The provincial government released its 2012-2013 budget last week. From the Progressive Conservatives, it’s a budget to help the vulnerable and increase services without increasing taxes. From the Wildrose and Liberal parties, it is a gong show masked by smoke and mirrors.
While tax rates do not increase, because of increased assessment, taxpayers will be paying more and funding the spending binge targeted to voter groups. It’s a pre-election budget meant to curry favourable feelings about a government that has been fiscally foolish the past several years.
With it being a pre-election budget, it begs the question of just when the election will be called, even after the foolishly named “fixed election date” bill was supposed to end the uncertainty candidates face. Instead, the PCs maintain the strategic advantage of being the only party to know when the writ will drop, hoping to catch the others flat footed in the race to the electoral finish line. For now, we know it will be before the end of May.
Given other legislation tabled by the PCs in recent times, last week’s budget should not come as a surprise. It’s the same government to pass laws limiting property rights, and then amend them after denying there was a problem. It’s the same government that voted themselves a huge pay raise and outrageous severance packages when leaving office. It’s the same government that wants to pass drinking and driving legislation that could result in vehicle seizure without the driver ever having been proven guilty, which targets small business operators who sell a beverage with a meal, and does nothing to improve road safety.
It should be concerning that we’ve blown through most of the Sustainability Fund and that with record resource revenue the government has decided to buy votes instead of balancing the budget. The government promised to be “back in the black” by 2012 under Ed Stelmach, what’s another year? Then again, perhaps the budget and other PC legislation is the will of the people, but we’ll have to wait to election day to find out – whenever that is.
