Alberta Finance Minister Ted Morton finds a way to reconcile Albertans’ irreconcilable differences in today’s budget. Actual Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Warning: This photo features a professionally trained stuntman. Do not attempt to duplicate this stunt at home!All government budgets in all democracies are political documents. Today’s Alberta budget was more political than most.
Premier Ed Stelmach and Finance Minister Ted Morton faced a fundamental problem: They needed to achieve two completely contradictory goals.
First, the budget had to settle down the thousands of Albertans who are fed up, disgusted and annoyed at the government’s abysmal performance on a number of key files, particularly health care, which they fear is being bungled so badly there is a risk of permanent damage. To do that, the premier and finance minister had to show they could spend more money.
Second, it needed to appeal to the hard right, symbolized in Mr. Stelmach’s mind by the Wildrose Alliance of Danielle Smith. Determined to outflank the Alliance on the right, Messrs. Stelmach and Morton needed to come up with a budget that gave Alberta more than a haircut, to use an infelicitous phrase popular nowadays in Tory circles. To do that, they had to show they could spend less money.
To achieve the first goal, they needed to run a deficit. To achieve the second, they needed to eliminate the pesky deficit.
So the problem faced by these two worthies was like that confronting a prisoner escaping from Alcatraz. He must stay on the surface in order to breathe. He must stay under the water to keep from being picked off by the guards.
Anywhere they cut, they are bound to arouse the ire of someone. And these days, Albertans are in a cantankerous mood, ready to listen to anyone who is fed up with the government.
Anywhere they spend, they have to endure the slings and arrows of the outraged right – so there was Ms. Smith in the Legislature Rotunda today happily complaining to the media that there are three left-wing parties in the Legislature, and one of them isn’t hers.
So the premier and the finance minister – plus, presumably, scores of busy finance department minions – came up with a document that succeeded to a remarkable degree at achieving these contradictory goals.
It cuts hard, and harmfully, in some places – places that Mr. Stelmach’s Tories are gambling Albertans won’t much care about.
And it pours money into others – particularly health care – where Albertans have made it abundantly clear they don’t want to see things privatized, downsized or changed significantly. No one, for example, will be sad to see the government pay off Alberta Health Services’ embarrassing and completely bogus $1.3-billion deficit, which was becoming a serious public relations liability for the Conservatives.
And the deficit? Well, it’s here today and gone … in three years. Promise!
At first blush, then, this budget will likely get about a B+ from edgy Albertans
The question is, what happens when voters start to really think about what’s just been done?
In this regard, the Stelmach Tories are a bit like a student who hasn’t attended to his lectures for too long. Now he’s pulled an all-nighter and scraped through with a pretty good mark on an exam. But will it be enough to pull off a pass?
That depends on whether the government guessed right on where to cut.
Whatever their practical results, cuts to the Executive Council, Service Alberta and the Intergovernmental Relations Department probably hit the political mark.
But huge cuts to Child Intervention Services and environmental law enforcement surely miss by a mile.
Oh, and by the way, choking back tears about keeping Alberta … beautiful, and having the backbenches shout “NO NEW TAXES!” is just lame.
Will today’s politically risky cuts leave sufficient numbers of Albertans with the impression this government doesn’t give a hoot about children at risk or the state of our natural environment? Will such doubts be enough to tip the Stelmach Tories into the Failure Zone come election day?
The answers to these questions remain to be determined.
2 comments:
Good analysis, Dave. He also succeeded in pissing off a small but indispensable segment of the voting population by cutting $35 million from the programs budget of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. That's the kind of stupidity that denied Harper a majority in the last federal election.
I agree they did an OK job balancing. But a B+ is pretty generous, that's about as good a grade as any budget could get. I'd give it more of a B- myself.
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