Alberta needs a strong public sector

This post first appeared on Krystal Kromm and Serge Gingras's Red Deer Alberta Party blog here.

Do you care about our public services like health, education, fire and police protection?

Take 5 and a half minutes and watch this video.

Creating and protecting public services require a strong government that represents the people and our values of fairness, empathy, responsibility and equality.

The private marketplace filled with ethical entrepreneurs is an important part of a strong economy. Public education, universal health care, fire and police services are not markets -- they occupy a public, not private, space that is driven not by private profits but by public service.

Some corporations and their political friends want to turn our public goods that are for everyone into private interests that profit an elite and wealthy few.

Here is how they are doing it:

1. Deliberately underfund public services.

2. Taxes for the wealthiest people and corporations are cut in a way that government claims that we spend too much and as a result, we “all” must address the deficit together with higher fees and new health care premiums.

3. Lack of funding erodes the quality, availability and accessibility of services.

4. People get more frustrated and lose confidence in the services.

5. Corporations and their political friends say that privatization is the answer.

In many cases, privatization of public goods has a proven track record of lower quality, less service, higher costs and greater risks to public safety. Too often, privatization means that Albertans pay more and get less.

Privatizing our health, education and services for seniors often changes the bottom line. When a service remains public, people remain the bottom line. When we privatize and corporations take over the delivery of services, there is a shift and the bottom line becomes more focused on profits and less on the needs of people.

Some private-public partnerships may work but they can not only be held accountable to shareholders whose interest is on profits. A transparent government should be truly accountable to all Albertans and provide the best care for our health, education and seniors, without the threat of privatizing our public services.

The Alberta Party understands that Alberta's health and wealth requires a diversified economy, a commitment to the environment, a strong public sector, a balanced budget and a strong social conscience.

Learn about the Alberta Party's Better Way here.

My Talk on Education as Crime Prevention

My talk today focused on 3 big ideas:

1. It's easier to build strong children than repair broken people.

2. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

3. If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

My talk today about rethinking Crime Prevention was based on these blog posts:

3 big ideas about teacher workload

3 things I learned teaching in the hospital

Alberta isn't broke but the PC's ideas are

Alberta: 11,000 new kids with 14.5 million less dollars

Budget cuts could result in 2500 fewer teachers

Better Way Alberta

Alberta Could

15,000 qualified post-secondary students turned away

5 Reasons why I left the PCs for the Alberta Party

There is a better way Alberta!

Alberta's basic operations like health and education have been held hostage by the price of oil for too long. Albertans need to understand that there is a better way to manage our oil so that we can keep our promises to our children, our seniors and ourselves.

We need to manage our spending as much as our revenue.

Alberta needs fair and progressive corporate taxation.

Alberta's oil belongs to Albertans. Albertans deserve their fair share of the profits from our oil.

Alberta has been lied to for too long. Blaming scapegoats might get you elected, but at some point, Albertans will speak truth to power, revealing the real culprits.

Take less than 5 minutes and watch this:

Whom is the Alberta Government for?

Alberta's public schools are expected to be
everything to everyone with less and less.

In Alberta, a dependency on oil and gas has left us grossly susceptible to excessive revenue volatility -- things are glorious in the booms but down-right scary in the busts. Thus, Alberta has come to be defined as much by our advantages as our disadvantages.

Today, Alberta is busting under a 40+ year old government now led by Jim Prentice who is yet again looking to balance the budget by cutting hard working Albertans and public goods such as health and education.

No one in their right mind would ask Jim Prentice to Be Like Ralph had the PCs learned anything in the 25 years since Ralph Klein took an axe to Alberta's schools and hospitals.

Alberta isn't broke, but Jim Prentice and the PCs' priorities are.

Hard working Albertans get upset when the government demands "burden sharing" during the tough times but ignores "profit sharing" during the good times. It takes zero courage to make hard working Albertans pay for the bad times while PC MLAs mismanage the good times in their own favour.

It's nearly impossible to believe that Alberta's oil belongs to Albertans when we have the second lowest oil and gas royalty regime in the world -- only Yemen has a lower royalty rate for oil. But, it's like they say, if it's good enough for Yemen, it's good enough for us... (wait, no one says that!)

Hard working Albertans get frustrated when "everything is on the table" means that public goods for all like schools and hospitals will be sacrificed to save private interests for the privileged few. In other words, austerity is when people who have the least give up the most, so that people who have the most don't have to give up anything. Cutting expenditures while ignoring revenues is like building a house with only a saw.

Webber Academy is an elite private school in Calgary
that has select admissions, annual tuition ranging from $10-20
thousand and is subsidized by Alberta taxpayers.

In 2013, any Albertan who made more than $17,593 paid the same percentage (10%) of Alberta tax regardless of their income. Alberta could raise its taxes by $11 billion a year and remain the lowest taxed province in Canada. When public services don't keep up with the wealthy's demands for things like health and education, they pay for it out of pocket -- while everyone else likely goes without. Need proof? Keep in mind that 1 in 7 children in Alberta live in poverty while you watch this powerful 9 minute video on the difference between an affluent private school and a poor public school in Calgary.

Cutting expenditures can not be the only solution. Prentice has said that, "I could terminate the employment of every single employee of the Government of Alberta, leaving aside healthcare, and it would not fill a six- to seven-billion-dollar hole." This isn't an argument for cutting healthcare or education -- it's an argument that says if your only tool is a saw, you will cut everything.

