What’s wrong with this picture?
On the one hand, our provincial government feels it necessary to shell out $350,000 of our tax dollars to mail out a glossy, full-colour brochure to 1.2 million Albertans to explain austerity budget measures.
In other words, the Province wants to spend $350,000 to tell us why it isn’t going to spend in areas we’d like it to?
On the other hand, Banff Mineral Springs Hospital is facing a $600,000 budget hack as a scalpel is slipped through a funding artery to St. Martha’s Place.
Here at the Outlook, it seems to us that an “austerity budget brochure” – if it’s actually needed – would be better trotted out in black and white on a recycled paper product. Wouldn’t it then seem more of an austerity publication?
Should you not receive one of the delightful, colourful, soon-to-be-a-collector edition of Progressive Conservative propaganda, you can visit Report to Taxpayers here: http://alberta.ca/AlbertaCode/images/ReportToTaxpayers.pdf
In Report to Taxpayers you’ll discover not only a pretty picture of Premier Alison Redford and a kid, and a scenic of our Rockies, but a couple of testimonials from a doctor and a small business owner as to how awesome things are, provincially-speaking.
Likely, though, Dr. Rob Wedel, the physician lead at the Taber Clinic who is quoted in the report, is not facing $600,000 in cuts like the Mineral Springs is.
What we like, though, is the fact that in the second sentence of Redford’s personal “message” she attributes Alberta’s financial woes, woes based on a provincial budget tied to fluctuating oil revenues, to the newly-coined Bitumen Bubble.
The Bitumen Bubble, no doubt the cause of Mineral Springs’ loss of $600,000, is now perceived by the Province to be responsible for a $6.2 billion hit to our revenues. Certainly, it’s not shabby provincial budgeting…
The issue is clear – the reason we can’t fund everything we want in Alberta is the Bitumen Bubble doesn’t allow us to ship our finite supply of oil and gas out of the province as quickly as possible to offshore interests.
If only everyone would see the light and allow Alberta big business to build the pipelines we need to ship out our oil.
On the flipside, though, to deal with the Bitumen Bubble, Alberta, according to the Report to Taxpayers, will do everything it can to protect what is apparently virtually the only thing this province has going for it, oil, by (from the report): adding an additional $5 million to strengthen Alberta’s presence and grow and diversify markets in Asia, the U.S. and Europe; earmark $204 million to support economic development, innovation and technology commercialization to enhance Alberta’s global competitiveness and boosting environmental monitoring of the oil sands and continue to build a provincial environmental monitoring system that is accessible, transparent and under scientific oversight by an arm’s-length agency. Finally, Alberta will advocate for expanded market access for Alberta’s oil through envoys to Washington D.C. and Ottawa. Premier Alison Redford has taken four missions to Washington D.C. to tell Alberta’s story directly to those who will make critical decisions about market access.
To rip off an Americanism, is Alberta really only a government of the oil, by the oil, for the oil?
Don’t get us wrong, there is an afterthought mention of agricultural and forestry playing some kind of role in the economy.
It is comforting indeed, though, isn’t it, that we can put up $209 million for the sake of our oil while St. Martha’s Place is chopped to the tune of $600,000?
