Alberta Politics & Government Thread 2.0

[PepsiFree]

Clearly Kenney needs to close up shop on the war room and just deliver Kenney bucks to everyone.

He'll be spoken of as legend for decades to come.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Clearly Kenney needs to close up shop on the war room and just deliver Kenney bucks to everyone.

He'll be spoken of as legend notorious for decades to come.

fyp

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Clearly Kenney needs to close up shop on the war room and just deliver Kenney bucks to everyone.

He'll be spoken of as legend for decades to come.

He should have spent the Keystone XL money on GME stock.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

He should have spent the Keystone XL money on GME stock.

And gamble with our money??? That's crazy talk. I couldn't imagine a Premier making that kind of poor decision...

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Clearly Kenney needs to close up shop on the war room and just deliver Kenney bucks to everyone.

He'll be spoken of as legend for decades to come.

Kenney Bucks would be so uninspired.




Kenney CADs. Kenney Krugerrands. Kenney Kwarters. We can make the alliteration work. There's an army of six-figure salaried issues managers who can come up with something.

[Misterpants]

Pretty sure burgers is the currency that should be used.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

Kenney Bucks would be so uninspired.




Kenney CADs. Kenney Krugerrands. Kenney Kwarters. We can make the alliteration work. There's an army of six-figure salaried issues managers who can come up with something.

Kenney Kwik Kash obviously.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

We have the same economic policies as we did under Klein: hope for unprecedented natural gas and oil royalties to make up for lack of vision, short term deals like selling off capital assets that have poor long-term consequences, and enriching cronies every step of the way.



Klein was lucky enough to get the royalties, so people didn't care about the other stuff that much.

Ralph was done in 2006.

It’s the next 8 years where the big mistakes were made. Ralph bucks and ending health premiums were problematic as was the increased spending but when Ralph left the next premier needed a new vision. Klein’s cutting and paying off the debt from the early 90’s -2004 set us up well. His next two years weren’t the problem.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by GGG

Ralph was done in 2006.

It’s the next 8 years where the big mistakes were made. Ralph bucks and ending health premiums were problematic as was the increased spending but when Ralph left the next premier needed a new vision. Klein’s cutting and paying off the debt from the early 90’s -2004 set us up well. His next two years weren’t the problem.

Klein's cutting and paying debt is exactly the problem. We weren't in monetary debt, but the infrastructure debt left behind after years of austerity needed to be corrected. Even Klein in his last years increased spending to start to improve the deficiencies but in his single minded quest to go to 0 debt at all costs is what ended up costing Alberta so much.

Instead of building roads and hospitals when the economy was low and labour cheap, we had to wait until the economy was booming and labour was expensive in order to start mass producing the infrastructure required to keep up with not just the economic boom, but also the population boom. Mistakes weren't made as much as we NEEDED to increase capital and operating expenditures and had to do so at insane rates.

I get the economics of it are counter-intuitive, but this province was seriously damaged by Klein's reign and no amount of blame shifting to Stelmach will change that.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by belsarius

I get the economics of it are counter-intuitive, but this province was seriously damaged by Klein's reign and no amount of blame shifting to Stelmach will change that.

Yep. Klein's strategy played well to the base and lent to a "feel good" moment, but by 2012 - before the true oil price crash - Redford had to borrow $17 billion to fund infrastructure projects that were left in the wake of Klein's service. She basically described the borrowing as a "mortgage on infrastructure".

And contrary to popular belief, we weren't "debt free" in 2004 when Klein declared it; the government had just budgeted money to eventually pay off the debt in 2013.

In my view Klein had a two-year window in which to restructure royalties to fast-track Heritage Fund savings. Instead he kept royalties pouring into operational budgets, and gave $1.4 billion in cash handouts instead. The price of oil was about $40 when he gave that out, and it rose to about $75 by the time he left office. That could have made a world of difference for padding the fund, especially with an eight-year gap until the collapse in 2014.

Stelmach and Redford aren't saints either - they foolishly thought they could get rid of health premiums when health spending per capita was increasing, especially to play catchup on Klein's infrastructure deficit. Klein arguably also ignored economic diversification during his 15 or so years as Premier.

All around, the conservatives created a cluster#### that was great for fleeting, short-term feel good moments but lacked foresight for future generations and what was required for a growing province, and now here we are.

Today, Kenney and his salty molluscs have taken it upon themselves to be stewards of the public purse, but have made blunder after blunder that it's hard to see what their endgame is.

I'll give Klein credit for something - at least the $1.4B or so that he burned away went back into Albertan's pockets; Jason can't say the same about the $1.4B he lost on his ridiculously boneheaded and unnecessary gamble in KXL.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Misterpants

Pretty sure burgers is the currency that should be used.

Man's gotta eat

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Weitz

Not sure I would call it big. When I lived in GP barely anyone would go there, and they were skiers/borders. I regularly travelled there by myself.

T'was Shangri La for us "actual" northerners

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

I found this to be an interesting article yesterday. I agree with Fawcett, in hindsight I think King Ralph was the one who essentially had an open net and whiffed it badly:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1367164366236311560

Conservatives are bad for the economy.