Re: “Will Notley win a second term?” page 24, March 27 Gazette.
The writer makes excuses for (Premier Rachel) Notley by saying that she didn’t cause the crude oil price recession, but ignores the NDP’s study that said adding a carbon tax would decrease Alberta’s GDP by 0.5 per cent.
He ignores the NDP study leaked to the Sun (newspaper) that said increasing minimum wage to $15 would cause significant job loss. He ignores the feedlots closing because of changes to the WCB rules.
He ignores the 20 per cent increase in business tax, and greater increase in personal tax. Every economist will tell you that increasing taxes lowers GDP growth.
Let’s compare (former Premier Ralph) Klein and Notley. In Klein’s first four-year term, Alberta’s GDP grew faster than the national average, and added 164,500 new jobs.
Klein increased tax revenues from $11.5 billion to $15.5 billion, and cut spending from $14.6 billion to $14.5 billion by 1997.
The unemployment rate dropped from 9.6 per cent to 5.9 per cent. Notley still hasn’t brought back all the jobs lost, and our GDP growth is at the bottom of the barrel, averaged over the three years.
Notley killed the coal industry, and cost a couple of billion because those changes allowed electricity companies to legally opt out of the electricity pool.
Notley didn’t cause the oil price crash, but she did everything she could to make things worse.
Some people might claim that Klein did well because of rising oil prices, but oil prices actually fell in his first four years.
Bob Wilson
Calgary
