“This budget is so lame that if it was a horse, they would have to take it out and shoot it,” said NDP Leader Brian Mason.
There’s good ol’ Brian’s rhetoric again, hopefully he didn’t just upset any PETA supporters with that comment. But let’s go through the high and lowlights of this budget.
The good
- No massive funding cuts.
- No wage rollbacks.
- The delisting of chiropractic procedures (see: Wikipedia references and discussion).
- The end of the idea that we must avoid deficits at all costs.
The bad:
- No real vision for Alberta.
- Baseless assumption that oil will be $55 a barrel on average this year.
- With no economic diversification and rampant spending, we will need $75 oil to be out of deficit.
- No stimulus that every other economy in the world seems to be doing.
- Trying to blame Ottawa for their mismanagement problems (and begging for $700 million).
- They removed any forecasted revenue projections for royalties (which were based on a percentage, so there should be no issue there), which prompted Taft to stand and defend the oil industry in the Legislature today, asking if the government was afraid to admit how much it was taking from the oil industry.
- And obviously, no new money for the underfunded auditor general.
The ugly:
- Attacking the transgendered minorities by delisting sex-change surgery (making us more regressive than Iran!)
- The Wild Rose Foundation is dying so that the government can personally decide which non-profits should get lottery money.
- They released a hugely biased government poll that was conducted within hours of releasing the budget that shows Albertans generally like the budget (although I doubt most saw it).
Overall, I wouldn’t characterize it as much more than the status quo for Steady Eddie.
I mean, if you didn’t have a plan during the election and boom, why make one now?
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Chiropractic has been delisted? Good Deal!
Of course he has a vision for Alberta… It involves rolling in money.
Must the taxpayer foot the bill every time Mr. Garrison decides to superficially change his/her/its sex organs?
Newsflash morons, that XY is not going to turn XX or vica versa with any surgery. Just because you sew a penis on your vagina doesn’t make you a woman. It makes you a freak.
Again the socialist hypocrisy…chiropractic work works as well at treating back issues as well as that fancy new fake penis makes XX turn XY. Yet a socialist would never attack something that is trendy such as flavor-of-the-month surface sexuality.
Are you not concerned of the plight of the minority group that is chiropractors?
Also, what on earth is a ‘vision for alberta’?
I mean of course above being a trendy buzzword for attacking anyone who is not a socialist?
Using the Government surplus figures as a basis and, taking the exchange rates 2006-07 as nominal 10% and 2008-2009 as nominal 25% I have developed the following alternate table. I am using the BC Saskatchewan royalty rates of 30% for a low comparison.
I have not expanded on the start up royalty which is 2% in the neighboring provinces. It was 1% in Alberta and now, it is 0%
These figures then represent the inside lowest possible royalty figures.
Past surpluses Sask and BC royalty
2000-01 — $6.57 billion-Royalty at 25% US – 30% – Should have been 8.54 Loss 1.97 Billion
2001-02 — $1.08 billion – at 25% US – 30% – Should have been 1.40 Loss .32 Billion
2002-03 — $2.13 billion at 25% US – 30% – Should have been 2.56 Loss .43 Billion
2003-04 — $4.14 billion at 25% US – 30% – Should have been 4.97 Loss .83
2004-05 — $5.18 billion at 19% US – 30% – Should have been 8.18 Loss 3.0 Billion
2005-06 — $8.55 billion at 19% US – 30% – Should have been 13.5 Loss 4.95 Billion (10% Exchange)
2006-07 — $8.51 billion at 19% Canadian 30% – Should have been 14.29 Loss 5.78 Billion
2007-08 — $4.58 billion at 19% Canadian – 30% – Should have been 8.15 Loss 3.57
Projected deficits
2009-10 — $4.7 billion at 19% Canadian dollar – Should be surplus of 3.9 Billion
2010-11 — $2.4 billion at 19% Canadian dollar – Should be surplus of 5.89
2011-12 — $1.8 billion – Should be surplus of 11.44
That is a total of 20.02 billion dollars swept away on a Conservative platform. One that says there can be no extra cash in Government, it must go to the companies.
They call it being Great Conservatives. I call it fiscal mismanagement.