MLA Report: Rural values are Alberta values, Part 3

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on June 18, 2021.

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging

One of the most common concerns I hear from folks is that our governments are getting away from the core values that once made our province and our country strong.

This is of great concern to me, because we didn’t come by our values the easy way. They are a reflection of the struggles we have faced and the lessons we have learned over three, four, and five generations. We have faced harsh winters, drought, floods, and prairie fires, not to mention two World Wars and a Great Depression. Our legacy is the values that we learned from our parents and teach our children.

Here is one lesson that three Alberta governments, led by three different parties, have studiously and consistently ignored: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

I shouldn’t have to explain this; it’s just common sense.

Alberta is now more than $100 billion in debt. The debt has exploded from $0 to $100,000,000,000 in just over a decade. We’re in a rather substantial hole, which has only grown deeper as successive governments increased spending.

Rather than put down the shovel, our governments have refused to acknowledge the threat that structural deficits pose to core government programs like healthcare and education. Instead, they have consistently fed Albertans false hope in the form of over estimated resource revenue and economic growth. This inability to provide a realistic plan to balance the budget has led directly to a series of credit downgrades, making our hole even steeper.

So what has the current government done to tackle the deficit? Nothing. In fact, they’re all-in on the Justin Trudeau model of economics, ignoring deficits and trying to paper over past mistakes by increasing spending. That’s the kind of thinking that brought us to the Premier’s latest brainwave: a Covid-19 vaccination lottery.

You see, Jason Kenney thinks too few people are lining up for the jab, despite the fact over two-thirds already have received a first dose. At the time of his lottery announcement, the rate had already reached 68.7 per cent, 1.3 per cent below the threshold for lifting all public health restrictions. Unable to accept the imminent end of the pandemic, Kenney decided this was the time to raid your children’s piggy banks, looking for a cool $3 million to hand out.

He says his plan will pay for itself, like a Justin Trudeau deficit, but he has no metrics in place to measure if it is a success. He has a shovel, darn it, and he intends to use it.

It’s thinking like this that dug our $100 billion hole. It’s time for the Premier to put down the shovel, and remember what our ancestors taught us: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Some of the more elitist elements within our governments tend to look down on such values, and dismiss them as rural remnants of a bygone era. This is incredibly short sighted. These values aren’t just rural values or conservative values, they’re foundational Albertan values.

To get our province back on track we need to get back to what works for us.

Rural Values are Alberta Values is a series of opinion columns by Drew Barnes, MLA for Cypress-Medicine Hat