Bill Debate

Bill 9 Appropriation (Supplementary Supply) Act, 2011

March 8, 2011

Mr. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sorry I was away earlier. I was interviewing a fantastic candidate for the riding of Livingstone-Macleod, and I unfortunately couldn’t make it. We’ll make sure that I’m here a little bit more often. He’s a doozy. You’ll love this one. Anyway, we’ll leave that till 2012 along with a few others.

I’d like to comment on the supplementary supply bill. In particu-lar – honestly, I’m not going to mince words – this government talks about balance and finding the right balance. They’ve got about as much balance as a drunk. I mean, they wouldn’t know balance if it was, you know, flashed right in front of them, if their life depended on it, and indeed it does at this point.

It’s just something else when we’re listening to the tripe that was expressed yesterday by the Member for Edmonton-Calder with regard to the federal building. I got a couple of e-mails from some folks who had watched question period and watched that member’s statement. They’re just amazed that it actually hasn’t occurred to this government yet that spending $275 million on new offices for bureaucrats and MLAs with, I might add, interactive water features, an ecozone, an agrizone, a skating rink, a new plaza . . . [interjec-tion] I know. The interactive water features, Member: maybe we’ll have to wear our swimsuits to work. I don’t know.

The point is the fact that they can’t see that it is so clearly not a priority for Albertans. The interactive water feature in the federal building somehow was a higher priority than new schools, than long-term care, than balancing the budget.

5:40

That’s the whole problem with this government. They keep saying: “Where would you cut? What would you do? What would you do differently?” Then you tell them: “Let’s have the list. Give us the order of projects that you have. Give us the list of projects that you feel are important for Alberta, and give us the criteria that you used to arrive at those projects, and then we’ll have a debate. We’ll talk about what stuff can wait an extra year. We’ll have that debate.” That’s a good debate to have so that we can balance our budget and get our province back on the road to prosperity. Yet all they can do is go back to the same tried and trusted method that they always use, which is to fearmonger, to spin half-truths and entire mistruths, to personally attack.

It’s amazing. You know, it just doesn’t make any sense to me that a government that is elected to serve the people can be so out of touch with reality that they would actually think that the reno-vations to the federal building, including skating rinks and interactive water features, are somehow more important than se-niors and long-term care and schools for kids and balancing the budget, for that matter, all three.

The problem people have with this government is that they have not been able to prioritize. They are a Seinfeld government; they are a government about nothing that stands for nothing. There are individuals in that government that do stand for things and do have principles, but as a whole they don’t stand for anything. I mean, the term “Progressive Conservative” is an oxymoron in and of itself, but aside from that, there’s just no grounding that they have with regard to what they’re doing, what the plan is other than to spend as much as you can to satisfy as many people as possible. You know, it just blows my mind away that that’s the limit of their vision and imagination.

Obviously, as a Wildrose government we would have looked very carefully and would have clearly said that that federal build-ing along with carbon capture and storage and many of the other boondoggles and waste that this government has come up with over the last several years – we would clearly put those projects off. We would delay them, and we would focus on the priorities of Albertans, which are, for example, long-term care so that we can unclog our hospital beds, schools for our kids so that we can edu-cate the next generation of Alberta entrepreneurs and health professionals and scientists and artists and all the talent that we have.

Anyway, the biggest failing of this government – and it’s re-flected in this bill – is just a complete lack of ability to prioritize needs before wants. Ultimately, that will be their undoing because as we saw with Paul Martin federally, as we see with other politi-cians throughout time, anybody whose priority is everything, stands for nothing. That’s the problem with this government. They don’t know what they stand for other than satisfying the whims of every possible special-interest group under the sun. [interjections] That’s right. There you go.

Anyway, I hope that this government will find it in their minds at some point to realize: “You know what? The people of Alberta want to see what their priorities are.” They want to see the list top to bottom so that we can have this debate. I’d like to know from the members opposite: what did the federal building beat out? What long-term care facility did that $275 million beat out? What school did it beat out? What on that priority list got left behind because of the blinking $275 million federal building? Until they answer that, they don’t have a leg to stand on.