The provincial government’s revelation Monday that it’s now looking at a $3.1-billion deficit — double what was projected just three months ago — was greeted by the usual scorn from opposition parties and most tax-paying Albertans.
The dramatic increase was a combination of lower revenues, especially from the non-renewable resource side, and increased spending. Neither comes as a surprise. For years Alberta has ranked among the biggest spenders in the country. The latest figures (2009) put Alberta’s per capita spending at $10,923, second only to Newfoundland-Labrador.
That free-spending philosophy may have been fine when oil and gas revenues were at a peak and the government couldn’t find enough ways to spend all the money. The problem now is that revenue — especially from non-renewable resources — is off sharply but spending is not.
It would be easy to jump on the Conservatives for their continual failure to diversify the economy in any real significant way. Except, as the ScotiaBank Group noted in a report this summer, Alberta’s professional services industry such as medical sciences and nanotechnology has shown the most notable gains of any sector over the last five years.
What we can question the government for is its failure to control spending. Just say no. It’s a simple but catchy phrase. Yet for some reason, politicians these days are so afraid of all the special interest groups that they’ve forgotten that two-letter word.
Maybe it’s not their fault. The “Me” generation has grown into adulthood and they’re being raised to expect everything to be given to them. Somewhere along the line parents forgot how to say no to their kids. No should be the first word that children learn. It would better prepare them for the reality of life.
And it might have prevented today’s situation, where all levels of government are continually faced with unreasonable requests for money. Look at St. Albert, for example.
Just last week city council received requests from nine different groups looking for a total of more than $4.9 million for next year alone.
Whatever happened to people standing on their own feet? When did society decide that taxpayers should foot the bill for everyone’s pet project?
When was the last time a government of any stripe told some of these self-interest groups to get out of the trough and earn their own way by working and raising the money they come begging for year after year after year?
The problem, of course, is governments don’t have the will to reel in their own lavish spending ways, to balance their budgets. Hey, we ran a huge deficit last year and we still got re-elected so why shouldn’t we continue to run deficits?
“Deficits are like potato chips,” Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall once said, “bet you can’t stop at just one.”
It’s time politicians on all levels learned to say no. No to increased, wasteful spending in their own departments. No to special interest groups providing non-essential services. No to unions that think they deserve salary increases every year just because they still have jobs.
Just say no.
