Successful 2024 transitions into unpredictable 2025: MLA Hunter

Times Photo by Trevor Bush. REGION IN ACTION: Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter addresses a crowd of citizens and dignitaries inside the Taber Community Centre Auditorium on Saturday afternoon as part of the annual State of the Region address. Also making presentations were Town of Taber Mayor Andrew Prokop, MD of Taber Reeve Tamara Miyanaga, and Town of Coaldale Mayor Jack Van Rijn. For stories on Prokop and Miyanaga’s presentations, see next week’s edition.

By Trevor Busch
Taber Times
editor@tabertimes.com

As part of the State of the Region address on Saturday, Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter talked about many of the positive economic indicators that were showing promise in southern Alberta throughout 2024.

Hunter would initiate the four-part address at the Taber Community Centre Auditorium, which also featured presentations by MD of Taber Reeve Tamara Miyanaga, Town of Taber Mayor Andrew Prokop, and Town of Coaldale Mayor Jack Van Rijn.

One of the chief concerns in 2024 was affordability, and Hunter says his government took active steps to address this challenge.

“I wanted to talk to you about the some of the things that we’re doing here in this area and the province, and good work on some of the things here right now. Because of COVID and some of the supply chain issues, we have had an affordability crisis not just in Alberta, but in Canada and throughout the world. As the supply chains started to break down, we recognized the need to be able to, first of all, grow and produce more things locally, and we also recognized that those supply chains are extremely fragile. And so what you saw, the result, is you saw the cost of everything going up, and every jurisdiction in the world was faced with this inflationary oppression. So we tackled it with a few different mechanisms. First of all, we saw utilities skyrocket. And as you know, Alberta is the only province and one of the only jurisdictions in North America where we have a quasi, semi-deregulated system. And so the retail side is deregulated, and the distribution and transmission are both regulated. Because of that, we have seen the majority of the cost increases in transmission and distribution. So what we’ve done is we have worked to try to mitigate those cost increases for transmission and distribution. And the way that we did that was we had to go directly to the distribution companies – you cannot manipulate the price when it comes to distribution and transmission, and also on the retail side of this as well. So we brought in more competition, we brought in regulations so that they cannot manipulate that system. And because of that, we’ve seen a decrease in our utility cost.”

Hunter believes any rapid acceleration of a net zero goal for Canada will end up costing utility consumers big.

“The federal government has been chasing net zero. You’ve probably heard this term ‘net zero’ for some time now, and they wanted us to get to net zero by 2030. And so we were happy to see that the federal government has backed off of that, and they are actually more in line with what our approach would be, a 2050 date on that. So we’re happy to see some wins, however, I will say that the regulations that they have brought forward after the court sued them are still not acceptable. Just so you know, we believe that is poor policy, and it’s going to cost Albertans a whole lot of money in terms of utilities.”

Regulatory foot-dragging is delaying important irrigation-related infrastructure projects as environmental assessments hold up construction.

“In terms of agriculture and irrigation, I will tell you that we made some changes to the agri process and investment tax credit. We made some changes to the regulations, enacted December 2024,” said Hunter. “There’s no restrictions as to who can actually make the application for this. I pushed pretty hard for that, and I think that’ll help. Water storage is obviously something that we’ve been working really hard on over the last five to six years. As you know, Chin Reservoir will be the largest expansion, and the off-stream storage expansions that we do, we need to do better. The reality is that an environmental impact assessment here in Alberta is required to go forward. It is taking too long. And I say that being part of the government, and so I have a problem when we’re doing something that is taking too long. And so I would say that we need to do better in terms of making sure that projects go forward in a timely fashion. You know, we can complain about what Ottawa does; listening to Pierre Poilievre this morning, because of C-69 the average mining project in Canada will take about 19 years to complete – 19 years. And so what happens is nobody comes to Canada to start progress, because there is no hope for business. Now I can complain about that a lot, but in reality, when it takes over a year just to get the terms of reference part done for the environmental assessment, we’re not doing much better. So I will tell you that I’m advocating to streamline rules.”

Engagement over the Water Act hasn’t been the most popular initiative of his government, but Hunter explained why he feels it is necessary.

