{"id":1367,"date":"2007-04-20T15:14:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-20T19:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2007-04-20T15:14:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-20T19:14:00","slug":"albertas-ndp-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1367","title":{"rendered":"Alberta’s NDP Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those outside of Alberta may have missed it, but something truly remarkable happened in our province yesterday (no, not the snow storm or the Flames win – both small miracles in their own right).<\/p>\n

Remember the complaints <\/a>by some on the right about Flaherty’s<\/span> 6-8% increase in spending? Well, yesterday, Lyle Oberg<\/span> brought in the first Stelmach<\/span> budget which calls for an unprecedented<\/span> 17% increase in spending<\/a><\/strong>. This may very well make Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives the authors of one of the most free spending budgets in Canadian history<\/em>. After years of gargantuan surpluses, it is projected to shrink to $2.2 billion this year, $1.4 billion in 2008 and $925 million in 2009…that’s assuming no out of budget spending and oil prices which match the forecasts. Most alarmingly, instead of banking the surpluses to the Heritage Fund, 2\/3 of all surpluses will be spent onto miscellaneous<\/span> new projects while only 1\/3 will actually be saved.<\/p>\n

Despite the massive spending, there’s no real focus. No plan to make Alberta’s Universities world class. Not a penny for the environment. No plan to diversify the economy. No tax cuts. No end to the health care premiums. Not since the Alexei Yashin<\/span> contract has so much been spent for so little return.<\/p>\n

But enough from me, I’ll let Rick Bell <\/a>do the talking:<\/p>\n

This is a mess. The Tories cannot say it is a mess because they created it.<\/p>\n

Many Albertans, and many Calgarians<\/span>, cannot say it is a mess because they supported the making of the mess, where loyalty to the Tories trumped common sense.<\/p>\n

But make no mistake about it. The numbers aren’t lying. In the richest province in the land, we have a mess.<\/p>\n

So naturally, there’s all kinds of spending on catch-up construction, though off the top there is a big caution.<\/p>\n

A good chunk of change is for projects already approved and announced. Lyle Oberg<\/span>, the finance minister, admits there isn’t a “huge amount” for new projects.<\/p>\n

And well over a billion bucks covers the costs going through the roofs not yet built because the Tories, in their wisdom, wait to bang nails big-time until the economy is good and hot.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The most interesting thing about this budget is that it opens up a ton of space for the Liberals to pass the Tories on the right (appropriate since as Transport Minister, Ed Stelmach proposed moving the “fast lane” on highways to the right). A focus on long term planning, the Heritage Fund or tax cuts right now from the ALP could very well force a few on the right to hold their nose and vote Liberal…at the very least it would make it very hard for them to justify their continued support of the PCs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those outside of Alberta may have missed it, but something truly remarkable happened in our province yesterday (no, not the snow storm or the Flames win – both small miracles in their own right). Remember the complaints by some on the right about Flaherty’s 6-8% increase in spending? Well, yesterday, Lyle Oberg brought in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,49,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2008-alberta-election","category-alberta-politics","category-budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}