Edmonton must watch for three things in the provincial budget

Sometimes I get asked about why city councillors spend so much energy advocating towards the province. You can’t operate a healthy city in an unhealthy province: Edmonton depends on the provincial government.

With a quarter of the provincial population and growing, Edmonton deserves a new deal, and a fair deal.

Three things to watch for in this Provincial Budget

Will the Premier pay her property taxes? $96 million is owed to Edmonton since they stopped paying in 2019 (Read More: www.michaeljanz.ca/threepillars2024)

Will the Premier take poverty, safety, social disorder seriously? Edmonton Centre MLA David Shepherd has compiled an excellent toolkit of promises made, kept, and waiting since the UCP took office in 2019: Read More: www.michaeljanz.ca/safety)

Will the Premier slash– or invest in – the low-income riders program? (The hand up to help in hard times: https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/low-income-transit-passes-the-hand-up-to-help-in-hard-times

When the province does their job, all of our property taxes go down. This is not just a matter of paying the outstanding property taxes: Edmontonians are spending more on fire rescue (doing the job of EMS), policing (doing the job of Alberta Health, downstream effects of provincial cuts) and social support for the low-income and unemployed (doing the job of the province).

If Premier Smith is looking for a good news story in the midst of her government’s massive health care scandal, what better way than paying her property taxes?

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