This Week in Alberta: Redford's First Budget

I've spent much of the past two days trying to draft a blog post on Alberta's 2012 budget. After all, this was not only Allison Redford's first budget, but a pre-election document - surely, there would be plenty in it to critique and/or praise.

But really, this may be one of the most innocuous budgets in the province's history. Take a look at the official budget highlights and tell me if there's anything newsworthy in there:



Of the thirteen key bullet points, three use the word "continued", three mention rosy revenue projects, and three talk about something Redford didn't do (raise taxes). The only newsworthy changes in the budget are new funds for handicapped Albertans and children - two feel-good spending initiatives even Danielle Smith wouldn't dare criticize.

Even the budget name sounds like it was focus group tested to find the title least likely to offend: Investing in People. After all, who's against investing in people? And who's against spending a bit more on health care and education, holding taxes steady, and just kind of hoping the price of oil increases so that everything works out? Things seem to be going fairly well in Alberta and Redford seems to be fairly popular, so why do anything even remotely controversial that could rock the boat, with an election on the horizon?

Well one reason to rock the boat is that Liepert's budget speech itself concedes the province relies too much of resource revenue and needs to change its fiscal framework. Not that he's doing anything about it, mind you.

But my real beef with the budget is that it continues the visionless drifting we've seen in recent years. Alberta is one of the few provinces with the resources to support boldness, and all Redford has delivered is a cautious, aimless plan.

I might not like their vision for the province, but Premier Morton and Premier Smith wouldn't shy away from being bold. Premier Mar would try to reform the Health Care system. Premier Manning would have pushed through environmental initiatives and democratic reforms. The Alberta Liberals released their election platform this week, and it calls for increased taxes on businesses and the rich, with the payoff being, among other things, the end of school fees and free tuition. It may not be good politics or even good policy, but at least it has whiffs of boldness in it.

Which is a lot more than can be said for Redford's painfully safe budget.

This Week in Alberta - Eddiemandering the Map!

The Electoral Boundaries Commission has issued its final report and, predictably enough, accusations of Gerrymandering have flown wildly.

Given the wild unpredictability of Alberta politics right now, I have a hard time believing that we're seeing riding boundaries drawn to help the PCs. Rather, the problem with the new map is the same as it has always been - Calgary and Edmonton get only half the seats, despite having two-thirds of the population (a ratio which will grow over the next decade).

Daveberta offers commentary on the new boundaries, and provides the 2008 election results transposed on the new maps.



Also in Alberta...

-Guy Boutilier becomes the fourth Wildrose MLA. Which is great, but someone might want to ask Danielle Smith at some point how a party made up of disgruntled PCs is going to be any different from the PCs. Just saying.

A new poll by Spotlight strategies shows Albertans are mostly happy and it gives vote numbers the PCs should be mostly happy about. Enlightened Savage provides some analysis here.

-More good news for the PCs: Alberta's deficit is down to a billion bucks.

This Week in Alberta - Special Tuesday Budget Edition!

Ed Stelmach(February 23, 2008): “A Progressive Conservative government will never put Alberta back into a deficit position”

April 7, 2009: Alberta to post $4.7B deficit

After 15 consecutive balanced budgets, Alberta has plunged into deficit. And it's a doozy - nearly five billion dollars.

In fairness to the PCs, few saw this coming (CG last year: "with a low balled estimate of $78 a barrel oil, I'd expect a multi-billion dollar "unexpected" surplus"), but much of this is because they chose to cut when it was cheap to spend and chose to spend when it was expensive to spend. But irrespective of how much blame they deserve, if you're going to pass gimicky balanced-budget laws, you deserve to be criticized for breaking your own law. Especially when you increase spending by 12% the previous year.

Among the highlights:

-The government is projecting a 2% contraction in the economy this year, followed by 1.8% growth next year.

-If resource revenues do not increase this year, the government has said they will either raise taxes or slash spending to make up 2 billion dollars. Neither option would be a particularly attractive one.

-The Herald falls victim to government spin, proclaiming "the Stelmach government has cut about $400,000 from overall spending, reducing expenditures to a projected $36.4 billion" - yes, that's a 0.001% cut in spending. Even that claim is dubious since there are 3.7% spending increases across the board.

-Reading the recap on the government's plans for the environment is a tad depressing - 8 million less here, 10 million more there. It's clear that the PCs see the environment as about a big a priority for Alberta as having a strong navy.

But really, there isn't a lot to comment on. The budget largely follows the course laid out last year, with a bit more money here and a bit less there. It's a status quo budget which might be newsworthy in itself, given the huge shifts in spending and priorities we've seen elsewhere in the face of the recession.

For more on the budget, click here.

Second Budget, Same as the First

In honour of earth day, it was a very environmentally friendly budget by Ed Stelmach's Conserva...ha ha. No, of course not. Now that the joke is out of the way, here's a serious rundown:

-Would someone care to remind me again how the Alberta Liberals got portrayed as "tax and spend Liberals" during the last campaign? Stelmach followed up one of the largest spending increases in Canadian history last year with a budget that increased spending by another 12%.

-Once again, there was no real focus or forward planning...this was mostly about playing catch up on infrastructure after years of neglect from Klein.

-I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the increased subsidies for horse racing and bingo weren't in Lyle Oberg's pre-election budget.

-Cutting health premiums completely by January 1st is a pleasant surprise given Stelmach's pre-election announcement planned to phase them out over three years.

-At first glance, there does not appear to be much for post-secondary education in this budget, which is disappointing given the massive spending everywhere else.

-Stelmach and Iris Evans will be criticized by the Alberta Liberals for, once again, ignoring the Heritage Fund and long term savings. However, with a low balled estimate of $78 a barrel oil, I'd expect a multi-billion dollar "unexpected" surplus, a third of which will be injected into the Heritage Fund.

I'll update this once other bloggers closer to the scene have a chance to weigh in. I'd also be curious to see some analysis about which election promises were included or ignored in this budget.


UPDATE: Daveberta has a good run-down, including this great synopsis:

Overall, the 2008 Alberta PC budget looked and sounded like a confused 37-year old: still paying for the mistakes of its youth, not quite ready to settle down, almost ready to hit that mid-life crisis point (hello, Ferrari!), and not quite ready to save for the future. It felt like it could have been something out of the 10th season of Friends.

Also, check out ES and get rich.