I write because of a recent ill-informed letter to the editor from Mr. Tony Gull about federal equalization payments being unfair to Albertans, and listening today to Jason Kenney try to kick Justin Trudeau into the gutter for his speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.
I recommend Mr. Gull read Mr. Roger Lecuyer’s excellent summary in the Gazette (Your Views, Nov. 21) about equalization payments. A more in-depth explanation is written by Trevor Tombe of the Calgary University Institute of Public Policy and can be found on the internet. Considering Kenney’s jaundiced remarks last summer on the same subject, I recommend he also reads both these articles.
We moved to Alberta about 30 years ago, when Alberta was clawing its way out of a worldwide slump in oil prices. The phrase “Jingle Mail” was widely used to describe cash-strapped Albertans sending their house keys to their mortgage holders. Premier Ralph Klein – famous for his “Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark” comment – was the provincial hero as he cut provincial spending to the bone.
Some cuts were needed since the previous oil boom had led to widespread private, commercial and government overspending.
Klein tapped into Albertans’ seemingly primal fear of debt, however, to not only reduce spending but to severely cut back on essential services. His government made “user pay” the watchword for everything from school supplies, to hearing aids, to highway maintenance and to CPAP machines for people with respiratory illness. “Business Case” became a mantra. Public employees became his government’s punching bag. Privatization of government functions became the norm.
Klein and the Conservatives also tapped into this province’s proclivity to blame everyone but themselves for bad situations. It’s almost a provincial tradition that any “real Albertan” will firmly believe any calamity befalling them must somehow have been nefariously birthed by those evil-doing federals in Ottawa, or even more so by the Trudeau family! Klein played this card brilliantly. Kenney does likewise.
Albertans should understand that their fiscal situation, under any government, appears to be driven by their desire to get good public services but pay insufficient taxes to pay for them.
Mr. Tombe’s Calgary University treatise explains it simply. Albertans have a provincial deficit because we are the only province without a provincial sales tax. Who knew? Of course, it will be an act of self-destruction for any government to bring in a sales tax, but that’s the real reason our province runs deficits compared to all the others.
It appears Albertans are more willing to swallow the bait that it’s all someone else’s fault for our difficulties rather than swallow the needed medicine that provincial revenues need augmentation by a sales tax, as is recognized by everyone else. We’d have little or no deficit if we had a sales tax.
All the provincial government bashing, snivelling about equalization payments, complaining about federal government wrongdoing, and blaming everybody else for our difficulties are equivalent to a student’s excuse for not handing in their assignment because ... ”The dog ate my homework!”
I very strongly agree with Mr. Lecuyer that our province needs to diversify its economy to solve its fiscal woes. I think in the interim that a provincial sales tax of five per cent would provide immediate fiscal relief and help us while we work on economic diversification.
Before you vote for anyone in the next election, don’t ask them who they blame for our provincial fiscal situation but rather what they plan to do about it so that our essential services are not cut to the bone and put us in the same terrible situation that resulted from the Klein government cuts decades ago.
The Alberta government and its provided services are already run very, very efficiently. The answer to our fiscal woes is more money, not more cuts. We need to learn from history – not repeat it.
David Merritt, St. Albert
