When the NDP and Liberals accuse the provincial government of treating the public purse like their own limitless supply of monopoly money, you know there really is a problem!
Budget 2011 is the latest in a string of damaging fiscal decisions made by a big-spending party that has lost any remaining right it had to call itself fiscally-conservative.
The numbers are painful.
A $3.4 billion deficit, three times higher than what they predicted it would be in the last budget. An additional $2.7 billion to be spent on provincial capital projects that isn’t included in the government’s deficit brings the total cash shortfall to an astronomical $6.1 billion. This shortfall will be paid for out of our savings fund built up over the last oil and gas boom.
That savings fund was at $15 billion just last year; by the end of this year it will be a paltry $5 billion and only a year or two away from total extinction.
Our Heritage Fund, when adjusted for inflation, is now worth as much as it was in 1981; and the PC plan for balancing the budget is based on the hope that all-time-record-high resource and income tax revenues are just around the corner.
Oh yeah, they also hiked user fees for vehicle registrations by 20 per cent and for registering a new business by 150 per cent.
The bottom line is this: The PC spending addiction has squandered almost every cent saved over the last 15 years, has depleted our Heritage Fund to 1981 levels, and the government’s plan to balance the budget consists of praying for $140 a barrel oil prices and the magical doubling of provincial GDP growth.
Less than 24 hours after the PCs delivered this budget, the Wildrose Alliance delivered a Balanced Budget Alternative document (you can view the full document at www.wildrosealliance.ca). In it, our party outlines a plan to balance the budget this year without resorting to cuts to health, education, seniors programs or other vulnerable Albertans. We propose accomplishing this by:
• Limiting the increase in spending for core social programs by the rate of inflation plus population growth (which is 2.2 per cent). This means a modest increase of a few hundred million for our health, education, social supports, seniors, child services and other key social programs while freezing or moderately lowering less critical departmental budgets. This would save us $900 million when compared to the continued massive PC hikes to core program spending.
• Spreading the existing three-year capital plan over an extra year. This would mean that infrastructure spending this year would total roughly $4.2 billion (which is still slightly higher than the BC/Ontario/Quebec average). We would propose focusing that $4.2 billion on the most critical projects such as schools for Airdrie, Chestermere and Beaumont, continued work on the Calgary and Edmonton ring roads and the doubling of Highway 63 to Fort McMurray. We would also invest millions into expanding long-term care facilities for seniors currently living in hospitals, thereby freeing up thousands of new acute care beds in existing hospitals around Alberta. Doing so would allow us to postpone spending on new acute care facilities until we can actually find and pay for the health professionals needed to staff them.
• Cutting millions of wasteful PC pet projects and vote buying schemes such as the $2 billion carbon capture and storage program, $130 million for new MLA offices, tens of millions in direct grants to corporations, and shrinking the number of cabinet ministers from 24 to 16 to name a few.
These Wildrose proposals would result in a balanced budget for 2011, and put our province back on the road to financial health for both current and future generations.
One of the ballot questions for the 2012 election is becoming clear: Can we, as Albertans, really afford four more years of PC government financial management? The sea of red ink flooding the Legislature right now would suggest otherwise.
