I am writing to express my disappointment with the Alberta Progressive Conservative government’s budget.
This lack of spending control and bad planning is leading Alberta down the road to more future budgetary deficits. These deficits, confirmed by the PCs’ own estimates of huge spending increases and lower government revenues, will virtually exhaust the Alberta Sustainability Fund in three short years!
This poor planning will leave Alberta with nothing to combat any future unexpected downturn in the world economy. However, with prudent planning this could have been avoided.
The Wildrose has released an alternative budget, available on www.wildrosealliance.ca and linked through my own fan page www.rodfox.ca. This alternative budget shows that through leadership, this year’s deficit ($3.4 billion) could be eliminated in three short, simple steps.
Fix spending increases to the rate of inflation plus population growth. This would create predictable spending increases: for health-care ($301 million this year), education ($127 million this year), as well as sensible increases in advanced education, seniors services, community support services, and children/youth services.
Fixing spending increases in this sensible way would result in $900 million in savings this year.
By freezing government management bonuses, reducing government ministries from 24 down to 16 and ending corporate welfare programs, an addition $180 million could be cut from this budget.
By extending our capital spending budget (infrastructure) from three years just one more year, to four years, an additional $2.41 billion could be shaved from this year’s budget.
Instead of making three simple fiscally prudent financial decisions, this government is squandering away our savings in the Sustainability Fund.
They are increasing our cost of living through hikes to fees charged on Alberta government services like vehicle licence renewals, veteran’s licence plates and registering small businesses.
This PC government is unwilling to cut spending. They freely admit that it was overly optimistic in its last budget, with the result being continued deficits.
Unlike other provincial governments, which have been cutting spending and returning to balanced budgets sooner, the PCs are pushing Alberta’s return to budget surpluses further into the future.
What confidence do we have that the Alberta PCs won’t continue their pattern of mistakes?
Rod Fox
Wildrose Candidate for MLA
Lacombe Ponoka Constituency