The Alberta Legislature building in Edmonton on June 23, 2015. Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images
The Alberta government is directing hundreds of millions of dollars from the proceeds of a settled lawsuit against Canada’s three largest tobacco companies into its Heritage Savings Trust Fund.
The payout, finalized last week, awards $24.7 billion to Canada’s provinces and territories. Alberta will receive approximately $3.1 billion of the settlement and got $713 million up front after deducting legal fees late last month in its first payment.
In a Sept. 9 statement to The Epoch Times, a spokesperson for Alberta’s Office of Treasury Board and Finance wrote that the initial $713 million was invested in July into the province’s Heritage Savings Trust Fund as part of a larger $2.8 billion contribution.
“With this investment, the total value of the Heritage Fund reached $30 billion,” Alberta’s Office of Treasury Board and Finance wrote. “The Heritage Fund is designed to protect resources for Alberta’s future. That includes ensuring the health care system is strong enough to support Albertans impacted by tobacco use.”
Alberta under Premier Danielle Smith has set a goal of growing its Heritage Fund to $250 billion in the next 25 years.
Critics such as senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society Rob Cunningham say the province’s usage of the Heritage Fund is too vague and the payouts from the settlement should be specifically allocated to provincial efforts to prevent and educate about the health harms of smoking.
“We do not know how it’s going to be spent in the future. There’s no commitment or allocation at all. It could be paid for deficit reduction in the future. You know, it could build roads and sewers,” Cunningham said in a Sept. 9 interview with The Epoch Times.
Although Cunningham noted the court’s decision on the lawsuit happened this past March when it was too late for Alberta to reallocate the funds, he said that the province could allocate the money more specifically this spring for the next portion of the payout.
“There’s a historic opportunity for the government to reduce the smoking, reduce vaping, and to reduce the health effects from smoking, and it should invest a significant proportion of these new funds into strengthening its tobacco control strategy,” Cunningham said.
“The more that we can reduce smoking, the more that we’re going to improve the health of Albertans and save lives, but also reduce future health care costs,” he added.
