Talk of taxes in Alberta is front and centre with the shortfall in provincial treasury revenue created by a history of dependence on the whimsical energy market.
Solutions which favour maintaining the current level of expenditure for programs the government has a responsibility to provide focus on include two sources of revenue available to the government – personal income tax, particularly compromised in Alberta by the flat tax, and a sales tax.
Meanwhile, the most regressive form of taxation by the provincial government slips even further from public view. The provincial government continues to requisition approximately 50 per cent of the property taxes collected by municipalities.
This requisition must be met, even on behalf of delinquencies. In other words, our council is the tax collector for the provincial government. This money goes to the provincial treasury ostensibly to be pooled and redirected by equalizing formulae to pay for public education, a provincial responsibility which is not a service to property and has absolutely no connection to ability to pay.
The point has been made often in the past. Several editorials in the Calgary Herald were devoted to the obvious; even a former provincial treasurer, Steve West, went on record supporting the recommendation of a committee struck to examine the question of funding public education to separate entirely the connection.
Those recommendations were buried. In any overhaul of the province’s several sources of revenue available and a revue of its obligations and priorities, the long-outstanding regressive provincial market value assessment as a basis for treasury revenue must be addressed.
We have all recently received our municipal property assessment. Further in this annual ritual a mill rate will be applied to that amount and the annual individual tax bill will be presented. Later this year a provincial election will be held.
In Canmore, the last time I asked, circa 2001, “the citizens of Canmore were paying the highest residential education tax per capita in the province”.
Canmore $484/per capita
Banff $364/per capita
Calgary $284/per capita
Cochrane $229/per capita
Edmonton $204/per capita
Wood Buffalo $4157 per capita
During the six years of 1997-2002, $116.1 million flowed out of the Bow Valley to the provincial treasury, requisitioned by the government to meet part of its responsibility to fund the province’s public schools. In all, $34.3 was paid into the Bow in education grants based on several generators, principally enrollment. The net outflow from the Bow Valley during that period was $81.8 million; Canmore ratepayers’ share of loss to the community was $19.6 million.
Banff receives a special consideration “based on inflated property values.” That placed our MLA at the time in a conflict of interest position when she was appointed to a two-person, no-meet committee to consider alternate methods of funding while her considerable family residence was in Banff.
Canmore’s cost of living shelter index was second only to Fort McMurray at the time. Canmore’s average assessed home value to average income was considerably higher than all but Jasper, 7.0 compared to the provincial average of 4.9; a clear indication at that time of the regressive nature of tying the financing of public education to a province-wide municipal property assessment.
I, for one, would have up to date figures in order to intelligently confront candidates on their opinions and plans to address this archaic and discriminatory method of financing a very clear provincial responsibility with absolutely no ties to our places of residence or our individual ability to pay.
David Owen,
Canmore
