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There are only two ways out of a fiscal mess: more money in or less money out.

More money in can come from higher taxes, but that costs jobs and hurts the economy. Or it can come from economic growth. However, any significant economic growth is hampered by Alberta’s inability to sell our oil to world markets. That is not going to change unless we have much more oil getting to tidewater than the 590,000 new barrels per day we may get from Trans Mountain.

The NDP don’t agree. In their “Path to Balance” document they predict that in the next five years Alberta’s GDP will grow by over $100 billion or 22.3 per cent. That would be the best five-year period since 1980. There is no reason to believe we will have another super-boom. The NDP’s economic predictions are garbage.

The problem is that just this week Kenney predicted that with his corporate tax cuts we will grow our economy by over $113 billion or 25.7 per cent in the same period! It’s just not possible.

Regardless, there is little evidence that Alberta has a revenue problem. We do have a spending problem. Because of politics as usual, during the good times we created the most expensive government in Canada which we can only afford during good times. These are not good times and we are heading back into recession. We need to tackle this problem. But Kenney seems to have missed this.

First Kenney declared — as an afterthought to an insignificant MLA pay cut — that there would be no cuts in pay for public-sector workers in Alberta. Pay represents about half of what government spends, so a promise of “no pay cuts” is a very significant announcement. Then a few days later, Kenney declared that there would be no savings to be found in health care, which is over 40 per cent of the provincial budget.