Third Reading

Bill 17, Appropriation Act, 2011

April 28, 2011

Mr. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, as this is our last opportunity to stand in the House and talk to the budget, essentially, I’d like to stand on behalf of the Wildrose Alliance caucus and explain again why our caucus does not support this budget. We feel that this government has over the last several years severely damaged the economic standing of Albertans.

There was a lot of work done prior to this administration to establish a heritage fund and to establish a sustainability fund. We did those things. Should more money have been saved during that time? Yeah, it should have. Should spending have been controlled more during that time? Absolutely, it should have. No doubt about it. But what has happened since then over these last several years has been an absolute non-Albertan, frankly, way of doing things. This is not the Alberta way.

There have been billions and billions of dollars in cash shortfalls: this year $6.6 billion; last year $7.6 billion – in other words, that’s how much money is going out compared to how much money is coming in – and close to $8 billion over the last two years in actual deficit numbers on the books according to the government’s own numbers. There is no excuse for this. The government can say all they want – and they do – about how the economy is in the tank, et cetera. The economy in Alberta is not in the tank. Our unemployment rate is very low, not necessarily compared to where it was in 2006 or 2007, but certainly historically it is very, very low. If you want a job in Alberta, generally speaking, you can get a job in Alberta.

That’s not to say that things are always wonderful for everyone, but things are good. We have near record royalties coming into the coffers. There have been one or two years when overall royalties have been as high as they are now, yet here we are with a $6.6 billion cash shortfall and a $3.5 billion deficit. It’s a shameful display of fiscal irresponsibility by this government.

Albertans deserve much better than this. We have over and over again stood in this House and explained that if we had begun earlier to cap program spending and operational spending and capital spending to the rate of inflation plus population growth, if we capped it at that amount, we would not be in the situation we’re in today, where in order to balance the budget, we would have to essentially freeze spending, frankly, in order to do it at the rate we’re going right now, and we wouldn’t be able to account for those increases in inflation plus population. That’s because this government failed to control their spending even in the last few years. If they had started back in 2004-2005, yeah, we’d have huge surpluses even today. But even if they had started at the beginning of this current Premier’s administration to increase spending by only the rate of inflation plus population growth, we would have a balanced budget today. It shows a complete lack of ability to prioritize.

Why are we building new museums when we have a $6.6 billion cash shortfall? Why are we building new MLA offices and offices for civil servants when we have a $6.6 billion cash shortfall? Why are we giving cabinet 34 per cent raises when we have a $6.6 billion cash shortfall? Why are we doing these things? Why can we not spend on capital the same amount as B.C., Ontario, and Quebec do on average per person? Why can we not do that? How is that unreasonable? That’s a right-wing idea? Are you kidding me? That’s a fiscally responsible idea. That’s what fiscally responsible or at least fiscally competent governments do. But here we are, spending bucket loads more money than any province in the country per person on capital, and here we are, in the cash shortfall position that we find ourselves in.

This government is not conservative. I challenge anybody in this House to identify something conservative that this government has done over the last three years of their administration. Look at their property rights record. Look at their record on the budgets. Look at their record on health care: the centralization, the top-down, the lack of democracy. It’s ridiculous, and it needs to change.

There are many priorities that Albertans have. We need to build the schools that our kids need. We need that. We need to build the roads that we need. We need to finish twinning that road to Fort McMurray. We need to finish those ring roads. We need these things. Absolutely, we need them. But can we not do so in a way that will not fiscally mortgage our children’s future? The Wildrose says that we can do that. I think that we can do it. I know there are members over there that probably in their heart of hearts know that they can do it.

We can’t mortgage our kids’ future anymore. What are we going to say to them in the year 2020 or 2030 when they come to us? What are we going to say if the heritage fund is still worth, as it is today, as much as it was in 1981? At that time, let’s say, there’s a replacement for oil, or the price of oil isn’t nearly as high as it is today, and we’re not able to fund the social programs and the things that we fund because we refused to be fiscally responsible and to put a little bit away so that that ocean of non-renewable oil and gas in the ground could be turned into a mountain of permanent investment capital, replenishing the books of the government every single year with interest.

