Re: “Evisceration of the Alberta Advantage continues uninterrupted” (St. Albert Gazette Commentary, Sept. 19).
A 2013 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that even individuals with extraordinary memory ability were as susceptible as the general population to false memory and reconstructive memory distortions.
The best example of this in Alberta can found in the reminiscing of the 1990s Alberta Advantage – where the details have faded and all that surfaces is the thought of a “Paid in Full” sign, held up and surrounded by smiling faces.
Details, however, are hugely important in remembering our history and weighing the actual impact of past public policy, especially when opinion grows to recycle past policy for imposition on future generations. So here are some long-forgotten details, historical notes from the 1990s that continue to affect us today, despite editorials to the contrary.
In just two years of implementing deep, across-the-board cuts to multiple ministries, by 1995, the government of Premier Ralph Klein had reduced the combined number of short- and long-term care beds by more than 50 per cent. Particularly devastating were the cuts to long-term care, as Alberta went from providing more than 6,200 long-term beds to Albertans, to less than 800, an 88 per cent reduction.
Devastating cuts to social services drove individuals and families to charities such as local food banks in unprecedented numbers. Our prosperous province was home to Canada’s first food bank, and almost 80 food banks around the province have been formed since the 1980s to meet the growing issue of food insecurity in our communities.
The deficit you might not see, but instead feel as your car rumbles down the road, is Alberta’s infrastructure deficit, another legacy of the Alberta Advantage. The Alberta Road Builders and Heavy Construction Association has estimated that the cuts which began under Premier Klein in the early ’90s have left the province and its municipalities with an unpaid infrastructure deficit as high as $16 billion.
The Alberta Advantage of the ’90s saw teachers and nurses flee the province, overcrowded portables filled with overstuffed class sizes, learning in an environment that wasn’t well heated in the winter, nor cooled at all in the summer.
The Alberta Advantage of the ’90s nearly closed two active treatment hospitals in the capital region, though public backlash simply meant that one was left under-maintained to crumble, while another was reduced for years to a community health centre, flooding demand for health care into the emergency rooms of the U of A and Royal Alex hospitals. Could you imagine the capital region today, if Klein had realized his dream to close both the Misericordia and Grey Nuns hospitals? Frightening.
Our population isn’t concentrated in a temperate Lower Mainland, making centralized service delivery easy, and eliminating weather-related wear-and-tear on infrastructure that plagues Prairie provinces like Alberta. If B.C. can deliver services at a slightly reduced cost than Alberta under those conditions, it should be no surprise, though Mr. Nelson seems to find something world-changing in this fact.
Honesty from those who level criticism at our current government is perhaps found abroad, versus at home. We see Mr. Jason Kenney vacationing in India and proclaiming his admiration for Alberta’s current low rates of taxation, our educated workforce and the current investment climate. Congrats, Mr. Kenney, for noticing, even if you don’t proclaim your support for such things here at home. And congrats to Mr. Nelson, for demonstrating the apparent fact that memory is unreliable, and needs to be reinforced with historical facts, which I’m more than happy to provide for you here.
Albertans enjoy a government today that hasn’t cut public services and created long-term harm, that has sheltered our population from a rare but devastating market shock to our primary industry. A government that is paying down our infrastructure deficit while bringing our finances back to balance, that is lowering unemployment, growing the job market, and supporting the non-profit sector at a time when they, too, must help Albertans weather an economic storm. All while reducing the business tax rate and ensuring that Albertans enjoy one of the lowest rates of taxation in the country.
All of this adds up to the real Alberta Advantage we enjoy today, not the mythical one of years past that left far too many Albertans behind.
Tom Genore, St. Albert
