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Wildrose candidate takes harder look at 2015 budget

Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock Wildrose Party candidate Glenn van Dijken joined other party members in labeling the 2015 budget as Alberta’s “second NDP budget.
Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock Wildrose Party candidate Glenn van Dijken
Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock Wildrose Party candidate Glenn van Dijken

Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock Wildrose Party candidate Glenn van Dijken joined other party members in labeling the 2015 budget as Alberta’s “second NDP budget.”

In an editorial compiled by van Dijken and two other Wildrose representatives, he recalled the $41.1 billion budget tabled by former premier Alison Redford three years ago.

“It was an outrageous document that the National Post referred to as Alberta’s first NDP budget,” said van Dijken.

“Redford’s PCs opened the spending taps wide. Per capita spending reached a record $10,800, compared to $9,000 in Ontario and $8,400 in Quebec.”

At the time, the Redford government projected a $886 million deficit, but insisted it didn’t actually matter because the PCs had a “terrific long-term plan,” said van Dijken.

“We now know that Redford’s long-term plan was a fraud, and that her budget was a calculated act of political irresponsibility,” he added.

Before passing the 2015 budget, van Dijken said that Premier Jim Prentice travelled the province speaking to Albertans about how government was “too big, too wasteful and too expensive.” That message resonated with Albertans.

When it came time to pass the budget, however, van Dijken said the premier made a last minute decision to embrace tax hikes and deficit spending on a colossal scale.

“This year he is going to rack up the single biggest deficit in Alberta’s history – all inclusive, that one-year deficit will be roughly $8 billion,” he said.

van Dijken said he was particularly concerned about the province’s growing debt and “where we’re … headed.”

Albertans will continue paying $1 to $2 billion in interest each year because of the debt, he noted. By current estimates, it is projected that Alberta taxpayers will owe $31 billion by 2019.

“Prentice is pushing the province deeply into debt, guaranteeing that taxpayers will be obligated to pay billions in interest,” said van Dijken. “He’s creating an ongoing financial debacle that should cause every free-minded Albertan to shudder.”

The Wildrose candidate also criticized the numerous tax increases throughout the 2015 budget, which established new taxes or raised tax rates in 59 tax categories. He noted the cost to register a home with a $400,000 mortage will now quadruple.

Health care taxes in the form of premiums will now cost Albertans $400 million in this first year, he said, and every tank of gas and diesel is now more expensive due to a four-cent increase to taxes on fuel.

“Prentice’s budget, in a way that has never been seen in Alberta’s history, openly places a higher priority on protecting the size and cost of government than it does on upholding the fiscal viability of the province,” he said.

van Dijken also criticized Prentice spending $100,000 in taxpayer dollars to give a televised address.

“He’s using taxpayer dollars to do politicking, as I see it,” he said. “I think that it’s time the people spoke and said this is unacceptable behaviour.”

Brian Jean, who was elected as Wildrose Leader on March 28, also critized the budget as being “conservative” in name only.

“Who would have thought that an apparently conservative government would bring forward this budget?” Jean said in his leadership victory speech, noting that the government is taking too much direction from left-leaning thinkers.

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