Quote du Jour: A kick in whose head?

Plunging natural gas prices are gutting the Alberta treasury, with the once-booming province staring at a deficit of almost $7-billion, its biggest ever.

The price of natural gas has fallen by more than half this year, steadily sliding each month as a flush of new supply in the United States smashes against weak demand because of the recession.

It has been a “real kick in the head,” said Alberta Finance Minister Iris Evans, as she announced a budget update and the new deficit of $6.9-billion for 2009-2010, $2.2-billion worse than predicted in the April budget.

This province has been run by economic fools for decades. Conservative fools who keep getting elected by an ignorant public that apparently likes being kicked in the head repeatedly by finance ministers who never come through on their forecasts. Ever. And we always end up paying for it by more cuts to essential social services like health care and education.

Don't look to the Liberals or NDP to be making any breakthroughs during the next election even with a lot of grumbling aimed at Steady Eddie Stelmach. The buzz now is all about the (further) right-wing party, the Wildrose Alliance. Just what we need - our own bunch of neocons.

I'm a liberal. Get me out of here.

Update:

Next thing you know, we'll be having a garage sale too.
 

Iris Evans Cures Mental Illnesses

I kid you not:

"The huge failure of Canadians is not to educate the children properly, and then why should we be surprised when they have mental illnesses or commit dreadful crimes?" she said.

This is why Easterners think Albertans are just a bunch of dumb hicks. (Not that we don't have our fair share of those here...)

Seriously, this woman is a trained nurse. And she's a former provincial minister of Health and Wellness. I kid you not (once again). Let's hope she never worked on a mental health ward. The stoopid. It hurts.

No wonder mental health services are so poor in this province. She probably thought that handing out flash cards with multiplication tables would automagically fix patients who needed help. On the other hand, she was too fucking cheap to even manage to do that.

And don't even get me started on this crap:

To raise children "properly" one parent should stay at home while the other goes to work, Alberta's finance minister suggested Wednesday.

In a tangent at the end of a speech on Alberta's economy to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto, Iris Evans spoke about the importance of teaching kids about finances and how those lessons can be empowering.

After struggling with finances as a mother herself, Evans said, she made it her mission to teach her own children about money. Now, as adults with their own families, her kids have topped up RRSPs, live in good houses and have good savings, Evans said.

She also said good parenting means sacrificing some income to stay at home while kids are young, as her children have done.

"They've understood perfectly well that when you're raising children, you don't both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise," Evans said. "This is not a statement against daycare. It's a statement about their belief in the importance of raising children properly."

Iris Evans: Canada's Dr Laura. (And just as self-righteously annoying.)

Update:

Evans apologizes (but still stands by her cure for mental illnesses, apparently.)
 

Alberta Budget 2008: Health Care Premiums are History

Finally. Effective January 1, 2009. That's the biggest sound bite to come out of Tuesday's budget. Considering the fact that this province has been swimming in oil money for so long, that move is long overdue.

The Calgary Herald has more:

Spending up 12%

Finance Minister Iris Evans' first financial blueprint projects $37 billion in operating and capital spending this year and a relatively small surplus of $1.6 billion, based on extremely conservative commodity prices, such as oil averaging $78 per barrel this year.

The Cons always low ball the oil money projections so they can claim "success" each year when they pretend to act surprised at how much of a surplus actually results from that little game. Then they use that little trick to talk about how wonderful they are. It's gotten pretty old.

As for that increased spending, here are a few details:

Despite all the spending, no new K-12 schools or post-secondary facilities are planned for the fiscal year, although operating budgets will see substantial increases. The health budget will see a $1.1-billion increase in program spending, sending the total health tab to more than $13 billion.

More details here on the official budget page and here from the Herald.

Note: we're still playing catch up here from all of the slashing and burning the Cons did during the 90s to the health care system, education, and infrastructure spending - the 3 main areas of concern for all Albertans (the majority of whom kept re-electing this useless party anyway...insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results...lots of that happening in this province, obviously.)

But while Albertans may save more cash, very little is being socked away for the future. The government has allocated $279 million to inflation proof the province's primary savings vehicle, the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, but doesn't plan any direct deposits into the account.

Expect grumblings from fiscal conservatives over that issue although I don't know what they're complaining about since the Cons have kept stashing money away in that fund for a supposedly rainy day despite the more pressing needs Albertans have had that some of that money could have been spent on.

Fiscal cons have also been on the government's back for its pattern of 'spending like drunken sailors' under Ralph Klein (who actually was a drunk, but not a sailor), so expect blowback on that front too.

Exhibit A:

"We have some very serious concern about this government's addiction to spending," Scott Hennig, Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said Monday on the eve of the budget. "It's irresponsible and not sustainable."

Afaic, if they'd actually spent more of that drunken sailor money on helping the poor in this crazy boom economy, they might have gotten some kudos from me. But the tories rarely spend on anything they can't see a fiscal return from, so that isn't surprising.

Here's a view into how they choose their priorities:

Funding boosts also will go to some controversial programs, with $7 million more headed to the Horse Racing and Breeding Renewal Program, and an additional $3-million for bingo associations. Combined, the two increases equal the same amount of new money dedicated to after-school children's programs in Alberta.

Gambling v children? Look who wins.

I'll add opposition party reaction as it comes in...