Electoral reform among key legislation passed in spring session

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Ryan Dahlman

By Trevor Busch
Commentator/Courier
editor@tabertimes.com

Reflecting on the most recent session of the legislature, Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter singled out the changes made to Alberta’s electoral laws as one of the key pieces of legislation that raised concerns among many citizens.

Bill 54, or the Election Statutes Amendment Act, was passed during the session and significantly lowers the threshold of support needed for citizen initiatives and constitutional referendums. All initiatives, including constitutional, are now only required to meet a threshold of 10 per cent of voters in the last general election, rather than the previous 20 per cent.  

Hunter maintains the legislation is largely about preserving the integrity of the voting process for Alberta citizens.

“I think that there’s certainly some questions about the changes we made to the election laws. I think that what’s key with this one is to make sure that when people cast a ballot, they know that every ballot can be trusted, that that vote is trusted, that we know that it would be counted. And so that was really the goal and the intent of the changes that we made with the Election Statutes Amendment Act. The reality is that there are some situations where we’re going to need to have some provisions – like for instance a senior citizen doesn’t have their mail go to where they live, versus a son or a daughter’s house – there might be some concern, but remember that we can have provisions for those small scenarios where that needs to be fixed. You need to be living in Alberta for six months. You need to be a Canadian citizen, and you need to be able to prove that, and so that’s kind of what we’re getting back to is those initial, original rules. So I think that that’s going to be helpful to be able to make sure that Albertans feel safe when they vote, that they can have confidence that their vote is being properly counted.”

With many Albertans still struggling with the cost of living, the UCP also implemented a promised tax cut despite a $5.4 billion projected deficit in Budget 2025. 

“Affordability is probably still the number one thing that I hear from my constituents coming into the office,” said Hunter. “And so we made a campaign promise to bring in a tax cut to more Albertans, and the average Albertan will receive about $750, so a family receives about $1,500 in tax cuts per year. And so when you do your taxes next year for 2025 that will be realized, and you’ll be able to enjoy that tax cut. Now, I know that the cost of food and everything seems to be going up still. It went up quite a bit due to supply issues throughout the world brought up by COVID, so we tried to address that. That is something to be proud of. Conservatives like to give tax cuts, and so that’s what we’re going to do.”

Hunter admits that while deficits are anathema for conservatives, they sometimes are necessary for governments to achieve short-term goals.

“We have a projected $5.4 billion deficit to a $75 billion budget. And really, a lot of that is dependent upon that deficit. I don’t like to see deficits. I know our intrepid Minister of Finance (Nate Horner) doesn’t like to see that, or our premier, but remember that that’s a forward looking document, and so we’re hopeful that if the price of oil doesn’t dip down too low and stays where we need it to be, that the royalties that we receive off of that oil is going to be beneficial to see if we don’t have that deficit. So stay tuned.”

While an escalation in the war between Iran and Israel shouldn’t be considered a positive development for a number of reasons, with Alberta’s government revenues tied so directly to oil and gas, the conflict is likely to have an impact on the province’s bottom line with global oil prices now projected to rise sharply in the near future.  

“It hasn’t looked good – the oil prices have been quite low – so who knows? We’ve got a situation growing now between Iran and Israel and so who knows, the price of oil could skyrocket due to that. So that’s going to be part of it. The other part is going to be what is our Canadian-U.S. dollar exchange? And then the last part is what that differential will be between West Texas Intermediate, and the Western Canada Select. Those three parts really have a very profound effect on our budget. So we watch those very closely and try to make sure that we were projecting well, as nobody has a crystal ball.”

Recently appointed as Associate Minister of Water, Hunter was tight lipped about what the portfolio will entail until he has received a mandate letter from Premier Danielle Smith.

“That should be coming shortly. I don’t want to preempt that. I’ll just say that I’m quite excited about that role. As you know, water is extremely important to us down in southern Alberta. I’ve been working on the Aquatic Invasive Species Task Force. I chaired that, and so the work that I was doing on that, I can let you know that that will certainly be continuing with this new role, and there’ll be other things as well.”

Hunter is also taking on the role of chief government whip.

“There’s no mandate better to that. This is the responsibility of managing caucus. So that is my role now is to manage caucus, and I will also be the chair of caucus as well. Some jurisdictions the chair and the whip roles are broken out, but in Alberta, we have both those goals as the whip.”