Today is provincial budget day, the day we see where the Province’s reliance on the vagaries of oil pricing has placed us.
In hooking our economic engine to the whims of oil pricing, our economic outlook has apparently gone from relatively sunny to a serious, estimated $4 billion-ish deficit – or roughly four times that estimated in 2012.
Cuts, tax hikes… who knows what’s in store? A sales tax (gasp)? Post-secondary student funding cuts?
Makes you wonder about spiralling public sector wages, questionable moves like past vote buying by cancelling health care premium payments in 2009 and throwing $400 Ralph Bucks at everybody in the province, even about attaching our future to oil pipelines headed south and west.
If we remember correctly, health-care premiums put about $1 billion annually into provincial coffers. Considering complaints of wait times at hospitals these days, it would have been wiser to continue collection and continue appropriate funding of health care. It’s unlikely those premiums were putting many in the poorhouse; and they could have been adjusted for low income earners.
In the end, did giving adult Albertans $400 Ralph Bucks in 2006 amount to more than many people squandering $400 apiece on “stuff” they didn’t need? At the time, if you remember, retail operations around the province were suddenly awash with sales on $400 items like TVs or phones.
A $400 giveaway wasn’t going to change anyone’s life.
Then again, if flexible oil prices are throwing things into chaos provincially, maybe it’d be wise to work toward a little less dependence on oil and gas, not more, and stop pushing to funnel Albertans’ non-renewable oil as fast as possible out of the province through mega-project pipelines.
Equally bad; Alberta’s Heritage Trust Fund, at least according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (the people who brought attention to the Province’s “Committee That Didn’t Meet” – the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, Standing Orders and Printing) is in neutral, valued at $16 billion, up from $12 billion in 1987 when the Province was pumping in money from resource revenue.
If we’re now in a $4 billion deficit situation, the Heritage Fund isn’t much of a rainy day fund any more; which was what Premier Peter Lougheed envisioned when he launched it. That’s what happens when you draw down on a rainy day fund.
Here’s a thought – instead of relying, as always, on big business oil and gas or electrical generation and the need for mega-projects like oil pipelines and electrical transmission lines, maybe Alberta could think of itself as a power specialist by embracing alternative energy sources, along with oil and gas.
Would it be so bad to “think small” and have south-facing roofs all over the province sporting solar panels to generate some “green” juice? Wind projects have some downside, as we’ve heard, but it’s hard to find anything negative relating to ultra passive solar power collection.
It’s thinking outside the box, of course, but maybe there would be room for a little Power for the People in embracing solar. Set up a system, feed the grid, maybe earn some dollars back as a provincial power partner. No extra transmission lines needed.
In the Bow Valley, where LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) construction has caught on, it wouldn’t be a big jump to add a solar component. And think of the children… imagine the educational opportunities provided by having an in-school solar system generating power.
