In 1998, oil dipped below $15. The budget was balanced. Some years ago, more than once oil dipped below $30. Budgets were balanced. During most of these years, Alberta’s infrastructure spending far exceeded the national average.
Today, that respect for taxpayers is gone from the PC Party. Wildrose is the only party in the Legislature standing against Jim Prentice’s 59 tax increases. We are also the only party with a definite plan that will balance the budget by 2017—without raising taxes, and without cutting frontline services. Some are asking, “How will we do it?”
Wildrose will eliminate 3,200 upper-level, loaded, government management positions. We’ll end corporate welfare. No grants or loan guarantees for corporations. None. We’ll eliminate sole-source contracts that have enriched so many friends of the PCs, and we’ll guarantee open-bidding processes on all major government contracts.
We’ll end “March Madness,” the bureaucratic spending spree that wastes millions when government departments and agencies empty bank accounts at the end of the fiscal year, fearing their budgets will be cut if they don’t.
The PC practice of running around at election time saying, “Vote for me and I’ll build you a _______ [fill in the blank] will be buried. Wildrose will require full public disclosure of infrastructure priority lists, including costs, and specific reasons for the timing of each project.
The PC Cabinet pay hike of 30% will be rolled back, as well as the 8% hike that was given to MLAs. All final votes in the Legislature will be free votes. We’ll ban MLAs from being elected under one party, and then crossing to another, without first facing their constituents in a by-election. We will implement recall legislation, and true fixed election dates. This manipulating of election dates for political advantage will be over.
Savings from cuts to extravagant AHS executive pay, perks, and severance, will immediately be used to cut healthcare wait times. Wildrose will expand patient-based funding because we believe funding should go with the patient, to the service provider of the patient’s choice. This could encourage community-based service providers and non-profits to enter the field.
Wildrose will pass a legislative motion to entrench the property rights of all Albertans into the Canadian Constitution—keeping in mind that the term “property rights” also refers to protecting legal instruments such as leases, licenses, and contracts, that according to recent PC legislation (Bill 36), Cabinet now has the power to extinguish, while denying people access to compensation and the courts.
For years, the Alberta government’s objective was to empower people so individuals, families, and businesses could save, invest, and prosper. What we all came to know as the Alberta Advantage was never necessarily about geography, or even about oil; the Alberta Advantage was always about fiscally-responsible government.
Regrettably, successive PC governments have deliberately erased the Alberta Advantage. Jim Prentice’s recent budget was the final installment in a ten-year slide carried out by irresponsible PC Premiers. Prentice now wants record high debt ($30 billion by 2019), the biggest overall tax hike Alberta has ever seen, and policies that protect and shelter government inefficiency, rather than expose it, and fix it.
It’s time for change.