[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Zarley

I really am scratching my head at this statement. What has improved in Alberta in the past five years? I guess I could see an argument that things have improved for public sector employees, but things have not been pretty for the rest of us:

You can see how things have improved for employees who took wage freezes during the NDP’s tenure? That’s a wonderfully glass half full approach.

- Healthcare benchmarks have not shown improvement despite increases in spending at AHS, and on aggregate things have gotten worse: go to page 135 of the AHS annual report to see for yourself, but here are the wait time metrics:
Change in wait time from 2014 to 2017:
Radiation Oncology +8.2%
Medical Oncology +1.8%
Coronary Artery Bypass +49%
Cataract Surgery +28.4%
Hip Replacement +27.9%
Knee Replacement +23.3%

While I would agree that the increased wait times are disappointing, trying to argue that increased funding to AHS as a whole should have reduced wait times for all healthcare treatments is disengenuous. It ignores the improvements made in areas like increased access to mental health treatments and other newly built infrastructure that doesn’t affect these procedures. There are a number of factors that contribute to wait times increasing, a larger aging population, violent crime and drug use increasing emergency room visits, etc.

- Crime has increased across the province each year, both in terms of per capita rates, but also in terms of severity. Calgary used to be safer than the national average, but this is not the case any longer.

- The drug crisis in the province continues to persist out of control. The chart on page 17 of this report is eye-opening.

The unfortunate reality is that there is generally an increase in both of these categories during economic downturns. If you truly believe our pipeline capacity issues weren’t the primary cause of the downturn I can understand why you’d blame the NDP for these trends, but I don’t believe that to be the case.

-Average weekly earnings have stagnated brutally - after you consider the impacts of inflation the median Albertan has been consistently losing money for the past half decade.

That seems like a predictable outcome given the fact that an industry whose employees were generally compensated at an above average rate was impacted with the most job losses.

- And of course, the majority of economic metrics on this dashboard have exhibited negative trends over the past five years. Bankruptcies, incorporation, investment, housing starts, construction, etc - take your pick. It's a horrendous record.

These are again very predictable outcomes when your jurisdiction faces one of it’s worst economic downturns and the primary contributing factor(pipeline capacity) isn’t addressed.

Now obviously the lack of pipeline capacity has affected oilpatch capital as well, but those same constraints existed in 2014 when investment peaked.

Investment peaked in 2014 and was on a downward trend before the NDP took office yet you’re maintaining that the NDP are to blame. If what you are saying is accurate we wouldn’t have a capacity issue, as our existing pipelines would be empty due to lack of investment.

For comparison - here is global capital investment in the oilpatch - note the increases in North America.

How do we compare to other jurisdictions with no export capacity? That should be the comparable you’re presenting to validate your argument that the NDP’s policies are to blame for the lack of investment. Otherwise it’s essentially apples to oranges.

- Of course, the corporate tax increase that did not result in increased government revenue certainly didn't help things. It just contributed to the stigma against investing in Alberta. Also contributing to this stigma is the cap on oil sands emissions.

What tax rate would have been more suitable to attract investment in an industry that can’t profitably move it’s commodity?

- Speaking of a gap in financial and economic education, NDP policymakers simply lack an understanding of how wealth is created in a market economy. They are well meaning, but naive and ideological rather than analytical thinkers - as exemplified by the PPA fiasco.

So your solution is to elect a government that believes in trickle down economics as the key to prosperity. Now who’s being naive and idealogical?