Alberta bill aims to help prospective parents with adoption costs

The Alberta government wants to offer supplementary healthbenefits for newly adopted children to encourage more parents to adopt within the province.

The bill proposes offering dental, drug, vision and other supplemental health benefits for Alberta children adopted either from government care or through a private adoption agency.

The province wants to cover $6,000 of the costs of private adoptions for families with incomes under $180,000, and increase the provincial adoption credit by nearly $4,000.

The measures are part of Bill 10, the Financial Statutes Amendment Act, 2023, introduced Thursday in the Alberta legislature.

"Parents that would look to adopt a child can do that with sufficient support," Finance Minister Travis Toews told reporters.

"And these children, after they've found their new family, can have additional support through our health-care system."

The measures do not apply to children who are adopted from outside Alberta. The government said no other province offers supplementary health benefits to adopted children as proposed under the bill.

Balanced budgets

The main purpose of Bill 10 is to implement technical measures Toews introduced with the 2023-24 budget last month. The measures include enshrining new rules for handling budget surpluses, and bolstering the Heritage Savings Trust Fund.

If the bill is passed, future governments would be required to present balanced budgets, barring a significant disaster or large drop in revenue.

As for surpluses, the proposed fiscal framework would require that half of the money go ward debt repayment. The other half could be parked in an Alberta Fund for the government to decide what to do with it. The options are to move some or all of it to the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, spend it on a one-time initiative, or pay down more debt.

Currently, any investment income generated by the Heritage Fund above what is needed to account for inflation goes into general government revenue.

Bad fiscal management, NDP says

Bill 10 proposes the investment income stay in the fund. But there is a catch. Treasury board, a committee chaired by the finance minister of the day, could still authorize a withdrawal as long as inflation is accounted for.

NDP finance critic Shannon Phillips called the Alberta fund a slush fund to help buy votes in the upcoming provincial election.

"The fine print on the fund allows the UCP to spend the projected surplus for their re-election before the bills come due at the end of the fiscal year," Phillips said in a news release. "This is bad fiscal management and is exactly how you squander a resource boom."

The measures in Bill 10 echo past legislation aimed at restraining governments from spending all theirresource revenues when times are good and oil prices are high.

The Progressive Conservatives under Premier Ralph Klein passed balanced budget legislation only to repeal it four years later.

Toews acknowledged that laws can be repealed or ignored. He told reporters that his fiscal framework is sensible and flexible enough that any politician who dared to ignore it would face the wrath of Alberta voters.

"If we bring in thoughtful fiscal rules, then for government to move outside and effectively revoke those rules, there would be and should be a political cost," Toews said. "And that's the goal with this fiscal framework."

Other measures in Bill 10 propose changes to the Local Government Fiscal Framework,which will replace the Municipal Sustainability Initiative next year.

The amendment proposes tying funding for municipalities at 100 per cent of the percentage change in provincial revenues, instead of 50 per cent currently in the act. Funding changes will reflect changes from three years ago to give municipalities time to plan for changes in grant funding.