On November 6, 2009, David Swann had these words for delegates at the 2009 convention of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association:

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to share some thoughts with you today.

First I want to express my appreciation to all of you for working so hard on behalf of the citizens you represent. Good, responsive local government is crucial to the health and prosperity of all Albertans, and I know that all of you take that responsibility very seriously.

Indeed, local communities have to take their responsibilities more seriously than ever, because our provincial government, the Stelmach administration, is failing to do its job.

Local communities are growing increasingly burdened by the Premier’s slipshod management, and with a deficit approaching ten billion dollars, I’m afraid things are only going to get worse – until Albertans vote for change at the next election.

From boom to bust and back again, Alberta seems to be trapped in a cycle of feast and famine. In good times, government services are flush with support and our province stands proudly at the peak of prosperity.

Then comes the inevitable bust. Public services are slashed, thousands of public employees lose their jobs, uncertainty creates havoc in the private sector. That $11 billion the Premier promised for municipal sustainability? I’m sorry to say that it feels like nothing more than an empty promise now. Where’s the money going to come from? You know better than me that municipalities need to be smart with their money, and without a long-term, reliable funding agreement, that challenge becomes almost insurmountable.
Last session, the Official Opposition proposed a bill, Bill 204, that would have seen a portion of provincial income tax revenue shared with municipalities…but as you might guess, the Premier and his administration voted it down. How many more municipalities will have to dissolve because they’re unsustainable and underfunded by an administration that’s taking them for granted?

To add insult to injury, the Stelmach administration’s Bill 202 is a slap in the face to municipal governments. The Premier has a lot of nerve suggesting that municipalities can’t handle their money wisely when it’s clear that the provincial government is the one with the spending problem! And can this Premier and this administration really claim that a municipal auditor general would do any good anyway, considering that they consistently ignore and underfund the provincial auditor general? They’ve ignored hundreds of the Auditor General’s recommendations over the last few years. What hypocrisy!

A record-breaking deficit is staring Albertans in the face. The Stelmach administration won’t be able to keep its promises to municipalities. The boom’s been busted once again. How did this happen?

Well, the “how” this time around is pretty simple: the Stelmach administration, like Conservative administrations before it, became dependent on nonrenewable resource revenue and overspent as if oil and gas prices could never collapse. At the same time, they failed to save more than a pittance for the future; their legacy for future generations is a stagnant Heritage Fund and a Sustainability Fund that will be bled dry by this time next year, if not sooner. A deficit approaching $10 billion is bad enough, but barring a miracle, Alberta will soon once again be billions of dollars in debt.

The more important question is not “How did this happen?”, but “Why did this happen?”
I believe it’s a question of character. While the individual members of the Stelmach administration may be good people, they’ve shown over and over that they lack the discipline and imagination necessary to manage Alberta’s finances for the long-term benefit of the province and its people.
Or to put it more bluntly, they govern by the seat of their pants, reacting to situations instead of anticipating them and preparing for them.

Anyone with a shred of common sense understands that any large-scale endeavor requires a plan. Whether you’re running a small business, building a hydroelectric power plant or operating a farm, you need a plan - a plan for the day, the month, the next six months, the next year, the next five years and beyond.

Since Alberta is so heavily dependent on the oil and gas industry, step one is to create a stable royalty regime that’s fair to both the industry and Albertans at large.
With that accomplished, an Alberta Liberal government would implement a savings plan to ensure that future generations will also benefit from today’s oil and gas wealth, even after supplies run low or the resource loses its value.

We must also ensure that our other major industries – agriculture, tourism, and the arts – have the support they need to flourish – stable support that these industries can depend upon year after year.

The same goes for our most important public institutions: health care, education and public infrastructure, all of which need stable, regular funding, along with our municipalities. Right now, the Stelmach administration depends on public-private partnerships to build many of our newer facilities. But these partnerships create long-term debt for our grandchildren, and they’re more expensive than publically funded construction, since you have to factor in a profit margin for the private businesses you hire to do the work.
It would be far better to issue government bonds to cover these infrastructure projects; bonds are a form of debt, to be sure, but one that’s owed to the people of Alberta, not the big banks, ensuring that public infrastructure remains under public control no matter what.

With the highest per capita spending in Canada, it’s clear that there’s also room to trim quite a bit of fat from the provincial budget. But rather than slashing essential public services such as education and health care, as the Premier is doing now, I’d focus on the truly wasteful spending, such as handouts to private golf courses, horse racing and other private businesses that don’t need public subsides, huge severance packages and bonuses for top patronage appointees, and redundant committees. And I’d spend on preventative programs now to save money in the long term. Investing in health, the homelessness problem, crime prevention and education saves billions, if we are wise enough to plan for the long term.

An Alberta Liberal government would also spend a lot less on slick communications spin and devote those resources to real action, the meat-and-potatoes work a responsible government must undertake, simple things like ensuring that our lakes and rivers are monitored and analyzed for toxins, and that our food supplies are monitored for contamination – simple but vital tasks the Stelmach administration has failed to complete, as outlined by Laurie Blakeman, the Official Opposition critic for Environment, and the Auditor General.

When the oil money flows, Alberta is the easiest province in the nation to run – but even then, the Stelmach administration mismanaged the boom and squandered most of our nonrenewable resource wealth. How then, can we expect the same group of people to manage this province when times are tough?

My approach is simple: make decisions based not on political ideology, but on solid evidence, to serve the long-term interest of Albertans. In good times and bad, that’s the kind of government the best province in Canada needs. That’s the kind of government that would help your communities flourish.

Thank you again for this opportunity, and I hope all of you enjoy a fruitful and rewarding convention.

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