Public Interest Alberta consulting public on 'People's Budget'

Brad Lafortune, Public Interest Alberta executive director, speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about his organization’s budget consultations and priorities for 2025.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: Let's start on that element of pre-budget discussions. Your organization is preparing to gather feedback. Why go to that effort? Why not encourage Albertans to engage directly with the government?

Brad Lafortune: For a couple of reasons. We think it's important for us to hear directly from our members and supporters of Public Interest Alberta, and sometimes budget conversations can be framed in a particular way to get a specific answer or outcome.

What we would like to do a little bit differently than what we've seen from the Government of Alberta, is say, ‘What do you really want to see reflected in this budget?’ So we're calling it a people's budget, and the process is going to release all of the results that we get, unfiltered, raw, back out to Albertans, so that we can really reflect back on what we heard.

What we're concerned about right now, of course, is the potential for a deficit royalty roller coaster we continue to ride. Also, when it comes to public services, health care and education and social services are really, really crumbling, quite frankly. We want to put together something that we can reflect back what the real interests of Albertans are in our budget.

MH: It was noted during the recent release of the second quarter fiscal update, despite a projected surplus of $4.6 billion, these are challenging times. If oil prices don't rebound, to your point about deficit, we could be there. What's your view of the financial situation facing the Smith government?

BL: I think that it is true that Alberta has always relied very heavily on oil and gas and non-renewable resource revenue, that's not a secret to anyone in this province. With that in mind, what we would like to do is start to shift the conversation towards more sustainable revenue for our province in the long-term, and also to make sure that we're budgeting for our priorities.

Budgets are all about priorities, we hear that all the time from politicians, and we think that the priorities of this government and every government should really be about getting the basics right. That includes strengthening our health care, strengthening our education, and strengthening social services. Also having a really honest conversation about the sustainability of our resources and how we generate revenue in this province in the long-term.

It's really hard for any organization, whether it's big or small, to budget into the future if you don't know where your money is coming from, even a household budget. So when it comes to the province, I think that we really need to open up a conversation. We're hoping to do that with our people's budget process about how we're going to fund our services in the long-term so that the Alberta advantage, the prosperity that we all hear about, is shared more equitably amongst hard working Albertans who are, quite frankly, seeing times become really tough in this province right now.

MH: Let's touch on a few other topics that are on the radar, starting with AIMCo. You've spoken out against the appointment of Stephen Harper as board chair. Why shouldn't a former prime minister be in in that role? Is this not someone who will bring prestige, who will bring experience to the position?

BL: We are hearing from people who think that Stephen Harper will bring much needed stability to AIMCo, I would say a couple things in response to that. First of all, no disrespect to the former prime minister, but when it comes to investment management, even at the governance level, we're not investing in things day in, day out, we would like to see someone with direct pension experience.

That means that we look to the private sector and we look to the community to find the best person who actually has the experience and the track record of making sound governance decisions to allow those pensions to remain healthy and strong into the future.

We're also concerned about the politicization of pension plans. We know that Stephen Harper had been shortlisted for about a year now for this position, and with the premier saying things and Nate Horner, the finance minister, saying things like, we want to potentially de-risk high-risk private sector projects with the pension plans of 500,000 Albertans, that's a very, very big concern.

The final thing I'll say about Stephen Harper on pensions is that in his time as prime minister, he was very interested in making changes to the public sector federal pension plan that would create a two tier pension plan for pensioners. So new employees would have a worse pension than existing employees, and it really goes to show that, when it comes to direct benefits of pensions, we don't have the leadership that we think we need from AIMCo, in Stephen Harper, to protect those pensions in the long term.

MH: The Canada Pension Plan calculations from the finance minister, he told reporters he's expecting something soon on the federal government's interpretation. What are you anticipating in terms of trajectory of talks on exiting the CPP in favor of an Alberta Pension Plan?

BL: That's a great question, we're hearing it every single day, so my hope is we'll see that report very soon. I believe the finance ministers are meeting with the federal finance minister in the coming days. If I were the federal finance minister, that's where I would have that conversation, and then release the report to Alberta and to the public.

I think what it's going to say is that Alberta is entitled to 12-16 per cent of the asset pool if they decide to leave. Regardless of what the number is, our perspective at Public Interest Alberta is that the CPP is a very strong, world leading pension plan, and we shouldn't risk it, no matter how much or how big the pot of money is that Alberta may be entitled to.

So we're hoping to see a rational conversation come out of the release of that report. We'll be down in Lethbridge tomorrow to have a conversation about the CPP. It's not as if we're able to talk to every single Albertan who's contributed to CPP, but in those conversations we are having across the province, people are saying to us, ‘We would like to see the province focus on the priorities in our communities, not having conversations about leaving a plan that works.’

So we're hopeful that a more grown up conversation will prevail, and the government will just leave this CPP exit plan in the in the rear view mirror.