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Originally Posted by crazy_eoj
I'm talking about per capita spending; the comparisons based on provincial averages. The data is from Dominion Bond Rating Service Limited, “The 2009 Canadian Federal and Provincial Governments Overview: Restoring Fiscal Balance,” which was comissioned by the Federal Government and quoted in the Alberta 2010 budget.
If you want to look for yourself go to the fiscal plan and the graph is on page 17.
Our spending has been absolutely outrageous. In 2007, for example, Alberta spent 6.7 billion alone, while Ontario spent 6. Of course they have 4 times our population so you would expect they spent more...
While there may be a real infrastructure deficit on the ground, we can be absolutely certain it is NOT from lack of spending.
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If the metric is either simply total or per captia spending then the figure can misleading. If you don't consider factors such as total provincial income, average taxpayer income, economic situations that demanded immediate investment.
You quoting the 2007 numbers, which is pretty much the height of the boom in Alberta without any consideration for any other factor, is either intentional to give your point false support or an indication of the confirmation bias you are experiencing.
Or do you think that there were no extra costs incurred by the province that are associated with the booming oil sands development?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis
It is pretty absurd that we spend more per capita than Ontario with essentially a third as many people. But to be fair Ontario (more in the Golden Horseshoe area) already has quite a strong infrastructure in place. I don't know the ins and outs of the area, but I'd imagine they haven't had to build two city ring roads like we have had to in the last 10 years. Realistically Ontario has to more maintain its infrastructure whereas we need to upgrade ours. It still should not be that much of a gap though, and obviously indicates there's some wasteful spending going on
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Per capita spending, by the definition of being PER PERSON, disregards the entire notion of total population, so I fail to see how that makes it absurd at all. Maybe you missed some explanation?