Alberta Budget 2010
 

The Alberta budget 2010 was released today. Calgary's infrastructure funding is to drop to $254 million from $407 million.

I am not really suprised as the province already has a bad track record at budgeting as outlined in this CD Howe Report on fiscal accountability where it ranks 13th place out of 14 provinces for expenditure forecasts.

The question I would have for the provincial government is why pledge long term funding initiatives that should provide municipal governments with flexibility to fund long term strategic initiatives like West LRT, and then drastically change that funding source without consulting with the City of Calgary?

I would think that this announcement will result in delays for a number of municipal capital projects.

Yep, theres going to be interesting times ahead. From what they showed on the TV, bronco is pretty ticked off about it, and it sounds like legal action may be something they will even look at since the province did sign a contract

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I spent some time going over the budget details I am interested in. It looks like the province is going ahead with the SE ring road (I was thinking it might be delayed) Also, it appears that some significant work is going to be starting in the next three years on turning the #2 into a true freeway with no level crossings, and upgrades to some of the old design interchanges. I am worried that Glenmore and Deerfoot upgrades are not going to go ahead, they are not listed in the '10-13 Highway Projects plan.

Beyond that, it looks like the province took a large bite out of a lot of the smaller budgets to keep it's promise not to hit health and education, or to raise taxes. That's 65% of the budget the province has promised not to cut, in fact they increased it. Not very "balanced" in my opinion.

I'm rather dumbfounded here.

Revenues are way down. So, spend less. Every business and individual person on the planet understands this. When you have less, you spend less.

The ONLY thing that would make sense to increase spending on right now would be infrastructure. Buy it while it's cheap, as opposed to during a boom, right? It's worth going into a bit of debt if you can get a good deal now.

So what did the province cut a lot of?

Infrastructure.

In a province with one of the younger, more active populations, we spend more on health care per capita than the rest of the country. And now they're spending even MORE. Something is seriously wrong with the way this province runs health care that it can be in anything close to a poor state and yet we're spending the farm on it.

I really, really do not understand government finances.

This is all Don Getty redux. The government would be better the bite the bullet now and impose a 20% across the board spending cut rather than rack up tens of billion in debt and still have to enact the same cuts a few years later. 250 layoffs in the face of one of the biggest financial slumps ever is an embarrassment. There should have been a couple of more zeros after that number. I'm betting the Wildrose Allinace polling numbers are going to see another bump.

Bringing the flat tax back up to 10% would be a good thing, along with perhaps introducing higher brackets starting at 100k a year and an alternative minimum tax of 8% (to make sure people don't avoid a lot of taxes through deductions) would be good alternative to premiums and other taxes to help balance the budget (since the best tax is never going to be implemented due to political suicide, a provincial sales tax). Premiums were regressive and for companies that paid them on behalf of their employees they were a tax on new jobs.

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$NATGAS&p=W&yr=2&mn=6&dy=0&id=p26892315559

Many are expecting a second pull-back in the market this spring.

Federal taxes are massive yet how much of those dollars actually make it back to Alberta? Add the fact that special interests take up hundreds of millions of dollars for pet projects, now you can't fund things you truly need to logistically make this city work. The cards are stacked against this province

I'd settle for a small (~5%) provincial sales tax. I don't like it, but at least it hurts consumers, people who spend money. The poor, not so much.

So much for politicians doing whats best for the province regardless of the consequences eh. It's all about power, not altruism.

F-it all, anarchy! ;)

Exactly. The health care premiums were a "tax" that affected those people like my family the most, that have a household income above the minimum threshold, but not by a great amount. $88 a month is a lot higher percentage tax on someone making $60k a year than someone making $100k.

Perhaps the premium could be made to be a sliding amount, based on household income.

Basic living expenses go up, do wages even keep up with inflation? Smart plan...raise taxes in the middle of an economy thats lagging.

They should really do away with some high school programs, and introduce personal finance and economics classes.

Which ones?

The flat tax has been 10% since its introduction in 2000. The whole notion of a flat tax is that it drastically reduces allowable deducations.

The question I'd like answered is why does Alberta outspend practically every government on Earth on virutally every category of social spending, yet its outcomes are mediocre at best? The solution is definately not to do the same thing again (throw more money at a problem) and expect a different outcome.

Me too, but the real question I'd like answered is ARE things mediocre here?

I know the media likes to saber rattle about how poor health care is here, which is what's prompting yet more spending increased - but in my admittedly limited experience, health care in Alberta is leaps and bounds ahead of many other jurisdictions.

Are things really that bad, or do people here just expect that much more?

people just like to complain and believe its bad.

Uh, it depends on what falls under the umbrella of taxable items and services in a potential provincial sales tax. GST isn't applied to groceries and other staple things. I would expect the same of a provincial sales tax. Tax those that can spend.

All taxes hurt, I don't mind hurting a bit more myself, I'm not a slave to the all mighty dollar. I wathced my parents go bankrupt as a teenager and swore I'd never get into that situation, and I haven't. I believe in a socially just society. It's all philosophical in the end, and your a right wing ideologue.

I tend to put myself in the middle where I believe in a socially responsible free enterprise democracy.

The idea that corporations and business are given as many legal rights as individuals is at the core of what's skewed our perspectives on life.

You, however, would probably call me a pinko-commie socialist.

I do agree with that. Though there are things we could improve on like performance in certain aspects of how money is spend wisely on health care, (putting money towards prevention on programs that get us up off our fat lazy arses, preventative screening, etc) I think generally speaking Alberta is still doing pretty A-OK!

These are good questions to be asking. I have to admit I'm not well versed on the quality of social services. Are there any studies someone can point me to that have measured "quality" of healthcare service (by whichever metrics that would apply) between different jurisdictions together with how much is spent? I'd be interested to know how well Alberta performs.

^ The most normal measure of quality used seemed to be life expectancy back in 'Health Care Economics' in University. Usually graphs would plot that vs expenditures as a % of GDP per capita.

If my memory serves me Alberta does really well on the life expectancy side, but has big problems on the cost side, compared to countries with comparable health outcomes like France.

Something like this: http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/health/spend...longlife75.gif

That graph seriously exaggerates the difference in spending, yikes!

Edit, I'm dumb. Sorry, never mind!