Alberta bill aims to help prospective parents with adoption costs

The Alberta government wants to offer supplementary health benefits 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 on Thursday. 

"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. 

The main purpose of Bill 10 is to enshrine new rules for handling budget surpluses and bolstering the Heritage Savings Trust Fund that Toews introduced with the 2023-24 budget last month. 

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 half of it go toward 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. 

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. "