We could do that. We could have started it long ago. We could start it today, but we’re not. I just fear that, you know, when we’re long gone, out of this Legislature anyway, our kids will look at us when the price of oil is at 20 bucks and say: “What on earth were you guys thinking? You had the chance to save. You had the chance to give us a legacy fund to allow us to keep taxes low and keep people coming up here to start new businesses and new industries. We could have had that seed capital to do that, perpetuating over and over every year regardless of what oil and gas does. That’s what we could have had, yet you didn’t.” That’s what they could say to us if we don’t get our fiscal house in order.

The government says that centralizing health care has saved money. It hasn’t. In the last two years there’s been another double digit increase in health care: 6 per cent this year, and I believe it was 17 per cent last year. It’s just an absolute falsehood that centralizing health care has delivered any kind of efficiencies in the health care system, and because that’s such a large part of the budget, that is why we find ourselves in the fiscal hole that we are in today.

We have not controlled our costs. We have not signed appropriate contracts. The teachers’ contract: do we want highly paid teachers? You bet we do. We want to have competitively paid teachers. We want to  attract the best to Alberta. But you cannot in the middle of a recession give a 9 to 10 per cent increase to teachers over a two-year period when the cost of living goes up during that same time by less than a third of that. You can’t do that and balance your books. If you do that and try to balance your books, you’re going to be cutting teaching positions. That’s exactly what has happened. Even with the 4 and a half per cent increase in education spending the boards around the province have to cut teaching positions because of the blinking contract that the Minister of Energy signed with the teachers when he was Education minister. When we sign contracts that are not sustainable, we have to pay. Our kids have to pay. It’s wrong. We can make sure our teachers are paid well. We can make sure that there are cost-of-living increases.

I met with the ATA table officers yesterday, and we got to talking about this. I said: “Wouldn’t you rather have a sustainable, gradual funding increase so that you knew you could make sure that you hired teachers each and every year and could keep your teachers and not have cuts? Or would you rather have these unsustainable pay increases and then have the government not giving you the money to fund the contract and then you having to lay off teachers?” Guess what? It was an easy answer for them. But they also said: why should we be expected as teachers to keep our pay increases to the rate of the cost-of-living index, inflation, when the government MLAs’ salaries are tied to the average weekly wage index, which greatly outstrips inflationary costs? That’s a good point. How can they? Teaching is every bit as important as being in this Assembly. That’s for sure.

So how can we do that? Well, not only did this government tie our own salaries to the average weekly wage index, which is wrong – it should be tied to the rise in inflation – but furthermore, aside from that, it gave us a 34 per cent pay increase as its first order of business when it got back after the 2008 election. We all know in this House, specifically us new members, what that was.

That was a wake-up call.

Mr. Hinman: Tell us about it.

Mr. Anderson: Well, it’s another story for another day. It was shocking, but what do you do?

Mr. Hinman: Wasn’t that the Premier’s promise to individual candidates?

Mr. Anderson: Yes, it was, hon. member. The point I’m getting at is this. If we want to have a sustainable budget, if we want to be able to save, if we want to be able to bring our budget into balance, we have to make tough decisions. That doesn’t mean we have to slash and burn. What it does mean is that we have to prioritize. We cannot have everything right now. I’ve got four little boys. They want everything right now. Everything. It’s all good stuff. They want ice cream. They want a baseball glove. They want a hockey stick. They want this book, that book. They want the candy and the pop, and they want everything. Guess what? As a parent you’ve got to make sure that you give them what they need and that you give them the best that you can give them, but you don’t give them everything all the time, whenever they want it. You prioritize. You make sure that they’re registered for their baseball and for their hockey so that they can have some sports to play. If that means not getting them a whole bunch of new toys, then that’s what it means. You prioritize. You make sure you’ve got food for them and heat and that the mortgage is paid. You make sure those are done first before you go to Hawaii for a $10,000 vacation, right? Is that not what you do? You make sure that you can afford to pay the mortgage and the car payment before you go off and upgrade to a Mercedes or something, right? You make sure you can pay your bills. You look at your income, and you make sure, and you plan for the future.

But this government doesn’t do it. They just keep on throwing around money like candy at a parade. Whatever you need. If you’re going to vote for me, here’s some money. That’s all it is. It’s not conservative; it’s not fiscally responsible. I expect the Liberals and the New Democrats to be more fiscally responsible than these guys right now.

Mr. MacDonald: We are.

Mr. Anderson: Yeah. The hon. Member for Edmonton-Gold Bar sure seems to be. I like some of the ideas in his alternative budget. He seems to have it down.

