Bottom line that two booms and busts should have taught us not to base public policy on ever increasing commodity price assumptions and not to spend carelessly just because we have it now. It's very hard to wein spending down after government departments/special interests are addicted to surplus cash. The problem with that is when there are obscene surpluses all the "I have a great idea to spend the cash", type ideas come out of the woodwork
Example of this attitude of no foresight or fiscal prudence would be this Post from a royalty review debate back in '07:
Quote:
We live in a debt free province pulling in surpluses left right & centre every year, there is plenty of money in the provincial coffers. What is needed is for your namesake Eddie our buddy to loosen up the purse strings and start spending that money - to attract more doctors and nurses and more teachers to Alberta, to give the cities more funding to pay contractors who will hire the labour needed for these infrastructures.
More money SPENT always solves the problem, but more money in the government treasury locked up and not being utilized does not. Why do you think Bronco is always crying for money? It's all there locked up in Ed's safe. Would you need more money if you were Bill Gates? Start worrying about how to SPEND the obscene amount of money you have first before worrying about what is the best way to duplicate the NEP legacy of the Trudeau era.
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Looking back on that thread there was only really a handful of people who supported less government spending and who looked at the royalty review as speculation on higher oil and gas prices.
http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthr...Royalty+Debate