Kevin Laliberte
Editor, Smoky River Express

Albertans are being urged to speak up and tell Premier Ed Stelmach and his government that big spending cuts and massive job losses are a formula for economic disaster and exactly the wrong way to respond to a worldwide financial crisis. That’s the reaction from the president of Alberta’s largest union - Alberta Union of Provincial Employees - this past week after separate interviews by the premier and the Treasury Board President Lloyd Snelgrove indicated depressed energy prices combined with Alberta’s no-deficits legislation could force the province into strategies reminiscent of the days when King Ralph (Klein) ruled the provincial roost. “We may go back to the same strategies we used in the early 1990s,” Stelmach told a reporter from the Calgary Herald. Snelgrove suggested in an interview with the Canadian Press that he wanted to meet union leaders to talk about possible mid-contract concessions and job cuts. AUPE president Doug Knight, meanwhile says he expects Albertans will tell their government that in order to weather this worldwide economic storm our economy requires stimulus and a steady hand. “There is a reason that virtually every other government in Canada and throughout the world is responding to the present situation with economic stimulus packages.” He noted that just last November the economically conservative Conference Board of Canada said in a report that “it would be wrong-headed economically to cut programs or reduce total planned government spending during an economic slowdown in order to attain a pre-determined fiscal surplus or balance target. “This strategy would only reduce demand growth and make a difficult situation worse,” the Conference Board said in the paper entitled Fending Off a Canadian Recession. Knight, meanwhile says a panicked response to low crude oil prices – which were a temporary phenomenon as were last summer’s very high prices – is a recipe for doing serious harm to Alberta’s economy. Also responding last week was Alberta Liberal Leader David Swann, who is vowing to defend Albertans against a repeat of traumatic slash-and-burn service cuts similar to those of the 1990s. “Albertans are looking to their government for visionary leadership to get them out of this recession, including measures to stimulate the economy and protect jobs,” Swann says. “Instead, the Premier’s only solution is to go through his own old playbook – nearly 20 years out of date – and cut the services Albertans need most.” He says the Tory cuts of the 1990s balanced the budget, but did grievous harm to the labour market, public education, public health care and infrastructure – damage that Alberta is still attempting to recover from. Dave Taylor, Alberta Liberal Shadow Minister for Finance and Enterprise, says the government could have weathered the economic storm with ease had they saved more of Alberta’s non-renewable resource revenues, instead of spending it as quickly as it arrived. “We’ve got to get out of this feast-and-famine, boom-and-bust cycle,” Taylor says. “A good government saves during the good times so it has something to fall back on in times like these.” The Liberals are also suggesting that Albertans made their sacrifices in the 1990s in good faith, and now the government is threatening to punish them again. As Albertans we all recall those famous fiscal belt-tightening words of wisdom from Klein during the ‘90s, “short-term pain for long-term gain.” We also remember the impact it had on our seniors, teachers, health care professionals, students and so many other Albertans. And it’s not exactly something we as Albertans care to go through again anytime soon.

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