Letter: Cuts have nothing to do with austerity

By Letter to the Editor on March 10, 2021.

An open letter to Jason Kenney,

Recently when asked about your government’s planned cuts you replied, “Money does not grow on trees. … We have to protect the health of the province’s finances.”

I was flabbergasted hearing this from a premier who lost $1.3 billion gambling on a failed pipeline, spent $12 million to dismantle the Super Lab (which would have been useful during the pandemic) and $1.5 billion to cancel oil by rail contracts. Corporate Tax Cuts that benefit corporations will amount to $4.7 billion in lost revenue and the embarrassing so-called ‘war room’ has a budget of $30 million.

I am outraged that your cabinet members are the highest paid in Canada yet your government intends to cut workers’ wages to ‘bring them in line with comparable wages in other provinces.’ Why are your cabinet members the highest paid in Canada and why do they each have two paid personal staff? Alberta’s health minister, Tyler Shandro, makes $181,404 more than any other Canadian health minister.

You stacked a plethora of paid panels with individuals who stand to benefit from your greedy policies and you called that ‘consulting!’ I call it “using my tax dollars to reward cronies’ and ‘pretending to be democratic.’ It is obvious that your cuts have nothing to do with austerity, but are about your hidden agenda, the one you did not campaign on. It includes decimating our public health and education systems in favour of American-style privatization that will cost more and cater to the wealthy, dumbing down our post-secondary education system and breaking our unions in favour of big corporations who donated to your campaign.

Please don’t use the pandemic as an excuse for your financial mismanagement of my tax dollars. Under your watch it had already ballooned pre-pandemic. You have squandered Albertans’ tax dollars as if they grew on trees. You must step down because you are not representing the best interest of Alberta and Albertans.

Carolyn Schoepp

Drayton Valley

9
-8