The Liberals: are they extreme right wing, too? I guess they’re extreme right wing because they want to control spending. Good grief. Get a grip. When the Liberals and the New Democrats are running to the right of you on fiscal issues, isn’t that a sign? Of course it’s a sign. When you go back, you’re probably going to have one more budget before the next election. Maybe. I don’t know. Who knows when the next election is? But if you are going to have one more budget, please – please – whoever the new Premier is, hopefully that Premier will be truly fiscally responsible. I’m looking at the group you’ve got there right now, and I’m not very hopeful on that.

Let’s hope that that occurs. If it does, make sure to hold that person’s feet to the fire. Make sure that they show leadership and get our books balanced and put a savings plan in place that is going to make sure we can save and build that heritage fund over the next 10 to 20 years to a hundred billion, to a hundred and fifty billion so that when the oil and gas goes back down to 20 bucks and when we’re sitting in our armchairs enjoying our grandchildren, we can enjoy our grandchildren because they’ll still be here in Alberta, because they can still get a job, because we can keep the Alberta advantage here instead of having to talk with them at Christmas by Skype because they’re down in some other jurisdiction out east or out west or down south because Alberta blew it, spent all the money, had to raise their taxes, and drove all the business out of Alberta so the place isn’t a very good place and not a land of opportunity like it is today.

That’s what we’re risking. It’s pretty easy for us to sit here in this Chamber and say: oh, well, we’ll be long gone by then. Yup. You’re right. The Minister of Energy will certainly be long gone by then. In 2030, I would hope – meaning out of this Legislature, of course. But what legacy will he have left? What legacy will this Premier have left? What legacy will the next Premier in this party, the PC Party, have left? Will they be the party that bungled the future prosperity of Albertans, or will they be the party that did the right thing and got their spending in check, reconnected with Albertans, and went forward?

I’ll tell you that if you don’t reconnect with your fiscal conservative side, you’re going to see a new government sitting over there at the next election. That is what will happen. When you don’t stick to your principles, when you get all wishy-washy and try to be everything to everybody, you’re not going to be successful. It didn’t work for Paul Martin. It didn’t work for a whole bunch of different leaders and different parties in this country and across the provinces. You need to stand for something. You need to stand on your principles. Fiscal responsibility used to be a principle of this PC government, and it’s not anymore. Please find it in the next year for the good of all Albertans, and if you don’t, the Wildrose will  find it for you. I’m sure the New Democrats will try to help out and be fiscally responsible since you are more fiscally responsible than this crew is over here from all indicators right now.

With regard to this budget, again, we would ask the government to please not just balance the budget but balance the cash shortfall. Let’s not spend anymore of our sustainability fund, which is down to something like $6 billion this year from $17 billion just a few years ago. Let’s have a savings strategy put in place, once we do get the books balanced, to grow that heritage fund by controlling spending to the rate of inflation plus population growth and investing those surpluses, or large chunks of them, into the heritage fund, not just for inflation-proofing it, like you’ve been doing the last 10 years, but growing it to where it can be a mountain of permanent investment capital, replenishing our province with compound interest each and every year. That’s important.

We can prioritize. We can be responsible. We can make sure that our health care needs are taken care of, that our education needs are taken care of, that vulnerable Albertans are cared for, but we have to get rid of the things that we don’t need. The carbon capture and storage fund: we’ve got to get rid of it. We’ve got to get rid of those ridiculous pay raises for cabinet ministers and so forth. We’ve got to make sure we stretch that capital plan, even just another year, and stretch that over a little bit longer. We can have everything we want. We just can’t have it today, right now, and that’s okay. [interjection] Yeah, we do need a school in Airdrie. Absolutely we do. We need a school in Beaumont, too. We don’t need $2 billion in carbon capture and storage spending being pumped under the ground. We certainly don’t need today a new museum or new MLA offices. We can wait for those things because, yeah – that’s right – Airdrie needs a school, and so does Beaumont, and so do a few other places.

This is obviously going to pass third reading, this budget. I hope that next budget this government will find its courage, will find its principles again, hopefully, if they ever had them, and that they will put forward a budget that is the Alberta way of doing budgets, which is balanced, which is saving for a rainy day, which is saving for our kids and caring about more than just our own political aspirations, our own political health for the next election but caring for the financial health and well-being of Albertans and our children for generations to come.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.