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What have you done?

Since becoming Premier, Mr. Prentice has stated he must regain the trust of Albertans.

Since becoming Premier, Mr. Prentice has stated he must regain the trust of Albertans.

But what has he done to do that?

Since offering himself up as a candidate for the head of the Progressive Conservative party, a series of steps have followed, which is outlined as:

Step 1 – gives away free party memberships;

Step 2 – back room deals with a big group of Wildrose Party MLAs to take away his largest and most effect opposition;

Step 3 – hands in our wallets.

And he is very neatly sidestepping the question of an early election, which will cost us some more if he goes ahead with one.

Isn’t that a great way to manage fiscal control.

As for the five per cent cut he and all MLAs are taking – a symbolic gesture at best after the pay hike increases in previous years.

Has anybody heard what the intended time frame for that was going forward?

Who’s to say the dollars to these MLAs won’t be increased in some other way?

And how would we ever know without an effective opposition?

How does any of this rebuild trust?

In the Athabasca-Sturgeon-Redwater Report (Winter 2015) that Jeff Johnson MLA mailed out, it state that “non renewable resource revenue accounts for about 21 per cent of total revenue for our province of which bitumen and conventional oil royalties make us 80 per cent of that.”

Even if we lost all of it, which we haven’t, why is Premier Prentice looking to make a 27 per cent change – nine per cent cuts, nine per cent new revenue, nine per cent coming out of funds previous saved.

Premier Prentice has said, “We can run to some degree a deficit. Beyond that we have to cut expenses and increase revenues. There are no alternatives and we need to do it in a balanced way.”

Mr. Premier Prentice – if you put in a sales tax or hikes in taxes like personal income tax, service fees, etc – then it would only be fair and balanced to hike royalty rates on our non renewable resources and hike corporate taxes.

After the boom, tax credits and subsidization for those two sectors are partly to blame for the current mess we are in.

To expect citizens of Alberta alone to shoulder the burden of a party’s poor economic management, fiscal mismanagement which includes overspending, overpromising, past corruption and favoritism in order to get elected is not a way of building trust.

Mr. Premier Prentice’s latest comment that every person in Alberta helped create this deficit so everyone should have to help pay, while planning to exclude royalty rate increases and corporate tax increases, is a perfect example of the continued favoritism and the representation of a select few while the rest of us pay.

No, Mr. Premier Prentice, this is not the way to build trust.

So, NO, NO, NO to a sales tax and NO to any new taxes or the raising of old ones that will be born solely by the people.

Shame on us if we continue to believe that Mr. Prentice wishes to regain the trust of Albertans if this is the way he’s starting out.

Jacqueline Littler

Boyle

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