On Thursday, October 24, the Alberta government released the provincial budget, which was nothing short of a brutal frontal assault on province’s public services, workers and the poor. The government outlined it would cut program spending by 2.8% over the next four years. This 2.8%, the largest cut to provincial program spending in 25 years, will reduce 7.7% of the public sector in the next four years, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs.
Alberta’s Austerity
The UCP budget will also give a 4.5 billion dollar tax cut to the rich and implement the ‘Alberta Job Creation Tax Cut’, which cuts the tax rate for large corporations from twelve to eight percent by 2022. Albertans will pay for these tax cuts in the form of layoffs, austerity and cuts to municipalities, social assistance and other services.
The budget follows the release of last months ‘MacKinnon Panel Report’, an 84-page document with 26 recommendations of how to “balance the budget” by 2023. The report was written by a six-person board made up of former deputy ministers, people from the academic sector, the CEO of ATB financial, and led by former Saskatchewan NDP finance minister Janice MacKinnon. It recommended cutting the operating budget of the province by $600 million a year off the backs of workers through cuts to Alberta’s public services.
The most concerning aspects of the MacKinnon report targeted education, healthcare and social services for cuts and privatization. The budget followed the recommendations of the report specifically related to post-secondary education, which cuts 5.1% across 26 institutions, with plans to link funding to “performance”, ends the five year tuition freeze, increases the cost of student loans, and allows institutions to increase tuition yearly by 7%, which could result in a 21% raise in tuition fees over the next three years. Private Christian post-secondary schools however, will be exempt from the cuts....