Quote:
Originally Posted by Airboy
The Klein era was not good in the long term. The infrastructure was left to deteriorate while trying to reduce the debt. We are now paying the price for that with the money being spent to replace and upgrade facilities. Another issue was the ending of Health Care premiums. Instead of bringing in a PST lets reinstate the HCP. At least get some stable funding for the health care system.
Diversifying the revenue stream is required. And as was mentioned above diversifying the revenue is more important that diversifying the economy. The energy sector is only 25% of the GDP.
|
A few key achievements stand out from the Klein era, at least in my view:
-keeping spending under control (or at least, recognizing the correlation between revenue and spending; whether you keep spending down or increase taxes to keep pace with spending - one or the other needs to happen;
-consistently balanced budgets, even during times of low commodity prices;
-aggressively courting corporate relocation from other provinces. This was about as close as the government ever got to successful diversification.
Agree that he should have kept the health premiums, but I believe it was actually Stelmach who eliminated them.
Not to say he didn't make mistakes (every leader does), but these were solid achievements; I can't think of any notable achievements from Klein's successors...