCP members.
The policy framework pledges that Alberta will be “the lowest tax jurisdiction” in the country and calls for the restoration of the 10 per cent flat tax on income brought in by Ralph Klein’s Progressive Conservative government.
The NDP government moved to a progressive income tax system with different rates for different income levels in its first budget in 2015, though the Tory government it defeated that year had also intended to dump the flat tax.
Under the brackets brought in by the NDP, anyone making under $126,000 annually already pays a rate of 10 per cent, meaning a return to the flat tax would mean a tax cut only for high-income earners.
“Flat taxes are inherently unfair. There’s a reason why currently no province in the country has one and that’s because they are a giveaway to the wealthy,” said Joel French of the left-leaning advocacy group Public Interest Alberta.
The policy framework also calls for a reversal of the NDP’s hike of the corporate tax rate from 10 to 12 per cent and for the complete elimination of the two per cent small business tax rate. It also wants to repeal the province’s carbon tax, as has been repeatedly promised by UCP Leader Jason Kenney.
Colin Craig, acting Alberta director of the conservative Canadian Taxpayers Federation, hailed the suite of potential tax cuts and called adoption of the flat tax “a great idea” — though he said it should only be done when the budget is balanced.
“For a long, long time it was part of the Alberta Advantage ... if you moved to Alberta the tax rates were great, they were low, they were simple. It was a great sales pitch but it was also good at attracting people,” said Craig, who suggested eliminating the carbon tax as well would help make the flat tax politically saleable.
The policy framework also touches on some other potentially controversial areas.
In education, it proposes devolving power from school boards to individual schools within the public and separate school systems.
The document also calls for a UCP government to “ensure equal funding regardless of school choice — public, separate, charter, home or private.”
Private schools in Alberta currently receive 70 per cent of the per-pupil funding of public schools.
French, whose organization is part of a coalition that has unsuccessfully lobbied the NDP government to wind down funding for private schools, slammed the idea.
“Alberta already has the most generous subsidies for private schools in the country,” he said.
On the health front, one of the policies in the document calls for allowing “privately-funded, privately-delivered health care services to address excessive wait times.”
Craig said the Alberta government should be encouraging a system that allows private citizens to pay for needed health care services.
“The reality is, a lot of middleclass and wealthier people that want faster health care, they’re
There’s a reason why no province has (a flat tax) and that’s because they are a giveaway to the wealthy.
... driving down to the States for faster health care, they’re flying there,” he said.
“They’re still getting it. We’re missing out on those economic gains by not having those jobs in Alberta and those tax dollars staying in the province.”
Klein’s push for a “Third Way” in health care that would introduce more private services into the health system set off an enormous political firestorm more than a decade ago, with the PC premier ultimately backing away from the project.
Kenney was not available for comment on the policy framework.
But just before Christmas he told Postmedia he looked forward to a freewheeling policy debate within the UCP. “I’m not against a certain degree of controversy,” said Kenney. “We’ve got big problems in this province. I want our members to think big. I don’t want them to feel obliged to come up with a puerile, Pablum policy declaration that avoids difficult issues.”