Welcome on board fishthebow, from out of lurking into posting. :tup:

They have been gradual. Fact of the matter is, Alberta is in the sh*t hole because no one has had the courage to introduce a PST here. That was on the tables, but they have deferred. Personally, I wish they would have stuck to their guns on this and actually have implemented. Hate the fact the Calgary residents with off-shore companies don't pay into the system when they buy their $300K cars. Edwards, Balm, etc.

Under Ralph Klein, Alberta managed to clear the deficit and pay off some debt at the same time. Yes, services were cutback, but everyone miraculously survived somehow.
What I see coming down the pipe from the NDP is a big run up on spending which some other government will have to deal with after the NDPs are booted out, and a growing number of provincial government jobs (none of which will end up in Calgary).

Whether people like the NDP or not, they won't last. They were a protest vote, much like Trump was. Neither Trump nor the NDP will be around in 4 years.

Ralph Klein sent everyone a cheque, while fully understanding that we were using up a non-renewable resource. When people talk about governments doing only what is required to get re-elected in a couple years, that is the definition.

The guy was a fantastic relationships person, but there was zero long-term thinking there. Lougheed was par excellence progressive conservative. Most since have been opportunistic vote hounds.

Anyway - this has not too much to do with construction, so we should move on. If people want to continue, there is likely a thread for that.

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It would take ~15% PST on top of the existing 5% GST to come close to balancing the budget, assuming no leakage (ex. higher rates forcing more transactions underground). Even without a PST and a poor economy, AB still brings in more revenue per capita than do other provinces. The mess that the NDP inherited is huge overfunding of health and especially education and infrastructure. To close the budget gap, all AB needs to do is lower per capita spending to BC levels. No one has yet to justify the rationale for AB's overfunding and the tangible benefits enjoyed by its residents.

1. The PST was required long ago.
2. You can't set a PST level based on an in-year deficit as this is not a projected deficit over a longer period. Bringing in maybe $3-4B with a 5% PST, even if partially moderated by a slight reduction in personal income taxes, would more than suffice.
3. PST pushes the burden on people buying bigger more expensive things that are not required for regular folks, so is more fair than a flat personal income tax that the cons had.

Agree there are challenges with other areas. I don't get, as an example, why we have a fully funded Catholic system whereas this is not the case for most of Canada. Looking at the BC model on this is good (IE Catholic schools get 30% or 50% instead of 100%), however, the BC model for overall revenue vs. expenditures works better because of PST (which you just slammed in your opening remarks). The BC spending model would not deal with our deficit either, without their PST revenue. If I'm wrong, show me the math.

FYI re: BC:
http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2009/e..._Estimates.pdf

BC's 7% PST 2009/10 = >$5B, representing 13% of total revenue.

To put that in perspective, natural resource revenue in Alberta is currently 5% of total revenue.

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It's going to have to be a meeting in the middle - neither cutting per capita spending (perhaps something like a 5% across the board public sector wage reduction) or introducing a new tax like an HST (e.g. 10% HST) alone will bring a balanced budget, both will have to happen. This seems obvious.

Some (but certainly not all) is private sector wage inflation was so crazy in Alberta. So any back of house professional (say administrative, finance, HR, IT, etc) the public sector simply could not compete without higher than average Canadian private sector salaries in these fields. I know the City of Calgary grappled with that during boom times. Just insane turnover due to the lure of much higher private sector salaries. High private sector salaries tend to inflate public sector salaries overall. How do you pay a teacher or nurse massively less money than something far less skilled in an economy? That's a big challenge.

If you could get a 5% reduction in Salaries, Wages and Employee Benefits, that is just over a billion dollars.

Before this gets even more out of control, let us move this over to Alberta Politics II.

Sure. A billion is a billion.

A billion from here, a billion from there, pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.

As I said, it's going to have to happen on a multitude of fronts on the cost and revenue side to find something sustainable.

Except that Trump didn't win by a protest vote, unless you consider democrats not voting for Hillary a protest vote. But yeah, both will probably lose the next election.

I moved some posts from the Calgary Construction thread to here to maintain the focus of the thread there and to bring some continuity and context to this thread.

Thank you for stating the obvious! I don't mean that in a snarky tone, I really mean thanks. I've been trying to tell people that Alberta's problem is not just low revenues, but high spending. Hell, the BC premier mentioned it, and everybody freaked out, but she was right.

Problem politically right now, is you have a government willing to tinker with revenues, but not touch spending in earnest. On the other hand, you have an opposition that's completely allergic to touching any new taxation and thinks we can cut their way out of a structural deficit.

I'll vote for the first party/leader that admits we have to do both. Step on up!

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Very interesting.

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