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Instead, the NDP will be on its budget tour discussing “the consequences of the kinds of cuts” that are coming down the pipeline because “Albertans won’t have a chance to have their say before schools, hospitals, and the services their families rely on are cut,” according to the party’s budget video and website.

There’s nothing wrong with government or opposition consulting Albertans, but it’s important to ask the right questions.

The Alberta government has been on the runaway spending train for too long.

If the provincial government simply held program spending increases to growth in household income beginning under the Klein government in 1998, spending would be $18 billion less today. The Progressive Conservatives doubled program spending between 2004 and 2015. Then the NDP increased spending by over 16 per cent.

Decades of poor decisions made across the partisan spectrum got us into this mess, but the opposition is doing Albertans no favours by pretending the spending problem doesn’t exist.

Albertans have been forced to pay for the government’s spending problem through a swath of tax hikes including higher taxes on income, businesses, tobacco, train fuel and liquor, along with the carbon tax.

Higher taxes made the tough times tougher, but taxpayers haven’t yet paid the full price of the government’s overspending. Albertans will be in for a rude awakening when we need to pay the piper for the government’s growing debt tab.