Ministers moving

Alberta’s minister of finance is wrapping up a visit to Toronto, having met with the Council of Ministers of Securities Regulation — which she chairs — to review progress on the passport system and the initiative to harmonize and streamline securities laws across Canada.

“We are extremely pleased with the work that’s been done to date,” said Shirley McClellan, also Alberta’s deputy premier, speaking to a breakfast meeting of the Economic Club of Toronto. “A number of provinces have already adopted the legislation required to enhance the passport and further harmonize and streamline our laws, and the remainder intend to do the same this fall.”

McClellan said council members and signatories to the passport system are committed to an aggressive timetable for completing the initiative.

Provincial ministers also met with the Crawford Panel on a single Canadian securities regulator earlier in the week. McClellan said the Crawford panel did a great job of developing the discussion paper but the council needs more time to review it, adding that the group is planning to go ahead with phases two and three of the passport system’s initiatives.

“If we’d done nothing before this report we’d still be two or three years behind,” she told the group. “Work on the passport system will do well no matter what system we end up with.”

Ultimately, she says both initiatives achieve the same goal — harmonization, streamlining and strong enforcement — even if the two groups differ in structure.

“Just two weeks ago, seven premiers endorsed the passport system and stated clearly they are not interested in federal involvement,” McClellan said in a statement released earlier in the day. “The provinces and territories are making remarkable progress working together and Canada is seeing real improvements to its securities regulatory system.”

The council of ministers also repeated its invitation to Ontario to participate in the passport system.

At a the breakfast meeting, the minister also took the opportunity to discuss the province’s road to fiscal solvency, the current state of employment and measures the government is taking to ensure continued economic and fiscal success in the province.

“There is every indication that prosperity will continue for sometime, but it wasn’t always like this,” she told the group.

Once upon a time when the minister was first elected to the provincial legislature, she says debt servicing cost the province $1.5 billion a year, job growth was stagnant and unemployment hovered around the 10% mark. Although many would attribute the province’s success in balancing its budget to higher oil and gas prices, “I would like to remind everyone that our (first) balanced budget occurred when oil and gas prices weren’t high.”

Furthermore, she says the province would still have high debt, despite higher oil and gas prices, if it hadn’t made a number of “hard decisions” over many years. “It’s easy to forget this when times are good,” she said.

The province is expecting nearly $60 billion in foreign energy investment between 2006 and 2010, particularly from the United States and China. By 2015, Canada is expected to increase production, making it the fifth largest energy producer in the world, up from its current position as the eighth largest. With this backdrop, the province is no doubt concerned about the current supply of labour — some companies are even putting in landing strips in Fort McMurray to bring in new employees.

“What most people don’t know, however, is that the growth is not just in oil and gas,” said McClellan, pointing out that professional services, sciences and technical sectors are currently experiencing growth above the 8% mark. Construction and retail sectors are following the boom, and transportation, manufacturing, insurance and financial services, and real estate are also enjoying strong growth.

“We are in an incredibly enviable fiscal position today,” she says. But even though the province may be awash in cash, there are costs to the growth and a need to invest in the future. McClellan points out that even though population growth is good for the province’s tax base — Calgary for example is now home to more new residents than live in the entire city of Regina — the new residents don’t bring schools, roads and infrastructure with them.

McClellan says the province plans to continue investing in education, medical research, science and technology. “The science and ingenuity fund, these are things that benefit all of us,” she says.

Taxes though, remain a concern for the minister. Canada is not competitive globally, she says, and companies do not just do business in one province. If Alberta were to raise taxes today to the levels used by the province with the second lowest taxes (“And no, it’s not Ontario,” she says), the province would add another $7.2 billion in tax revenues to its coffers. “Lowering taxes will affect your economy in a positive way. We’re going to continue lowering taxes.”

Filed by Kate McCaffery, Advisor.ca, kate.mccaffery@advisor.rogers.com

(06/14/06)