Good morning, St. Albert. Welcome to Premier Jim Prentice’s vision of your future. One where you will finally pay the piper for all of those good times you have been having.
Because, as you’ve now been told, you haven’t been paying your share of all those services you have enjoyed over the years. Now the province will be reaching into a lot of wallets and purses to extract as many extra pennies as they can to make up for bitumen revenues which have fallen by 73 per cent, that will leave us with a $5-billion deficit this year alone.
The new premier appears to be protecting the poor with progressive income tax measures that aim the biggest increases at those who make more than $100,000 a year. This is a good thing, as is limiting the so-called health levy to those earning more than $50,000 a year and not raising corporate taxes at this time because they could very likely lead to job losses. As businesses point out, ultimately there is only one real taxpayer who will pay for increased goods and services.
From a municipal standpoint, the budget appears to be more or less neutral, though Mayor Nolan Crouse worries what will come next year. Infrastructure spending and new schools will go ahead as promised. The library will receive some funding and a small amount of money from increased traffic fines will go into city coffers. But all of this does not eliminate dark clouds from the horizon. St. Albert’s city manager Patrick Draper is worried about what may happen when people start to lose jobs: “They are talking about fairly large numbers.”
This is where this budget starts to fall apart. Is anyone kidding themselves that asking the health system to absorb nearly $1 billion in growth pressures is not going to lead to longer wait times, for instance? And while new schools will still be built, it looks as if they will have to get by with 244 fewer support staff and a three-per-cent cut in funding. That may not seem like much, but it is not a reach to predict larger class sizes, reduced programming, fewer staffed libraries and less classroom help for children with disabilities and learning disabilities. While the government has said no teachers will but cut, it also hasn’t promised funding new ones. While teachers may be safe for now, it is safe to say the next round of salary negotiations will likely be a corker right out of the B.C. government handbook.
Let’s not forget that this budget is also the highly political platform the Prentice government will parade before voters in the provincial election he is expected to call in the coming days.
The old saying, "we get the government we deserve," is very apt. We blame the government for mismanaging during the good times. Then, when times are good, we collectively stick out our hand and demand our fair share. The ridiculous cycle has been repeated for 40 years. Every premier before Prentice has stated Alberta needs to diversify its economy to get away from the dependence on oil. Albertans have seen this movie over and over, and we keep lining up at the box office for more of the same.
The real test will come when oil returns to $100. Will the province have the stomach to stick with the long-term plan to wean us off oil royalties when people have their hands out asking for a share? Will the electorate also be able to stay the course and stop asking for more whenever times are good? We all have to do our part.
