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There is a problem with Alberta’s budget.

It is a very obvious problem — a gap between revenue and spending — with a very straightforward solution. It’s time to suck it up and adopt a sales tax.

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Oh, Alberta spends like a miner who won the Powerball — and the NDP needs to get a grip on that. But the real problem with the budget, released last week, is the same as it has been for the ten budgets before it: Alberta subsidizes an artificially low tax environment and high per capita social spending with oil royalty revenue.

For years, successive Progressive Conservative governments — and now an NDP one — have claimed a desire to rid the province of its dependency on oil royalties, which in decades past have comprised as much as 40 per cent of government revenues.

When the oil price went up and the economy boomed and the cheques came in and the poll numbers dragged and the public sector negotiations began, each successive government has chosen the easy and predictable path. The spending ramped up, the taxes went down, and resource royalties filled the gap.