Alberta Premier can't keep pulling out the NEP to mask his own incompetence

There is no shortage of things that the government of my home province does that frustrate me. Daveberta has brought up a great example, wherein Premier Stelmach blamed the current finical crisis on a man who’s been dead for 8 years, and hasn’t been Prime Minister for almost a quarter of a century. In truth, Alberta’s current financial situation can be boiled down to a failure to plan, and a belief that Alberta’s oil windfall would last forever.

Recently, Alberta saw its bottom line drop by $6.7 Billion, slashing the surplus from $8.5 Billion to an approximate “paltry” $2 Billion. While that may seem like quite a healthy buffer to readers outside of Wild Rose Country, remember that this is the government that gave out “ralphbucks” to all Albertans, and whose spending habits prior to the last provincial election resembled the clichéd drunken sailor.

Alberta’s problem, as our current leaders are discovering, is that our economy resembles that of a Banana republic. It is hard to plan one’s economy when most of the funds come from the export of a single raw resource, whose price fluctuates rapidly. When oil prices are high, the government can throw money at whatever problem arises, and doesn’t need to have any sort of foresight. Sadly, as we’ve seen, Oil prices won’t remain high forever. Just like coal before it, petroleum will be replaced as the power source of the industrialized world. Eventually, reserves will run out, or technologies will switch over to cleaner, more efficient power sources.

Premier Stelmach can’t simply pull out the ghosts of a quarter century ago to mask his own incompetence. Alberta, as noticed by the globe and mail, needs to put more money into the heritage funds, and work on building industries other than the oil patch.