For nearly the entire time he has been in office, Alberta premier Jason Kenney has insisted that the federal government hasn’t been doing enough to help Alberta.
During a lunchtime reception in Ottawa last December. At the Calgary airport this past March. In a news conference last month with premiers from Manitoba, Ontario, and Québec. Heck, he was doing it even before he was elected.
Recently, this insistence prompted me to search the federal government news archives to find out how much Ottawa has actually contributed to Alberta projects since the UCP took power in April 2019.
So, I spent hours upon hours pouring through 5,205 news releases trying to find Alberta projects the federal government committed funds to.
I found 75 projects, and collectively, they added up to over $850 million that Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals have committed to Alberta in the year and a half since the UCP were elected.
Here there are.
Now, keep in mind that this $857.8 million isn’t all the federal government has promised Alberta. It doesn’t include funding that they promised for the country as a whole but that Alberta will be able to participate in. For example, the more than 80 Alberta organizations who were part of hundreds of organizations to received a combined $50 million to support women and children fleeing violence.
It also doesn’t include the $244 million in infrastructure funding from the Gas Tax Fund for 347 Alberta communities during the 2020–2021 fiscal year. Or the $472.8 million from the same fund last year.
Nor does it include the $1.72 billion promised to BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan this past April to clean up orphan oil and gas wells.
Finally, it doesn’t include the amounts Alberta receives in annual federal transfer payments, such as $9.07 billion we received last year and the $9.96 billion we should be receiving this year.
If we did include all that, then Alberta has received—or has been promised to receive—over $20 billion since the UCP were elected.
