Our province cannot find the path to prosperity by freezing public spending, as UCP Leader Jason Kenney is calling for.
Naturally, every effort must be made to ensure each tax dollar invested has a clear potential for a return on that investment, and to take every measure to avoid wanton waste.
But neglecting to keep up with updating and improving the multitude of services and facilities Albertans have come to expect is in the long run only going to hamper growth and be counterproductive.
As the population continues to increase, so too will the demand for more seats in classrooms and beds in hospitals, as well as teachers and health professionals.
Meanwhile, offering tax cuts to the wealthiest people and profitable billion-dollar enterprises would only compound the economic problems our province faces.
As witnessed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax breaks, a handout to a country’s richest and most powerful does not necessarily result in more jobs, at least not good ones, and only translates to temporary stock market gains that don’t benefit the millions of people who can barely afford rent and groceries, never mind an investment portfolio. This has actually been painfully clear since Ronald Reagan introduced trickle-down economics decades ago — a policy largely picked up throughout much of the Western World. Since then, inequality has soared to new heights.
Instead, our neighbours to the south punched a massive hole in their already soaring deficit while the one per cent gladly proceeded to buy back stocks to further grow their already astronomical fortunes.
Meanwhile, three-quarters of Americans have previously expressed a belief that the one per cent should pay a fairer share.
That simply is not a model we should aspire to emulate. Yet in Canada, fewer than 100 people own as much wealth as the bottom third in this nation, or about 12 million people.
Putting more money into the pockets of the one per cent by offering them tax breaks will not magically materialize into desperately needed funding for hospitals, schools, emergency services and infrastructure. In fact government revenues will only be further eroded and projects like the future Sundre hospital would for the foreseeable future remain elusive.
And considering our province’s population is only increasing, freezing these services will inevitably result in growing pains and seizures, even potentially sending us back into recession.
Folks who bemoan big government seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. While they claim to want a smaller government, they also tend to want more teachers and schools, more doctors and hospitals, more police officers and emergency personnel, better roads and infrastructure, and on and on.
But conservatives had nearly half a century to make this province a prosperous promised land. Instead, they time and again unapologetically favoured corporate interests at the expense of average Albertans, shortsightedly relying almost exclusively on soaring but volatile prices of oil, along the way shortchanging us all by failing to save for the future.
So we should be particularly wary about being in a rush to run back to that kind of governance model, which is essentially the cause that Kenney is championing.
