Jobs & The Economy

Alberta has built enviable prosperity through its oil and gas economy, but now the global shift away from fossil fuels requires us to diversify. Meanwhile the growing unreliability of the American administration means we need to reorient our business activity to become less dependent on the U.S. We also urgently need strategies to address the impact AI will have on employment, especially for young people.

It’s time to:

• Reject separatism, which harms jobs and investment
• Reject Premier Danielle Smith’s focus on deepening our economic integration with the United States (with Trump in charge, now is clearly NOT the time to tie ourselves more closely to the Americans)
• Adopt a Buy Canadian/Buy Alberta policy for all of the Alberta government and public agencies
• Create a publicly owned crown corporation to lead the diversification of our provincial economy
• Pivot our oil and gas sector from a focus producing feedstock for fuels to producing feedstock for materials (which was the key takeaway from the AFL’s groundbreaking report, “Skate to Where the Puck is Going”)
• Support young workers by making postsecondary tuition free, creating a Youth Climate Corps, and reintroducing programs to subsidize summer and early-career employment
• Require oil and gas companies to use their own money to clean up their decommissioned facilities
• Create a publicly owned crown corporation to oversee public infrastructure development (with a mandate to ensure the widest possible community benefit of this work)
• Develop a recruitment campaign to attract the scientists and researchers who are being driven away from America by the Trump administration
• Launch a provincial commission to make policy recommendations on the impact of AI on jobs and the labour market