OKOTOKS, Alta. – The Wildrose party says the Progressive Conservatives are squandering Alberta’s petro-billions on perks and pet projects, moving the province dangerously close to the precipice should oil prices tank once again.
“Alberta families know the difference between a want and a need,” Wildrose leader Danielle Smith said Tuesday while outlining the party’s financial platform in her home constituency of Highwood, just south of Calgary.
“Unfortunately, the Redford PCs have completely lost the ability to make that distinction.
“They’re only interested in what matters to them (with) things like getting paid to be on committees that never have meetings, extravagant severance packages and huge pay hikes for them and their pals.”
Despite the price of oil – the wellspring of Alberta’s economy – hovering around US$100 barrel, the Tories under Premier Alison Redford withdrew $3.7 billion from the Sustainability Fund this year to cover off a record $40 billion in spending.
The province has been running multibillion-dollar deficits for the last four years, regularly transferring money over from the savings fund to prevent incurring long-term debt.
Redford’s team is promising to review all spending later this year and says it will return to surplus budgets next spring.
Smith said the Tories, who wiped out long-term debt under former premier Ralph Klein, no longer know how to prioritize. Under former premier Ed Stelmach, $2 billion was committed to carbon capture and storage technology test projects. Redford says she doesn’t plan to follow through.
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Earlier this month, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation announced that it had found 21 politicians, most of them Tories, who were being paid $1,000 a month for years to sit on a committee that hadn’t met.
Recent estimates say that generous changes to severance rules under Klein will result in more than $10.6 million being paid out in transition payouts to 22 MLAs of all stripes who have decided to retire from politics. That includes more than a million dollars for outgoing Speaker Ken Kowalski and almost a million dollars for Stelmach.
Smith said such wrongheaded priorities are similar to the ones that pushed countries such as Italy and Greece over the edge into spiralling debt and unemployment.
“Jurisdictions that fail to get a grasp on public spending are drowning in debt, besieged by taxes, plagued by unemployment and flailing desperately for lifelines and bailouts.”
Redford’s team has already promised to balance the budget this year by cutting extraneous government spending, particularly on carbon capture, and by extending some infrastructure projects by a year.
If elected on April 23 to form government, Smith said the Wildrose would pass a law to direct half of all future surpluses to the nest-egg Heritage Savings Trust Fund. The goal would be to grow it to $200 billion within two decades and reduce Alberta’s reliance on roller-coaster oil and gas prices.
Future spending would be limited to growth plus inflation, forcing politicians to direct money to where it was needed, she said.
Smith said she would focus on more funds for front-line help in schools and hospitals and would not increase taxes or introduce new ones to do so.
– By Dean Bennett in Edmonton
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