Pitiful lack of leadership

Re: “ ‘Painful for a lot of folks’; Budget cuts spending, borrows billions, drains savings fund,” the Journal, March 8. The morning after the budget I was astonished to be awakening to what seemed to be Dust Bowl Oklahoma. The government was shaking a tattered divan to free nickels to continue offering public services.

This pitiful scenario is playing out in the wealthiest province in a very rich country. I had hoped for courage and leadership in this budget since Alberta’s continued prosperity demands both.

The courage to do the right thing requires taking political risk, but the Redford government produced an incoherent mishmash of good and bad ideas linked only by a relentless failure of logic.

Business columnist Gary Lamphier was dead-on when he wrote Alberta “is the land of make believe, where crass politics often trumps the laws of economics.” We’ve been living a kindergarten fantasy for a long time suggesting the services a healthy government ought to provide can be offered with little revenue from the people, especially from those most blessed by a strong economy.

The failure seems partly because of not distinguishing “spending” from “investment.” It also results from lack of a long-term perspective. Infrastructure, municipal development, training, research, higher education: all these require government leadership and, if done effectively, pay handsome long-term dividends.

A small sales tax or a progressive tax would have been politically risky and courageous. The common interest has suffered from the lack of such leadership.