Mayor Brown lamented that the 2024 provincial budget has short-changed the city for local projects. His comment that: "It's great to save money for the future but if we're not investing in our municipalities today, it's gonna cost even more tomorrow" is spot-on.
I suspect Mayor Brown was thinking of the 40th Avenue overpass for which the city had to pay 80 per cent of the costs on a project where, in other parts of the country, provinces usually share the burden with cities 50-50.
Yet, the government has allocated $20 billion for the oil patch so they can clean up unused wells which they were supposed to clean when the PC government was in power a decade ago.
The Alberta government has also opted out of the universal pharmacare program out of spite for the Liberal government, a decision which will cost every Albertan money in the short and long term. They expect everyone from the wealthiest to the poorest of us to be able to afford monthly insurance premiums to pay for what the rest of the country will get from paying taxes. It appears that private insurance companies and their profits are more important than our health.
Yet, they still run their multi-million dollar "war room" where backroom deals are made on behalf of coal mining companies, the oil patch, and private industries.
A few weeks ago it was reported that there will be no money to expand the urgent care centre until private money is put into it.
To make matters worse, the 2024 budget will not account for inflation or population growth, expecting us to foot more and more of the bill for government services and public projects out of our own pockets. It is a no-brainer that as the population increases there is a greater need for those services and we will need more projects.
Yet, UCP MLAs use tax money for expensive trips to convince US state governments to do what they are already doing: purchasing our oil and gas. Their message is that the oil patch is much more important than keeping up with population growth.
Do you see a pattern here, or am I reading too much into a government which makes "saving money today so we have to spend more tomorrow" a priority?
As Smith and her caucus pat themselves on their backs for a job "well done" we face increasing costs daily in a province where the government seems to care only for its reputation than doing what is right by us.
Think about it in the next election and ask: "are these people thinking about our costs or merely balancing the budget on our backs to make themselves look good"?
Ron Roffel,
Airdrie, AB
