News

Provincial government is about seeing to the best possible core public services, supported by responsible public finance that is friendly to a modern, balanced, and sustainable market economy.

Who has done the best job so far this year?

On many important measures, the provincial government doing the best job for its citizens is the province of Alberta. Alberta Finance Minister Iris Evans's April 7th budget confirmed a number of long-term trends. A key and rarely understood one outside of the province, I think: Alberta is making the highest per capita investment in both education and health care in Canada.

In the case of education, Alberta has almost doubled its investment over the past ten years.

Education is arguably the single most effective investment government can make in the economy. Alberta's commitment to its schools, colleges and universities is paying off in multiple ways. It is attacking poverty at its root. It is growing the competitiveness of the economy. It is helping to lay the foundation for an economic future for both urban and rural communities - a key issue in any prairie province.

In the case of health care, Albertans are the most committed per capita investors in socialized medicine in Canada.

On the strength of this efficient, targeted investment - free of the profiteering and duplicative, predatory administration found in U.S.-style private insurance regimes - Albertans are pioneering beneficiaries of Tommy Douglas's vision for the second phase of medicare.

They are enjoying growing access to primary and preventive care designed to help people keep well, rather than patching them up after they have become ill. Many Albertan health indicators demonstrate the signal merits of this approach.

There is no lack of controversy about the details of Alberta's investments in both education and health care. But the overall story seems clear.

Who is doing the worst job among Canada's provincial governments?

The province of Alberta.

Alberta's praiseworthy public education and socialized health systems are built on the public equivalent of a ponzi scheme — a form of fraud that is the signature achievement of small-c conservative rule in both government and business throughout the western world over the past two decades.

In the case of Alberta, provincial finances are built on the populist fraud that Alberta is a low-tax jurisdiction.

Arguably, Alberta is in fact the highest-tax jurisdiction in Canada, possibly in the western world.

Instead of a visible, accountable progressive income and consumption tax system, the reckless folks running the province's revenue policy have substituted an extravagantly inefficient and ruinously expensive concealed tax system, levied on Alberta's children. Specifically, on their equity in their province's depleting fossil energy resources.

As this year's provincial budget and its $4.7-billion deficit demonstrates, funding public services from petroleum royalties is a thin reed to build on, as well as being fiscal madness in the long term.

The government of Alberta has wisely taken its lead from social democratic governments in setting investment levels for core public services. It isn't too late (hopefully) for the province to follow the same successful models in its revenues.

In particular, the province would do its children a signal service if it followed the model of a fellow petro-jurisdiction with roughly the same population base  - Norway.

Norwegians pay income and consumption tax to fund public services of a quality roughly comparable to Alberta's.

Meanwhile, by law, all revenues from Norway's temporary bounty of petroleum revenues must be directed to its "Pension Fund — Global," which can then contribute a 4 per cent return to public finances.

Norwegians have collectively banked $325-billion as a result - growing nicely in sovereign investment funds, there for their children.

Alberta should do the same, on all counts.

With its commitment to efficient and effective investment in education and health, Alberta is halfway to the New Jerusalem. Finish the job, comrades.

Brian Topp was deputy chief of staff to Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow. He served as the federal New Democratic Party's national campaign director in 2006 and 2008