Alberta teachers are in the middle of a collectively bargained contract that has me get 0%, 0% and 0% pay increases over three years. I already have 30+ children in my grade 6 and 8 classes, and I teach 120+ students everyday. In 2013, Alberta schools added 11,000 more students, but the PCs cut 14.5 million. How many students will I have after Prentice and the PCs cut even more? How much more of the burden do children, teachers and schools have to pay?

Trickle-Down Economics or Flood-Up Economics?

If everything is honestly on the table, however, then Alberta needs to address our revenue problem by raising Alberta's corporate tax, oil royalties and moving to a progressive tax. We also need to take the Heritage Savings Trust Fund seriously.

The size of the Alberta government is not our primary problem -- our primary problem is figuring out whom the government is for. For too long, the so-called "Alberta Advantage" has been built on corporate welfare, crony capitalism and PC privilege which has led to socialism for the rich and capitalism for the middle class and poor. If the "Alberta Advantage" is truly for everyone, then Albertans need a government who will build this province with more than a saw.

Albertans don't need an early and illegal election that will cost them $20 million, but Prentice and the PCs do if they want to deliver a budget that will likely double down on four decades of PC failure, mismanagement and squandering. Alison Redford had no-meet committees while Prentice has why-meet committees, both are an assault on our budget and democracy. When crisis hits Alberta, and democracy seems a practical impossibility, we need a government that is for Main Street, not Wall Street.

As long as Albertans continue to vote the way they have always voted, Albertans will continue to get what they have always gotten. It's time Albertans stopped choosing between being healthy and wealthy, when we so obviously need both.

If Jim Prentice and the PCs are to receive this message loud and clear, most Albertans need to find a new political home and vote for someone and something different.

I know I am.

Alberta needs to be healthy and wealthy

I attended a Wildrose meet and greet event in Red Deer where leader of the Wildrose Danielle Smith gave a talk and took questions. I went because I wanted to see and hear what the Wildrose are doing and what the people who would attend a Wildrose event are saying and thinking.

I was there to learn.

Danielle Smith talked about the ridiculous wages that some government administrators make like the head of Alberta Health Services or Redford's chief of staff.

Talking about income inequality is often a great way to get labelled a communist or a socialist, but when Danielle Smith and the Wildrose talk about government employees who make a ridiculous salary, they get head nods and hell-yeahs from Wildrose and NDP alike. 

Albertans who don't make six figures have a problem with public-sector employees who do.

Danielle Smith elicited gasps from the crowd when she said that the Alberta Union of Public Employees (AUPE) reported that many of their frontline members don't make $45,000 in an entire year -- which happens to be the cost of Alison Redford's flights to Nelson Mandela's funeral.

This hit home big time amongst the room of people in Red Deer -- I saw heads nodding everywhere. The tension in the room was escalating. If Smith was trying to elicit an emotional response, she hit everyone, including me, between the eyes.

Smith also talked about making Alberta's Heritage Fund a priority and pointed to Norway's Oil Savings Fund that now sits at over $900 Billion, compared to Alberta's $17 Billion.

That's some of what Danielle Smith and the Wildrose talk about.

Here's some of what Danielle Smith and the Wildrose don't talk about.

Like Smith and the Wildrose, I too am interested in what Alberta can learn from Norway. It turns out that Norway does a better job of saving money in the bank and keeping kids off the street. Smith and the Wildrose make a point to be envious over Norway's bank account, while ignoring their superior skills in keeping children out of poverty. I think Albertans care about both, and so should any political party worthy of governance.

The whole point of being fiscally responsible is born out of the idea that responsible adults don't run up a tab and then throw the bill at our next generation of children. If this matters, and it really does, then so does ensuring that our present generation of children don't live in poverty.

It is disingenuous to talk about government cronyism and then ignore Alberta's growing income gap and children living in poverty. (Did you know that the top Canadian CEOs earn average workers' salary in a day and a half?)

Anyone who wants to talk about fiscal responsibility or education without talking about reducing poverty has an agenda and should be challenged, and anyone who talks about social responsibility and reducing poverty without talking about balancing the books is irresponsible and should be challenged.

If we care about children, then we need to talk about fiscal and social responsibilities. For too long, Alberta political parties have been marinated in ideology that prioritizes one at the expense of the other. The ancient tug o' war between left and right over fiscal and social responsibilities is an old and tired political model that have many people angry, cynical or apathetic.

If you are a fiscally responsible and socially conscious Albertan who is looking for a different way of doing politics, then I invite you to check out Greg Clark and the Alberta Party.

Greg Clark and the Alberta Party believes, "we can have a strong economy. We can have a strong commitment to the environment. A strong balance sheet and a strong social conscience."

The Alberta Party understands that it is easier and cheaper to build strong children than to repair broken people. Their social policies reflect an understanding for the idea that an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure.

The Alberta Party is a breath of fresh air that Alberta desperately needs.

Winston Churchill once said:

Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.

While I give Churchill full credit for being pithy, this kind of black and white thinking holds us back. If Alberta is going to be healthy and wealthy, we have to stop choosing between having a brain or a heart.

Alberta needs both.

Alberta needs the Alberta Party.