Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) must have received one hell of a blast from parents about the appalling crowding in Alberta’s schools when classes started two weeks ago, judging from the policy lurch Alberta’s premier revealed in a hastily cobbled together TV announcement.
In her 10-minute pre-recorded remarks – her little video was too short to be passed off as an address or a speech – Smith said her government will pour $8.6 billion over the next three years into building new K-12 schools and upgrading old ones, although where she’s going to find the teachers to run them is not all that clear.
That’s up from $2.1 billion over the same time period in the previous provincial budget.
This will add about 50,000 new student spaces by the end of the 2026-2027 fiscal year, she said, some of them in modular classrooms.
Naturally, this “one-time funding boost” is being joyfully touted by the UCP’s friends in the commentariat. The premier is “uncorking the Alberta treasury,” enthused one. Another strained credulity by claiming 35 new schools could be built every year.
But with the caveat that a lot of beans are in motion under a lot of walnut shells here, so it’ll take a little while to see clearly what is really going to happen, we’ll have to take it on faith that the government truly intends to create 200,000 new student spaces over the next seven years. As for the premier’s promise they’ll do it without causing a budget deficit, that remains to be seen.
To keep the UCP base sweet, Smith’s sudden announcement included another 12,500 seats in charter schools, and more funds for private schools to “incentivize investment in the creation of thousands of new independent school student spaces at a reduced per-student cost to taxpayers.” How that magic is supposed to work is not clear.
Nevertheless, it’s a big change, and a sudden one – even for a province with a history of bi-polar policy making.
It’ll be “quite literally the fastest and largest build our province can manage given available construction workforce capacity and the time it takes to permit, prepare and service available school sites,” Smith’s avatar boasted in her dinnertime remarks streamed on the government website and a couple of TV stations.
I say Smith’s avatar because if you happened to have any questions, by the time the video started the premier had already jetted off to New York City to try to persuade American fossil fuel investors there’s still life in the old Athabasca tar patch. She’s supposed to be at a news conference this morning, though, so expect the school-building topic to be high on the media’s agenda.
Anyway, in her remarks, the premier expressed shock at the number of school aged kids moving here.
Who could have known, she wondered, despite her government’s efforts for the past two years to persuade folks to move here from other provinces because “Alberta is Calling”? She blamed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the unexpected crowd, because of course she did. “The Trudeau Government’s unrestrained open-border policies,” she called the federal Liberals’ immigration policy, lauding the memory of the Harper Government.
Nor did the premier mention that Alberta had refused to take part in the committee trying to figure out where to send asylum seekers, and dog-whistled a little more about the kind of “core values” her government thinks immigrants should have. They should “believe in working hard, protecting our freedoms, contributing to society, following the rule of law, and … have a deep respect for other cultures and faiths different from their own,” she said, as if they don’t.
She also advised municipalities to get cracking on fast-tracking building permits and approvals or she’ll be blaming them for making the scheme fall apart – although that last bit was unspoken, for the moment. “Cut the red tape,” she warned.
Last year, Smith and Finance Minister Nate Horner were all gloom and doom about looming deficits. Now they plan to include a massive increase in the next couple of budgets. That long-delayed tax cut will also be in the next budget, she promised.
Even NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi wasn’t too hard on the government, although he said the UCP should have seen the crisis coming, and criticized the UCP’s planned spending on private schools.
Suddenly announcing the Big Spend on an accelerated timeline will increase construction costs and slow the construction of affordable housing, he suggested, accurately enough.
But who knows what will happen after the UCP annual general meeting’s leadership review on Nov. 1 and 2?
We do economic roller coasters here and we’re not about to stop. Albertans complain about it all the time, but obviously they like it that way.
So stay awake! It could all change again tomorrow!
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Nick Seebruch, editor
