Five months after taking office, Rachel Notley and Alberta’s NDPs were on the hot seat last week delivering their first provincial budget.
With record debt and high spending on the agenda coupled with low oil prices, the announcement doesn’t sit well with Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken and his Wildrose Party.
“From the Opposition standpoint, we are concerned about the direction we are taking in the province,” van Dijken said.
“We’re concerned there’s no restraint to spending and a lack of a desire to find efficiencies, to build efficiencies, to be able to improve delivery [of services] … we just continue down the path of keep spending.”
Van Dijken said with all the factors added up, including the $6.1 billion debt forecasted for 2015/16 and the nearly $40 billion that will be racked up over the next four years, it’s not good news for Albertans.
“It’s risky economics, record taxes, [and] record debt, all at the same time,” said the MLA.
“This is a pathway to disaster. If there are any bumps on the road … it leads us even further into difficulty.”
A positive from the budget for van Dijken, the shadow transportation minister, is the planned $34 billion investment in infrastructure.
He says if the government can take advantage of lower costs during the downturn, it’s a win for Albertans.
“From the transportation side of things from the spending to rebuild, maintain and get ahead of our infrastructure deficit is good,” he said.
“It allows some jobs to be able to happen to keeps people occupied through this downturn.
“It allows Alberta to possibly be able to do the projects at a better rate, if the government is serious about doing a good job getting those projects tendered.”
He noted, however, that it’s not enough to stimulate the economy.
“Short-term it will have some effect creating value in economy,” van Dijken said.
“Long-term economic sustainability is created through investment, community, having the hope and the recognition of stability that they are able to get a rate of return.
“If we can’t show that in this province, we’re going to have a difficult time getting on top of this economic reality.”
In order to pay for the province’s spending the government will borrow for the first time in 20 years.
“The biggest concern we have is the debt that we’re going to saddle our next generation with,” van Dijken said.
“Our future generation has to have a sense of hope that they’re not going to be saddled with a whole whack of debt that’s not going to allow them to have the quality of life that we have in this day.”
Acknowledging the new government took office already facing difficulties, van Dijken said it’s their duty to get the province back on track.
“Not to blame everything on the NDP, but we are where we’re at now and it’s the responsibility of government to find a way to get us on a path of restoring some semblance to our spending,” he said.
With crude oil prices currently around $45 per barrel, the budget banks on oil recovering to $61 for the 2016/17 fiscal year, and up to $68 by 2017/18. Van Dijken said he was uneasy with those predictions and drew a parallel to the same budgeting challenge farmers face.
“I’m going to go to my agricultural background and how we had to manage through the ups and downs of the ag commodity cycle,” he said.
“At the end of the day, it was all about making sure you were effective and efficient at the bottom of the cycle that you could stay in business and when you went to the top of the cycle you stayed effective and efficient so that you could pad your pocket to be ready for the next downslide.
“We haven’t done that in this province in the last 10 years.”
In addition, van Dijken and his party are calling on a review of provincial services; something the MLA says should be done on an ongoing basis.
“When we compare our spending to other provinces, it looks like we’re spending a dollar and not getting the same level of value out of that dollar,” he said.
“The level of services are comparable and yet we’re spending more than each of our neighbouring provinces, per capita, to get that same level of service.
“We need to find out why are we spending more per capita and can we build some more efficiencies? Can we do it better?”
