Reality is a teacher..For as long as Danielle Smith has been offering her opinions in public, which extends back at least 24 years to when she was recruited to the Calgary Herald’s opinion page, and spans time in politics and as a talk-show host, she has consistently deplored governments that spend surpluses. She has always recommended financial rigour, and the lower taxes that such spending restraint by government makes possible for people..She has demanded the Heritage Fund be reinforced and expanded.. Toews puts on budget bootsFinance Minister Travis Toews, here shown preparing his 'budget boots,' used his budget speech to emphasize the need for fiscal responsibility, as the key to sustainable program delivery in the future. .And if there is government debt — and what government has not tried to patch its trousers with a loan? — then debt should be repaid..When onetime premier Ralph Klein famously paid off the last dollar of Alberta’s debt, no one could have heaped more accolades upon him than Smith, now herself the premier and inheritor of Klein’s mantle..Knowing what we know of Smith what, we asked ourselves here at the Western Standard, would a Danielle Smith budget look like?.We thought we knew..But the question was always going to be, if there was a surplus anticipated — which there was — and an election in three months’ time — which there is — could even Danielle Smith be counted upon to consult her old editorials and govern accordingly?.And the answer is that when you don’t have to win an election, you can afford to be a pure idealist. When you do, you must answer to the needs of the situation..To be blunt, you spend what you must, to meet the needs you must not ignore. The alternative is electoral ruin..For example, whichever party was now in power would have to deal with the reality that a pound of butter that used to be $5, is now $7. Ten per cent inflation? Maybe on things you don’t have to buy. But most of us need butter and that’s up 40%. Take that as a metaphor for the whole grocery basket. Rents? That’s up 40% too, in Calgary at least. And all Albertans will pay increased federal carbon taxes this year..People are hurting then, especially those on fixed incomes..The Smith government therefore wisely extended the affordability measures it introduced earlier this year to assist students and families with a program of affordability measures for the coming fiscal year, with the promise of more of the same for the two years following. Total, more than $6 billion over three years..Cost this year, $2.3 billion..Smith also promised to ‘fix’ health care. For practical purposes, this meant picking up the pace of elective surgeries, of which there were 69,000 outstanding when she came to office. It also meant cutting ER wait times and the agonizing hours spent waiting for ambulances..After all the improvements have been made that can be effected by reorganising how AHS works — banging heads together, as some see it — the fact remains that improvement takes more people. More doctors, more nurses, more ambulances and people to drive them..People cost money..So, this budget applies a total of, let’s see, another $2 billion this year (and presumably forever after) to “strengthen and modernize’ Alberta’s primary health care system, another $158 million to persuade doctors to take up positions out in the country, nurses too, and more than a billion a year for the next three years to build and fix facilities..Cost $3 billion plus, a year..In those few line items, there are more than $5 billion in new expenditures. Which ones would a responsible premier decline?.No doubt Smith pondered that long and hard, and decided that it would be best to make a smaller contribution to debt retirement. Or as Finance Minister Travis Toews put it in his budget speech, to not allow debt retirement to strangle our economic growth..To be scrupulously fair, when the opposition had their chance, they happily spent more, borrowed more and agonized less..And in truth, the DNA of what Finance Minister Travis Toews delivered this afternoon was here and there recognizable from old Smith newspaper clippings and radio broadcasts..It was after all, a balanced budget. Smith would rather drink ink, than deliver a deficit. There were no tax increases. And the promise of an immediate $2 billion top-up to the Heritage Fund, modest as it, is in there along with the promise that Heritage Fund earnings will no longer be siphoned off as they have been for decades, but will be retained within the Fund to grow and prosper. This is a hobby horse Smith has ridden since her days at the Calgary Herald when she enjoyed berating Treasurer Jim Dinning for doing that very thing. (Which is at least how long they've been doing it. During his budget speech, Minister Toews asserted that had the fund been allowed to retain its earnings, it would be worth $300 billion by now.).And, there is debt retirement — $2.3 billion which, as the budget documents eagerly explain, means more than $14 billion in just two years..Politics is the art of the possible..If the budget isn’t all that Alberta’s remaining conservative idealists wanted it to be, or even all that Smith herself might have desired, it’s what a Conservative politician was able to put together in this year of grace 2023, with the province coming out of a COVID-19 response-induced recession, and a deeply hostile government in Ottawa..So, this is the evolution of Smith from conservative idealist to Conservative politician. It had to happen..But reality is indeed a teacher..And at times, it also feels like a bugger.
