Photo: Travis Toews Facebook

By Shane Clausing

toews year-end interview

Year-End Interview: Travis Toews

Dec 28, 2021 | 7:00 AM

Grande Prairie-Wapiti MLA and Minister of Finance for Alberta Travis Toews feels 2021 was a year of growth and challenges for the province and Peace Region.

While COVID-19 restrictions and historic drought conditions dominated the headlines for the first half of 2021, the last half of the year brought with it growth.

Toews tells EverythingGP, the Peace Region helped lead the way for Alberta getting the province back into business.

“We’re projecting real GDP growth to be over six per cent this year, we’ll lead the nation in growth, which is very positive. We’ve seen a recovery in energy prices, and of course that has had a very positive impact on our region in terms of additional exploration and production in the energy industry,” he explained.

One of the ways the Peace Region helped lead the way this year is after Northern Petrochemical announced plans to construct a $2.5 billion methanol and ammonia production facility in the Greenview Industrial Gateway.

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“Over the last few months, we’ve seen announcement after announcement of investment intentions in the province. In fact, a few weeks ago we had a $7 billion week in terms of investment intentions in the province,” Toews said.

“That included the $2.5 billion northern petrochemical plant. We’re sitting on the cusp of almost $1 billion of agriculture investment landing here. We’ve seen an excellent year in the forestry industry.”

Toews mentioned the province has also seen tech investments in the past year, which will help grow the province’s economy well into the future.

“Broadly, I’ve been incredibly encouraged with what I am seeing in Alberta. We’ve recovered all of the jobs that we’ve lost during the pandemic. That means this recovery is going to be benefiting more and more Albertans,” he added.

“I know the recovery has been unlevel to some degree and I know perhaps some Albertans and some in the Grande Prairie region haven’t yet benefited from the recovery, but our focus will be to continue to position the province for disproportionate investment attraction economic growth, that we believe will result in opportunity and additional prosperity for all Albertans.”

Currently, the province is anticipating the province’s deficit will be $5.8 billion this year as opposed to $18.2 billion, which is huge for getting the provincial economy back rolling.

As mentioned earlier, the province saw historic drought conditions which led to many farmers struggling to sell their crop this year.

Toews calls 2021 “a mixed bag” for agriculture.

While it was a difficult year for farmers, Toews says most will be planning for a bounce-back in 2022.

“It would appear that commodity prices are going to stay high at least in the short and intermediate term.”

“Hopefully, we can grow a good crop in our region, the Peace Region, as well as the province overall next year and take advantage of these excellent commodity prices because, at the same time, our costs are going up.”

Toews adds farmers are making plans for next year.

“Hopefully, they had their crops insured. We pushed AFSC, over the course of the summer and fall, to assess crops as quickly as possible so that farmers could benefit from the insurance that they’ve taken.”

“Hopefully most are going to be able to plan for next year and hopefully get a great crop into these prices.”

Toews says AgriRecovery did bring some relief for livestock producers who had to buy feed and is hoping that, along with crop insurance, helped the primary producers.