“So we have also begun Water Act engagement, and it’s got some of our farmers – actually, probably most of our farmers – a little concerned. And so I want you to know that I believe that in the Lethbridge engagement we had, that the minister heard loud and clear. The reason why she opened up the Water Act engagement is that we have to be able to figure out whether we have the right policy, but then you have been welcomed so you might take a look and see if there’s any other gaps that we need to address. We’re trying to do that.”

Taking a proactive approach to preventing aquatic invasive species from infesting Alberta’s lakes, rivers and irrigation infrastructure will save the province big in the long run, argues Hunter.

“The premier tasked me with being chair for aquatic invasive species, the Invasive Species Task Force. And we met for about four months and we were able to address some of the gaps in terms of our response to aquatic invasive species. Quagga and zebra mussels are a real threat, especially to our irrigation. If the quagga and zebra mussels were to get into our waterways, they proliferate so quickly that it would be almost impossible to mitigate and get rid of them. Ontario spends, I think, about $500 million on mitigating the infestation that they have in the Great Lakes there. And we don’t want to be in that situation. So our first strategy is to make sure that these guys stay out. For 80 years now this province has had a good rat free strategy. I want to be able to say the same thing about quagga and zebra muscles as well.”

Alberta is playing host to succeeding waves of people coming to the province looking for a better life, but that means big dollars need to be spent on infrastructure to keep up with the pace of population growth.

“Last year we had 204,000 people moving to the province. They need schools. They need places to live. They need hospitals. They need services,” said Hunter. “And then they add to what Alberta is – the nice thing about it is that there’s 204,000 more Albertans that we can build the province for and make this a great place to raise a family, have a business, start that job. So we announced that we will have in 2024-25 a $215 million top up to the budget that we had in order to be able to address some of the current issues. But just so you know, that was last year’s numbers. We expect it to be just as big this year, and it’s not just immigrants that are coming, it’s people coming from other parts of the country. And that’s because we know what the Alberta advantage is: lower marginal tax rate, lower regulatory burden than in other jurisdictions. And so people come because of that reason. It’s jobs, it’s opportunities, there’s much more. The next closest jurisdiction to us is $6 billion more in taxing their people. Tax people a whole lot less – we believe in that. We believe that the people actually then prosper, and if they’ve got more jingle in their pocket, they’re going to be happy. So we’re building more schools. We have a seven year project to build for another 200,000 students, which is gonna cost us about $8.6 billion. Also, in the next three years, we’re going to be starting 30 schools each year. Think about that – we have to build 30 schools each year in order to keep up with that kind of growth.”

With all sections of Highway 3 now planned to be twinned, Hunter hinted some lobbying pressure could be applied to B.C. in ensuing years. 

“Highway 3 twinning between Taber and Burdett is doing well – 46 kilometres. We allocated $170 million over a three year period to build that and we also allocated another $90.4 million over three years for engineering, planning and design of the other sections of highway twinning between the provinces of Saskatchewan and B.C. So in 10 years, we’re going to get the whole thing twinned. Now we just have to convince B.C. to twin their portion.”

With a potential trade war looming with the U.S., Hunter defended Premier Danielle Smith and her recent approach to the Trump administration which flies in the face of other Canadian premiers.

“The Premier is down in the United States, and she’s fighting for us. I know you’ve heard some people out there – some in the media – that have said she shouldn’t be down there. I’ve actually had some people from my riding even call me up and say she shouldn’t be there. But let me just put this in perspective. If Trump is successful at implementing a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian products going down to the United States, it will create a trade war. The trade war is going to be borne by the people –  we are going to feel the brunt of it. And the trade war with the United States, when we’re 1/10 of their economy, when they get a cold, we will get pneumonia.”

Hunter is firmly convinced that Canada will be a mouse fighting a gorilla in any trade war with the U.S. and that dollar-for-dollar retribution will be profoundly damaging to Alberta’s economy.

“And so in my opinion, the best approach is a diplomatic approach, not a tit-for-tat. That is not the way that we’re going to be able to try to get through this. Perhaps President Trump will not listen to our premier, but she’s extremely capable at diplomacy. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it many, many times. If we have anybody down there at any given time, they probably prefer to have her than anybody else. She is doing a fantastic job. And so I applaud her for her efforts and I hope that she is successful. I have to admit she’s going to have to pull a rabbit out of the hat to be able to make this one work, but she has to try this. I take my hat off to her for driving with that.”