SMITH'S $8.6B SCHOOL PROMISE
Will the province's plan meet the demand — and will Albertans still get their tax cut?
The number of big promises from Premier Danielle Smith is mounting sky high. First came Smith's commitment to the United Conservative's ongoing promise to have a balanced budget. Second was her big election promise of a huge income tax cut for Albertans, one that will forgo about $1.4 billion in taxes. Now comes a new whopper of a promise, one where Smith proposes to quadruple spending on school construction to $8.6 billion from $2.1 billion over the next three years, increasing the number of new school builds from six per year to the equivalent of 35 schools per year.
Why the move to such a massive new build?
“Oh my goodness, we have to,” Smith told me in an interview, adding she's heard from parents about exceptionally large class sizes this year.
One mother told Smith her child's class size is 41 students. “I think we're accustomed to hearing about class sizes in the 30s, maybe the low 30s, but that is a very high level for a K-12 education classroom,” Smith said.
The explosion of new students is linked to Alberta's increasing population, Smith said. Alberta was pushing hard for workers to come here after COVID, with the UCP government bringing in an `Alberta is calling' advertising campaign to attract people. But no one expected it would result in 200,000 newcomers in 2023 alone, Smith said.
That migration meant an increase of more than 20,000 students than were expected for the 2023-24 school year. School boards that used to have underutilized school space now need every nook and cranny for classroom space.
Does such a huge new spending program mesh with Smith's other promises?
She's aware of the issue. As the premier noted in her televised speech on the new school build, “We have to do so while continuing to balance our provincial budget and delivering on our promised income tax cut in the next budget.”
The plan, Smith told me, is to switch the funding and accounting model for school builds. No longer will the province give school boards upfront cash grants to build and own schools, thus creating a major annual operating expense for the province.
Instead, the province will take on long-term loans to build the new schools. The province will retain ownership of any new school, lease it to the school board and treat it as a capital asset on the provincial budget sheet.
“It's not going to impact our operational budget and it will allow us to still deliver on our tax cut,” Smith said.
All told, 200,000 new spaces in schools will be created in the next seven years, Smith said.
Will the new builds be enough to keep up with incoming students? We're seeing about three or four times the number of newcomers in Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau than we saw in the first 14 years of the century under former prime ministers Stephen Harper, Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien. At the same time, Smith herself has been bullish on high numbers of newcomers in Alberta, saying as recently as January she expects to see our province of 4.8 million people grow to 10 million by 2050.
The provinces are pushing Trudeau to back away from his full embrace of an “open borders” policy, Smith said, so that more housing, schools and hospitals can be built so everyone is adequately served.
Alberta used to have the housing capacity to bring in newcomers, but even with builders working at full tilt we can now only accommodate about 100,000 new people per year, Smith said.
She'd like to see the federal government go back to the levels of immigration seen under Harper's government, about one-third the rate that we now have.
“We absolutely want to keep on being welcoming to newcomers, especially those who fit in with our job market, who share our values,” Smith said. “That's always been the case for Alberta. But at the moment the numbers are just too high for us to absorb.”
I imagine there will be four predominant reactions to this budget juggling and new building commitment.
Fiscal hawks will question the new spending and debt.
Opposition politicians will assert Smith is simply shuffling money around to make it look like the budget is balanced.
Another group of people will complain about a provincial power grab from school boards.
Most people will be glad to get a tax cut and relieved about a greatly accelerated plan to build schools.
I'm left wondering how firm Smith's talk of delivering the tax cut in February's budget is. I also doubt the school build-out will meet the needs of an exploding population. That said, it seems a worthy attempt.