NDP must make tough choices at retreat
This promises to be a momentous week in Alberta.
Not that you’d notice.
The NDP government is holding a cabinet retreat in Banff where ministers will be discussing a category of issues, but none more categorical than the provincial budget.
This will be “the” issue of 2018. The NDP has to show Albertans it has a plan to balance a provincial budget plagued with yearafter-year deficits in the neighbourhood of $10 billion.
How can the government bring that deficit to zero? And how quickly? (And when will it start to pay down a debt that is approaching $50 billion?)
When it comes to eliminating deficits, the government has three options: raise taxes, cut spending or pray for oil prices to rise. Previous Alberta governments have been big on the latter. But the gods of higher oil prices are a fickle lot.
That leaves raising taxes, which the government is not keen on, especially with a provincial election in just over a year.
Or cuts to spending. That’s an interesting one because the government has backed itself into a corner with promises not to cut the core programs of heath and education. Those two alone account for about $35 billion of a $55-billion budget. That doesn’t leave a lot of room to cut.
But there will be cuts, or as governments prefer to call them, “belt-tightening.” Or as the Alberta government likes to call it, “compassionate belt-tightening.”
“We are going to be ensuring that we compassionately tighten our belt,” Finance Minister Joe Ceci told journalists this week. “We’re going to be showing Albertans our path back to balance.”
Yes, balance is a good idea, because the government has been a bit wobbly when it comes to debt and deficits.
The cabinet retreat itself won’t generate much news. It’s behind closed doors and it’s not as if the premier is releasing updates by the hour. She might, however, hold a teleconference Thursday or Friday to update journalists, no doubt in the vaguest of terms, on what was achieved, budgetwise.
And no doubt a reporter or two will ask her about the optics of holding a belt-tightening cabinet retreat in the winter playground of Banff.
The government has already tried to downplay any criticism of the venue by pointing out cabinet is staying at the Juniper Hotel (where rooms go for about $125 a night), not the Banff Springs Hotel ($400 a night).
Total cost of the retreat is about $37,000. That’s not much compared to a $55-billion budget. But where voters might have difficulty comprehending $55 billion, they’ll have no problem understanding $37,000, and deciding whether the spending makes sense at a time the government will be (compassionately) tightening our belts.
But no matter the cost, and previous PC governments spent much more than $37,000 at times on its cabinet retreats, there’s the question of choosing Banff, again. (The retreat was in Banff last year, too).
“I know cabinet is focused and wants to discuss things,” said Ceci, downplaying the location. “This is not there for anything other than cabinet retreat.”
Yes, we assume ministers won’t be heading to the mountains of Lake Louise or Sunshine Village for a bit a snowboarding, but why not hold the retreat in Red Deer, or Medicine Hat, or Cold Lake (all locations of former PC cabinet getaways)?
This is not a big issue, just a niggling question. The United Conservative Party, for one, isn’t making a molehill into a Rocky Mountain.
“Admittedly, they could have held their retreat in a government facility in Calgary or Edmonton,” the party said in an email Wednesday. “That said, we’re more concerned with what new negative policies they might working on at the retreat, as opposed to where they’re holding it.”
No doubt this week’s retreat will lead to new government policies on a range of issues. But we won’t be seeing them until the legislative session begins in March.