NOTLEY COURTS FAMILIES ON A TIGHT BUDGET

NDP announces moves to save Albertans money and dares conservatives to object

The NDP’s latest throne speech is a laser beam aimed at the loyalty and votes of Alberta’s modest-income families, while virtually ignoring larger conservative concerns about debt and deficits.

The most-hyped symbol is the elimination of school fees for busing and instructional materials like textbooks. This is sure to be popular with struggling parents. People whose kids have just finished school will wish it were retroactive, but no luck there.

A Calgary family with three kids in a CBE school will save $1,400 a year, the NDP says.

The measure will cost the government $54 million this year — about $10 million more than the election campaign promise in 2015. The province may cover even more of these costs later on.

Along with many other NDP measures, the elimination of these fees is directed at the treasure-trove of suburban voters who belonged to the Progressive Conservatives for four decades.

Premier Rachel Notley’s crew imagined a 2019 election campaign in which conservatives scream for cuts, and she dares them to bring back school fees and payday loans, eliminate child tax credits, and remove the hard cap on home electricity prices — another measure the NDP will enact in this session.

“Rates will be capped below the average price families have paid over the last decade,” the speech says. “If electricity prices go up beyond the cap, electricity bills won’t. Period.”

The New Democrats want to avoid the crisis faced by the Ontario Liberals, whose green campaign has pushed electricity prices so high that the province is now forced to cut them sharply.

The NDP even has an angle on the unpopular carbon tax. If it were ever abolished — which the conservative parties vow to do — two-thirds of Alberta families would lose upfront cash rebates that are often higher than the carbon tax they pay.

The state of provincial finances is barely mentioned in the speech. It does not include the words debt, deficit, or fiscal. In the whole document, there’s only one money-related pledge, to cut the growth of government spending.

Not reduce spending, mind you, but only control the rate at which it climbs. In the current fiscal year, the province spends $53 billion, $10.8 billion more than its revenue.

The NDP points to some spending cuts that are real, although they’re almost irrelevant in dollar terms — frozen salaries for political staff, MLAs, ministers and civil service managers.

The government also trumpets last week’s welcome attack on the absurd compensation for executives in many governmentappointed agencies, boards and commissions. No more golf course memberships or finewine dinners with customers and lobbyists.

But even though the speech ignores the wider fiscal picture, it’s very business-friendly. The NDP touts business growth and diversification through a variety of incentive programs. Finance Minister Joe Ceci argues credibly that the new royalty regime has brought many working rigs back to Alberta.

The speech is also clear that Notley will keep fighting for pipelines and tidewater access. There’s no courting of the enviro fringe here — if her climatechange policy isn’t good enough for those people, so be it.

But the target market for this budget is really “ordinary Albertans” with their “family budgets,” as well as those in serious need. Everything is aimed at “making life better” for most people in the province.

The NDP promises to push on toward $25-a-day child care. There will be a new law “ensuring child death reviews receive the proper care and attention” — an obvious response to the appalling case of Serenity, the indigenous child who died in care without so much as a fatality report for two years.

Notley is trying to build a wall of support with the middle class and the underprivileged, and daring conservatives to storm it. They might find it harder than they think.

Notley will keep fighting for pipelines and tidewater access. There’s no courting of the enviro fringe here