As far as wages go, Alberta workers now face a significant “Alberta Disadvantage,” says a report on the continuing suppression of wages and salaries in the Western Canadian province.
Not long ago the highest-wage province in Canada, with wages 17 per cent above the national average, payroll data for hourly employees shows Alberta fell behind British Columbia in 2023 and Quebec last year, with wages here continuing to tumble, said economist Jim Stanford in his update to a 2024 analysis of the province’s wage declines.
Alberta’s wages have shrivelled to just 1.7 per cent above the national average – an edge more than offset by the province’s high cost of living. Alberta is the only province where average real weekly earnings were lower in 2024 than in 2019, the report says.
“This is partly the result of economic challenges and disruptions beyond anyone’s control – like the pandemic, fluctuations in global energy prices, and inflation (which gripped all industrial countries after 2021),” Dr. Stanford wrote, noting that last year inflation was worse in Alberta than in any other province despite the fact the place also had the weakest wage growth.
“However, much of Alberta’s wage disadvantage is self-inflicted,” his report continued. It is “the intended outcome of deliberate policies to suppress wages, and shift income to corporations and investors, away from workers.”
This portion of the Vancouver-based economist’s analysis not exactly news, of course. It’s been widely understood since before the election of the United Conservative Party in 2019 that a key part of the UCP’s policy was the intentional suppression of wages – although this was spoken sotto voce by then-candidate Jason Kenney to the then-new party’s corporate backers.
All that the rest of us heard about was “jobs, economy, pipelines …”
Only on the issue of minimum wages was the former federal Harper Government cabinet minister and soon-to-be Alberta premier completely open in public about his intentions, bragging in June 2018 that upon wining power he would freeze minimum wages. This was soon after they had been raised to $15 by the NDP government of Rachel Notley, to the fury of the fast-food industry. Kenney also vowed he would restructure the minimum wage to introduce pay cuts for some classes of workers.
This duly became policy after the UCP’s election on April 16, 2019, and the minimum wage has remained frozen ever since through six years of skyrocketing inflation, with cuts in pay for young workers thrown in for bad measure. It is now tied with Saskatchewan, that other Western Canadian bastion of wage suppression, for the lowest minimum wage in Canada.
“The resulting 17-per-cent decline in real earnings for the lowest-paid workers in the province is economically destructive and morally bankrupt,” Dr. Stanford wrote.
But credit where credit is due, when Kenney buttered up his corporate backers after turning up in Alberta to save the province from the NDP, insiders all understood that this was part of the deal. So you can safely repeat after me, as Kenney used to frequently say, “promise made, promise kept!”
Other factors making a major contribution to the UCP wage-suppression strategy are the most restrictive limits on collective bargaining in Canada, and the “uniquely austere” public sector wage settlements in 2020 and 2021, which resulted in severe declines in real wages in health care and education.
Last year was the fourth consecutive year, and the ninth in the past 11, that average hourly real wages declined in Alberta. By contrast, in the rest of Canada, real wages (a measure that accounts for the impact of inflation) rebounded briskly in 2023 and last year.
Since the UCP came to power in 2019, real hourly wages have fallen by a cumulative total of 4.5 per cent, Dr. Stanford noted by far the worst performance of any Canadian province.
“The UCP has killed the Alberta wage advantage,” said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, which released Dr. Stanford’s report.
“UCP wage-suppression policies include freezing the minimum wage for over six years, making it easier for employers to avoid paying overtime, making it harder for workers to join unions, and secret government bargaining mandates to keep wage increases for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers well below inflation,” McGowan said.
Dr. Stanford is the director of the Centre for Future Work, which is based in Vancouver. The PhD economist, who was born in Alberta, is also the Harold Innis Industry Professor in Economics at McMaster University in Hamilton and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney is Australia.
AIMCo dumps diversity, equity and inclusion program … of course it did!
Right on schedule, one might say, the Alberta Investment Management Corp. has dumped its diversity, equity and inclusion program and canned 19 employees including the program lead.
The Crown pension investment corporation, better known as AIMCo, is the entity the United Conservative Government would most likely ask to manage Canada Pension Plan funds in the event it can get its paws on Albertans’ and former Albertans’ retirement savings.
So this development strongly suggests that the offices of Premier Danielle Smith and Finance Minister Nate Horner are as predicted effectively running AIMCo now, setting politically motivated policy, and they in turn are getting their big policy ideas from the new Trump Administration in Washington.
In November, Horner fired AIMCo’s board and appointed former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper as board chair. With Harper in that role, is was obvious AIMCo’s previous arm’s-length relationship with the government had ended.
Harper is the originator and first advocate of the dangerous idea Alberta should pull out of the CPP and establish an Alberta pension to subsidize the sunsetting fossil fuel industry. Whatever you may have heard – or not heard – that scheme is still very much alive.
But don’t worry, The Canadian Press quoted an AIMCo spokesperson, “all AIMCo colleagues will continue to share the responsibility and accountability for ensuring AIMCo remains diverse, inclusive, innovative and motivating, in keeping with our corporate objectives and core values.”
Right. Good to know.
Oh look what just turned up in my mailbox!
I’m told ads like this are due to start running in Washington, and perhaps elsewhere in the United States. Wonder if they’ll dissuade President Donald Trump from slapping big tariffs on Canada? Probably not. I wonder if Canada’s other provinces were consulted about this big idea? Same answer.
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