Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Can someone tell me what is going on in Alberta?

I don't really follow Alberta news, but the constant "cut, cut, cut" and "whine, whine, whine" I am hearing from there recently is getting chaotic.
Does the Alberta UCP government have any idea what it is doing?
They are supposedly going to reduce surgical wait times by paying for more private surgical facilities, but at the same time they are cutting back on primary care doctors and eliminating nursing positions.  
They cut taxes for corporations, at the same time as they are nickle-and-diming drug coverage for dependents of seniors - people who don't have a lot of other health insurance choices - and forcing school boards to use maintenance funds to maintain teaching staff levels -- a trade-off that isn't going to work more than once.
Premier Kenney seems to be furious at PMJT because supposedly Alberta is paying more in equalization than he thinks is fair - except no provincial taxpayers "pay" for equalization, its a federal transfer program and anyway Canada is using the 2009 Harper formula which was apparently fine with Kenney until now.  Of course, Alberta is now losing jobs - 18,000 in November alone, the highest monthly job loss in Alberta history.
Why, if this keeps up, maybe they'll be entitled to equalization payments too!  (Side note: I will never forget how upset and appalled the Toronto-centric media were when Ontario actually qualified for equalization because of the 2009 downturn - complaints heard again when Ontario stopped being entitled to the payments in 2018.)
Kenney doesn't seem to have the capacity or the will to put together the kind of government stimulus and employment programs that have been used in the past to counter economic downturns and job losses -- which don't even yet include the companies that are not moving there because of the Wexit stupidity.

But never mind -- instead, lets everybody just trash WestJet - whose head office IS located in Calgary (at least, for now) -- for insufficient loyalty to Dear Leader:

If Alberta now needs more provincial revenue to support its government obligations, then first they need to implement a provincial sales tax, like every other province has done already, before they start demanding more money from the rest of Canada.

Whatever is going on in Alberta, I sure hope its not catching.

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