The NDP government does not realize that neither a family nor a business can run on a deficit even though the province of Alberta can.
Ten months into her first term in office, Premier Rachel Notley clings to progressive political dreams – economic justice, energy alternatives to fossil fuels, worker organization in Alberta's non-union economy, tax reform to redistribute income down the earnings scale and enriched childcare benefits.
Ironically, the collapse of “evil oil” prices is sucking the life out of those dreams. The good-time Progressive Conservative governments of the past 20 years arguably had a spending problem that created deficits.
The NDP government has a revenue problem tied to the price of the very fossil fuels that they and their activist allies have demonized.
“Obviously I wish oil was at $100 a barrel and not hovering around $30,” Health Minister Sara Hoffman said when she admitted Feb. 21 that most of the mental health review recommendations would have to wait for better times.
Seventy years of Alberta economic history since the modern oil era started here with the Leduc discovery teaches that as the price of oil goes so goes the provincial government's ability to pay for health care, education, seniors' services and the like.
The March 8 throne speech pledged that the NDP will diversify the economy. Its first bill, Promoting Job Creation and Diversification, will give business better access to capital through a $1.5-billion Treasury Branch fund, build the agriculture and forestry industries and modernize and strengthen credit unions.
The speech also promised a new $3-billion carbon tax burden on the faltering economy to be paid for by Albertans who may or may not have lost their jobs and businesses, or are still trying to survive in the 25 per cent of the economy directly dependent on oil and gas prices, and the 75 per cent of the economy not in oil and gas production, service and supply, processing, transportation or marketing.
The speech from the throne promised an improved childcare benefit. It also promised to crack down on the “predatory” practices of the payday loan business and steering cash-stressed families to credit unions (who may or may not be able to or want to lend to them.)
The throne speech demonstrated that the government is politically tone deaf to the plight of Albertans who depend on food banks, family and friends.
The 2016-17 budget, to be delivered in mid-April, will be the next time that Notley tests her vision against reality and tries to sell the results to the peasants, the plebeians and the patricians.
None of us will be better off for her failure.
However, given the track record of the past 11 months, none of us can bank on her success.
Frank Dabbs is the editor of the Didsbury Review.
