Notley praises Trudeau, blasts Wall over budgets
News conference on federal budget quickly turns to our prairie neighbours
When Premier Rachel Notley held a news conference Wednesday afternoon, she did it ostensibly to talk about the federal budget.
And talk about the budget she did, saying nice things even though there are still many questions over what the federal document, released Wednesday in Ottawa, means for Alberta.
For example, there’s a one-time payment of $30 million “to support provincial actions that will stimulate economic activity and employment in Alberta’s resource sector” — money that Notley wants to use to clean up orphan wells. (The number of abandoned oil wells with no corporate owner has increased to 2,600 now from 720 a year ago.)
Considering the total bill for such a clean up is around $500 million, Ottawa is offering a drop in the orphan-well bucket. But Notley had nothing but nice things to say about the Liberal budget.
She hailed “positive signals” in the fiscal document aimed at improving drinking water resources for First Nations communities: “There are also positive signals in this budget for our infrastructure and for innovation, both of which will support our economy and create good jobs in Alberta.”
But Notley was most keen to talk about another budget also released Wednesday afternoon — from Saskatchewan.
How keen?
Well, for journalists, it was like touching a gun with a hair trigger.
All it took was one question to unleash a broadside of criticism from Notley aimed at the Brad Wall government. Notley had obviously been primed and ready to explode the minute she saw Wall’s budget, which reduced spending on education, raised the provincial sales tax to six per cent from five per cent and cut jobs.
She also managed to take a shot at Alberta’s official Opposition while she was at it.
Here is just part of her wellrehearsed answer: “What we saw in Saskatchewan was in essence I think the Wildrose plan that they tried so hard to refuse to ever lay out to people, where you see significant tax increases, and at the same time significant cuts in important services to families, whether it be health care, whether it be post-secondary, whether it be education, whether it be libraries, for heaven’s sake, major cuts that will hurt families and a major tax increase that will make life more unaffordable for families, all so that they balance the budget three years before we do.
“Frankly, that’s not the approach we’re taking. We’re maintaining a steady hand because we believe that keeping money in the economy is the way to ensure that we come out of the recession faster. And so we think our plan is the more measured approach.”
If the NDP could fit this on a campaign button, they would.
This will pretty much be the Alberta government’s battle cry over the next two years, arguing that even though the NDP is dropping the province deeper into debt with no balanced budget for six years, it is “making life better for everyday Alberta families” by building schools and hospitals and not cutting health or education.
Wall has set himself up as a foil to Notley, purposely or not, and Notley is eager to use it to her advantage, pointing out the “two different sets of values” between their governments.
She took particular aim at Saskatchewan’s decision to raise its sales tax. Notley said the real hit to that province’s economy will be akin to an eight-per-cent provincial sales tax because it will now include children’s clothing, restaurant meals, snack food and construction services.
“In our province, we see construction as a handy way to do job creation, as a handy way to build infrastructure, as a handy way to create a strong investment climate,” said Notley. “In Saskatchewan, they just raised the cost of that work.”
You can be sure that whenever the Wildrose points to Wall’s conservative government as the example for Alberta to follow, hair-trigger Notley will happily unleash another broadside at her political foes in Saskatchewan and at home.