Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d say, to start off with, I’d like the Minister to remember his words about it’s a question of choices as he hears the repeated mention of common issues from this side of the House, and in that respect I have to say I’m very disappointed not to see any response in this budget from a massive amount of input that Members have had massive amount of work that both the Cabinet and the Regular Members had done in reviewing the draft budget and so on.
At the same time I do recognize that in post-election it’s a very different time frame, so I’m anticipating that the government will show some response in reaction to the substandard issues that we’ve put forward and commented on that you’re hearing about again repeatedly today.
The Minister mentioned that this is the best managed jurisdiction in Canada fiscally, and I say the evidence supports him in terms of the proportion of debt we have relative to our budget.
The Minister also recognizes the fragility of the global economy. I do actually agree with him on that, although I say it’s strictly a result of government policies that that is happening and that governments have the power to change that.
Meanwhile, given that fragility, this government is striving to hitch its star and that of our municipalities to an ever greater degree to the global economy. I think that’s very wrong-headed and deserves some real examination.
One reason we’re the best managed could be, of course, because the federal government has imposed legal debt limits and made us be that way. But I do appreciate that this government and this Minister have committed to decreasing our debts and putting in place or attempting to put in place a policy in that direction. So I will be monitoring that and I appreciate that stance.
The House has heard me speak a little bit today on the revenue issue. I would say that we have attempted to raise corporate rates in the past and dropped back again. We are in the middle of the
pack, but I’d say in terms of resource rents we have indeed won the race to the bottom and we have a lousy record of capturing resource rents. I am very surprised that the Minister doesn’t seem to even know about the resource rents and the sorts of reviews that we have talked about for years. So I am hoping that he gets boned up on that and brings a proposal forward.
I think a real opportunity has been missed in this budget again, year after year, but again in this budget, to introduce a carbon tax or some form of carbon pricing that could have been administered in a revenue neutral way and thereby achieving the Minister’s goal of protecting the people, but at the same time advancing the goals of this government’s supposed commitment to environmental sustainability. That is indeed part of our vision and our goals and we have a limit, but maybe we need some discussion about what environmental sustainability is, because I see us in this budget backing away from it rather than advancing forward. We can talk about that more in detail, but I think that is a key issue and today’s whirlwind. Even the largest corporations in the world are recognizing we need a truly environmentally sustainable approach in order to be even a sustainable business and have a sustainable economy.
I want to mention that on page 4 where the Minister notes this government makes no cuts to the $1.4 billion, I see this rather than being something to be proud of, I see a government unable to do the critical and ongoing assessment and redirection work that is needed to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of our programs and meeting our responsibilities. I’m not saying it’s Cabinet alone, but I think this side of the House might be complicit in that to some degree, but we need a government that’s able to recognize where we’re going in the wrong direction or not being effective, and redirect dollars to priorities or better ways to achieve our goals.
The education, I’m shocked, is completely missing in action in this budget. There have been considerable discussions recently about where we’re going with education. So I’m particularly, again, shocked when early childhood development is well recognized around the world, globally as well as nationally, and you can look at Alberta’s extremely progressive work on that. What we don’t achieve now there’s very little hope of regaining it without a lot of high costs and personnel and efforts. So I think if we don’t get started on that, we’re really missing the road.
Other issues that I agree with that have been mentioned, mental health and addictions. We need full implementation of family violence, phase 3 and so on. The land use sustainability framework that’s mentioned has been mentioned annually for the
past four years by the Minister. Nothing has been achieved to date except a word has been added to the title and rather than land use framework it’s now land use sustainability framework. I suppose that’s enough said on that. It’s been years and years and my expectations are lower than ever on that one.
Similarly, my understanding or my recollection of the Macroeconomic Policy is it was established in 2007 and, again, we’re just talking about implementation this year. My expectations are low, but I thought that was a good policy.
The mineral development, yes, we need it, but where is the strategy? Again, completely missing from meeting their energy requirements. Again something we’ve talked about and talked about and talked about. Especially meeting their energy requirements with renewable energy and where is the talk about a renewable energy portfolio called for in the Greenhouse Gas Strategy that would support the industry moving in that direction. Again, I understand that without any authority we will be spending two-thirds of $1 million on a Mineral Strategy in anticipation that we might get some authority there. But so much on the energy front. We’ve talked about it for years. So I guess we’re going to talk about it for years more, but that is disappointing.
I want to briefly point out, if I can, on the energy side and I think our cutbacks in energy commitments and so on are huge and deserve a discussion on their own, but the phrase going forward we are looking at regulatory improvements that will avoid the need for such drastic price increases by providing for an annual indexing mechanism refers to electricity rates. Now we’re simply going to increase them every year. So we’re telling the public as if this is a good thing, we’re going to avoid problems, we’re just going to increase your electricity rates every year from now on, so don’t worry about it. We’re subsidizing electricity rates by over $30 million in the next three years in addition to the already $30 million we’re putting into it. We need to actually put in place programs and return to a level of expenditures that we had in the 16th Assembly that will actually
reduce costs of living and meet the needs of our people and businesses. Mahsi.