"The most fiscally responsible goddam government [Alberta's] had in the last ten years was the NDP."
Am listening to #TheLineCa podcast ( @6618555 ); they're discussing the recent referendum questions from Premier Smith. Their take on it is that the government of #Alberta is about to announce a massive deficit (due to high spending and oil prices falling back to normal levels), and these questions are meant to distract the public.
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Is it true that Alberta's per capita government spending is unsustainably high given current revenues? They imposed a contract on teachers in 2025, and I hear complaints about the Alberta health care system. Where's the money going?
(I should look into this, but not at the moment.)
*Update:* I'm told some of the money is going into infrastructure. Sweet, sweet infrastructure.
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@mpjgregoire The UCP government has been deliberately making spending cuts in ways most visible to the electorate, but those cuts have been more than offset by mostly capital and administrative spending.
In education, they took a hard line on teacher's salaries but spent a lot on building new schools. In healthcare they reduced payroll of doctors and nurses but spentva fair amount on changing and even increasing bureaucracy (they have broken up AHS into 4 separate agencies, and wasted a fair amount of money on outsourcing to private companies, notably lab services.
In transportation they spent massive amounts upgrading Deerfoot Trail but maintenance of such infrastructure has not seen that level of expenditure.
Much of what is being spent is absolutely a good thing but there are questions of *how*, and once the capital money is spent the chickens must come home to roost. Someone's gotta teach the kids in the new schools, and low and fill the potholes on 4 extra lanes of freeway and so on...
@mpjgregoire ...there is also some worry that the province will accelerate tax increases that have been slowly increasing over the years (tax review by the province has increased marginally faster than population growth under Smith). The UCP has been "boiling the taxpayer frogs" by gradually increasing its take of municipal property taxes, eliminating tax credits etc. but avoiding politically visible tax increases like income tax rate or introducing a sales tax, and of course has relied on abundant population growth for line go up too.
Smith is doing a lot to distract from the fact that, if you strictly look as $ amounts and not *how* they are used Smith's government has not moved much from what Notley collected and spent. She has been catering so much to the noisy mapleMAGA base that she seriously risks losing "business conservatives" and moderates, not so much to the NDP but by way of fracturing the party again (maybe this new "Tory Party" gains traction).
It might be an interesting political year here.
"Infrastructure" in UCP-speak probably means "pipelines" or something to support oil.
@mpjgregoire I worked for Quebec-registered Canonical while living in Calgary. Income tax withheld based on Quebec rates. Filed taxes in Alberta. Got $10k+ back.
Alberta refuses to tax high income earners at a rate anywhere near other provinces.
@mpjgregoire In health, where I have direct experience, they have embarked on the process of dismantling one of the most efficiently run health agencies in the country (Alberta Health Services) and replacing it with multiple new bureaucracies. Where we had one health minister, one health department, and one major health authority we now have four health ministers, four departments, four+ agencies (depending on how you count), four boards, and multiple new groups of middle managers staking their turf. I can’t imagine any way that this saves money.
To their credit I do know that over the last few years they have also been hiring a lot of nurses, which is a cost but a cost that is needed.
They also hamstrung themselves by running a successful multi-year campaign to encourage migration to the province which has added strain to already underfunded services.
M. Grégoire
Mark Shane Hayden
Ruth O'Day
Bruce Elrick
Paul Turnbull has moved.🇨🇦