About a decade ago, toxic financial assets, due to U.S. banking deregulation, dragged the world into recession. Unemployment spiked, investment vanished, and governments did what they could to absorb the shock. In Canada, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty convinced his government that investments, not cuts, would be necessary to see Canada through recession. Despite the ideological objections of many in the Conservative Party to running deficit budgets, The Hon. Jim Flaherty’s advice carried the day.
In late 2014, recession was again upon us, the result of falling oil prices and over-production of the resource in the Middle East, and Alberta largely bore the blow. The PC government of the day tabled its annual budget – which (wisely) included an end to the only flat tax system left in Canada, but also included cuts and increased cost pressures to areas such as the charitable tax credit, the Office of the Youth Advocate, Education and Health. For this, and other reasons, the PC government and their 40+ year dynasty came down, felled by angry voters and an early election call of their own choosing.
Political change came on a massive scale just as the next recession hit. Unemployment rose, charities were flooded with demand for assistance, investment was leaving the energy sector, and the largest natural disaster in Canadian history, was one year from striking.
In a recession, more than ever, people need access to physical and mental health care, education, affordable housing, disability, seniors, and other services. The NDP government could have chosen to save money by increasing tuition costs, laying off teachers and health care workers, by halting capital projects, increasing class sizes and ER wait times, tabling new user fees and reducing the tax credit for charitable contributions. Wisely, they did not. The government buoyed the province and countered the economic hit to the private sector by not cutting essential services, and not sending more businesses, contractors, people and families into crisis.
Our provincial government responded expertly to the Fort McMurray fire. They’ve earned federal support for new pipelines and supported private sector investment in pipeline capacity. Despite reduced provincial revenue to fund services, business taxes have been cut, and a middle-class family in Alberta will still pay thousands less in provincial taxes than they would in any other province – or so says the finance experts who publish these numbers for us non-economists to Google.
After reading the “Smoke and Mirrors” editorial (Gazette, March 3), as a resident of St. Albert, I had to respond. The opinion of the paper is vastly contrary to the facts as I’ve experienced them in this community: we have new schools, a hospital and publicly funded services that didn’t get cut to oblivion, a new neo-natal IC unit and my child’s teachers and health care workers are still employed. Contrary to the smoke and mirrors opinion, these are concrete realities that have earned the NDP my vote and gratitude.
Alice Sears, St. Albert
