Alberta posts $4.6B surplus for 2007-2008

We should be saving most of this, not spending it. Sadly, just like the kids of today, the Boomers are all about instant gratification.

We'd be more than happy to save it if we didn't have to give it all away in transfer payments.

I will admit though Alberta's Tories are on a run away when it come to spending.

Spend it damn it, its raining

ORLY? How much was the last transfer payment cheque that Alberta sent to Ottawa?



And a runaway with artificially low taxes.

ORLY? How much was the last transfer payment cheque that Alberta sent to Ottawa?

Oh please, tell me your not really going to make me look this up. If you honestly believe Alberta doesn't contribute more to equalization than it gets back then I suggest you do some reading on your own.



I don't think low taxes are the problem, the fact that spending has balloned over the last few years is and the lack of accountability on the provincal government's part is.

I was hoping you'd at least try. If you did, you'd quickly find out that there are no such things as transfer payments from the provinces to the federal government. There are only federal taxes paid by people and companies in those provinces, and transfer payments to the provinces from the feds out of that tax revenue.

The idea that Alberta sends more to Ottawa than it gets back comes from the fact that Albertan people and companies pay more in federal taxes than Alberta receives in transfer payments. This I do not argue. I simply point out that the Government of Alberta is not burdened by payments to Ottawa that they don't make.



Spending has ballooned over the last few years because it was almost nonexistent in the years before, and now we're playing catch-up.

Where's all the bitching about Alberta slashing public funding? To listen to the media, you'd have thought all of Alberta's civil service was being shot. Now that their house is in order and lean, the rest of Canada comes with cap in hand, to ask for a handout.
Ontario and Quebec should get their houses in order.

We'd be more than happy to save it if we didn't have to give it all away in transfer payments.

I will admit though Alberta's Tories are on a run away when it come to spending.

I didn't see Evans mention that one cent of this surplus was going to transfer payments. And it's not like this is the first surplus we've had in a long time. We've had plenty of surpluses in the past decade and barely any of it has been saved. Instead, the PCs have spent it like drunken sailors in port for a weekend.

I acknowledge that we need to spend more on infrastructure, but we should be adding more than we do to the Heritage Trust Fund. It has hardly grown since the 1980s. It was created as a way to diversify our province, yet most of it is invested in the oil and gas industry. If we had truly invested across the board, we might not still be a boom/bust province.

Yea, they should find their own oil and sell it just like Alberta did.

Exactly how much tar sands oil was Alberta selling when it rationalized it's public sector?

Right, it's public employees, not the fact that the US is having a RECESSION that's Ontario's and Quebec's problem.

But to answer your question, quite a bit, though the royalty breaks meant we made almost nothing on it. Conventional oil and gas, however, has been funding the province since well before Klein.

The US is not officially in a recession!