While Minister of Infrastructure and Athabasca-Redwater MLA Jeff Johnson praised the release of his government’s 2012-13 budget as an investment in the province’s future, his local political opponents slammed the release for pandering to the electorate and overestimating future resource revenues.
Read by Finance Minister Ron Liepert at the Legislature last Thursday, the budget forecasts a deficit of $886-million for the year, with overall spending on the rise and $16.5 billion in infrastructure investment over the next three years.
It was that continued spending that Johnson pointed to as an example of the government doing its job to ensure stability in the province’s future.
“Today’s shortsighted decisions become tomorrow’s long-term problems,” Johnson said. “Albertans did not want us to cut, cut, cut just to balance the budget.”
He pointed to local projects such as the regional water line, the paving of Highway 827 and twinning of Highway 63, as initiatives to be followed through on.
“Under some budgets they could have been cut, but it doesn’t make any sense to do that,” he said. “We’re getting great value on the dollar and keeping Albertans working, which is very important for the economic recovery of the province.”
He also lauded his government’s promises kept with further spending on health care, education and support of the province’s most vulnerable people.
Those efforts will be targeted with three years of stable operating grants for the province’s post secondary institutions (including Athabasca University), a trio of primary care pilot projects (one possibly located in Slave Lake) and an increase in funding to the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped program.
Johnson also pointed to an initiative set out in Wednesday’s Throne Speech which will impact the area. He lauded the announcement of the Northern Alberta Development Strategy as a comprehensive plan that recognizes how critical the resource rich region is as the province’s economic driver.
All in all, the budget’s promises churn out the province’s highest ever year of spending, forecast at $41.1 billion dollars.
While the budget does not set out any tax increases, it does bank on huge gains in resource revenue in the coming years, a big problem for one of Johnson’s opponents in the upcoming election, Wildrose candidate Travis Olson.
“If you have a government predicting the biggest revenues in the province’s history and they can’t balance their budget, there’s no way they should be able to call themselves a conservative party and keep a straight face,” he said, while questioning the government’s ability to keep their promise of no tax increases when their revenue projections fall short.
He slammed the Progressive Conservatives for what he called fudging the numbers, hiding the true costs of capital projects over a number of years, and overestimating projections of natural resources which would see natural gas nearly doubling in price and a barrel of oil hitting $108 in the next three years.
Olson emphasized that even with the projected boom in revenue, the government fails to keep up its rainy day account.
“They’re still dipping into the Heritage Sustainability Fund. It defies all reason as far as anybody being fiscally prudent,” he said, referring to the fund that is sitting at less than 20 per cent of an all time high of $17 billion in 2007-08.
Offering up his party’s alternative budget, he said the Wildrose would have a more sustainable 2.5-per-cent increase in spending compared to the PC’s 6.9 per cent.
Their proposed plan would still see the hiring of 1,400 new teachers and 1,000 health care support workers, while addressing the glut of bureaucratic pay by reducing the number of management positions. He also said his party would aim to freeze public sector wages, with the province leading the way in what it pays its employees.
New Democratic candidate for the riding, Mandy Melnyk, agreed with Olson’s assessment that the budget’s projections are flawed.
In attendance at the legislature when the document was released, she said it was very clear the government was playing it safe in an election year.
“Fundamentally,I don’t think they’re being fair, or being clear with the financial picture,” she said, adding that the budget is an attempt to manipulate voters with promises they will be unable to follow through on. Melnyk said the government failed when it comes to this riding and others in the northern half of the province, questioning a seemingly aimless increase to funding directed at municipalities.
“We need to talk about the whole picture,” she said. “They talked about increased funding to municipalities but didn’t commit to what that funding would look like. What they really need to talk about is how we’re going to create initiatives to increase small business and housing capabilities so we can grow rural Alberta.”
Locally, she said, Johnson has failed to provide for the riding, specifically referring to 35 residents who must travel to Westlock or Edmonton for dialysis.
“Our population is aging. It’s more than likely we’ll see that number increase,” she said, also criticizing the lack of funding for a long-term care facility in Boyle and cuts to the senior-specific Affordable Supportive Living Initiative grant program.
“On a local level we need to start demanding specific services,” she said. “We have to fight really hard to make sure that that money trickles down to us.”
Overall, she said, Johnson did not do enough for the riding, offering herself up as a viable alternative to the PCer come election day this spring. “This is why we need a really assertive MLA for our area. Someone who will fight tooth and nail to make sure the money ends up where it’s needed most.”
