Bill 5
April 22, 2008 - Appropriation (Supplementary Supply) Act, 2008
Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to get an opportunity to speak during second reading of the appropriation bill, Bill 5, which of course encompasses the estimates that are supplementary supply estimates which were in Committee of Supply debate on Monday evening. I didn’t get a chance to speak then, so thank you very much for the opportunity now. I did read the Hansard from the other night just to make sure that I wasn’t repeating questions that were asked, and I hope I’ve been a careful reader.
A couple of issues that I’d like to bring up or question. The payments under Education which were essentially to reach labour –what’s the word we were using? – stability, labour certainty over, I think it was, a five-year period with the Alberta Teachers’ Association in return for the government agreeing to fund the unfunded liability of the teachers’ pension fund. Very interesting, but of course now we’re starting to hear from a number of other labour groups. So I am wondering what other labour issues are now backed up on the back burner where the government is seeking some sort of long-term labour certainty versus what the labour unions or the new unions would like to see. What I’m looking for here is: what’s the next one coming down the pipe? Because I’m wondering if anything would be offered, for example, to the labour unions that are seeking replacement worker legislation or first contract legislation, which is something that’s been raised quite a bit. I’ll look forward to a response in Committee of the Whole to that question.
My next question is around the Employment and Immigration department, and this one was very interesting. Essentially, what’s being asked for here is a supplementary amount of money of $14 million to cover an estimated additional $21 million cost of income support programs due to increased caseloads, 800 cases more than were being budgeted for or anticipated. For the most part, that’s 800 individuals, but it could be 800 families that are also involved there.
What kind of analysis has the government done around where those 800 cases came from and why? This is coming through, for the most part – there was a 10 per cent increase in the learners section, but the largest increase was out of people expected to work or working and people not expected to work, so this is welfare. Well, what we knew as welfare. It’s now called income support. So why do we have the 800 cases? What’s the analysis on this? Where do they come from? Who are these people? What steps is the government taking now to make sure we don’t have another 800 cases of people that are in dire need of income support from the government?
I do notice with a certain amount of exasperation that part of this is $10 more per case than what was budgeted. I think the government was actually spending somewhere in the $900 range. It was $983 versus $973, I think. I don’t have quite the right numbers there, but, boy, that’s not a heck of a lot of money to try and live on in Alberta in this day and age, when you’re looking at rents for a pretty shabby basement suite, one-room studio, or a bachelor in the sort of $500 to $700 range. That’s not a lot of money. Also under Employment and Immigration and raised by another colleague of mine was the decrease in money for workplace safety. That one puzzles me as well. I did read the response to it, and I don’t think the response really addressed why the government chose to make that reduction. You know, we’re coming up to the National Day of Mourning for workers who were injured or died in the workplace. I think in Alberta we have a high, to my mind, number of injuries and deaths. I think the injuries are three a month.
Mr. MacDonald: There would be three per week dying.
Ms Blakeman: Three per week. Three per week deaths from workplace injuries. That’s very high, yet there has been a reduction in workplace safety? That just doesn’t make sense to me, especially since our numbers are growing. When I was first elected here, we did not have three workers a week that were dying on work sites. Something’s not working there, and I would like to hear more about what the government is doing to assess the risk there and how they’re going to address it.
I was also looking under the explanation for the Environment appearing on page 26 of the supplementary supply estimates book. A one-time payment of $3.7 million to the town of Strathmore for costs incurred in demonstrating that its proposed waste-water operation is protective of the environment. Now, maybe I didn’t read thoroughly enough, but I didn’t see an explanation of why this was appearing as a supplementary estimate; in other words, it wasn’t anticipated in the original budget. Was this emergency timing that they had to show this, or was there extra money available, and that’s why they got to do it? Why did this need to happen at this particular time?
In finance an explanation appears on page 30 of the supplementary supply estimates, No. 2, booklet. Well, you know, this is around payments to the heritage savings trust fund. Earlier in the evening during my response to the throne speech I was in fact questioned about that because I had raised the fact that the government does not plan on a regular basis – in other words, budget on a regular basis – to make contributions to the heritage savings trust fund. Indeed, here it is again in the government’s own language.
What we get here, and I’m quoting from page 120 of Alberta Hansard on April 21, 2008, is the hon. President of the Treasury Board speaking, in which he says that there was “$918 million from the unallocated surplus commitment.” So we only get money put into the heritage savings trust fund, additional new dollars, when there is an unanticipated, unallocated surplus. The way things are happening now is that when the government – well, clearly, the government plans for surplus. I mean, today we had a budget in which they were pegging oil per barrel at between $78 and $86, and it’s on the market today at $119, so clearly the government is planning to give itself a surplus. But then that surplus is so-called allocated – this is Orwellian sometimes – into a series of endowment funds, many of which the Liberals, who came up with the idea, urged them to do, such as the stability fund. But then if they’ve got money even beyond the allocations that go to those, we get money going into the heritage savings trust fund, which is when you get unanticipated, unallocated surplus, which then gets committed to the heritage fund.
Perhaps for the person who questioned me earlier in the evening, they may want to refer to the man himself, the President of the Treasury Board, on page 120 of Alberta Hansard on April 21 because he answers the question.
Again, I underline the need to have regular contribution to this fund, not something that happens when there is a larger than anticipated surplus. That’s wing and a prayer stuff, and it’s really not adequate for what will be and is a diminishing nonrenewable resource.
Moving on to housing, appearing on page 34 of the supplementary supply No. 2, this is very interesting money here. We have a situation where $26 million is being added to the homeless and eviction prevention fund. This was a fund that started at $7 million plus the $26 million for a total of $33 million in this fund. It says that 62,000 instances of assistance and 27,000 families and individuals were helped. Now, I’m pulling this from the Hansard that happened on Monday night. My question to the minister is: is this telling me that approximately every family of these 27,000 families or individuals received assistance twice? If we have 62,000 instances of assistance and 27,000 families or individuals receiving assistance, that looks to me like they each got it twice. Perhaps we could get some clarification on that. I would also like to know how many landlords received funds. In particular, I’m wondering how many large companies we have with multiple property holdings who’ve received funding through this particular scheme because really to me what this is is a welfare scheme for landlords. They raise their rents as high as they want. The government steps in and pitches in for people that . . . [interjection] Well, it’s the Conservatives, but that’s the irony to me. We have sort of welfare for landlords, who are already making a killing because we have, like, a 1 per cent vacancy rate. Now they’re able to charge whatever they want, and the government is going to step up and make the difference between what the individual could afford and what the landlord is charging.
I’d also like to know how many of these buildings are owned by out-of-province owners, where the money isn’t even staying in the province. It’s going out of the province to somebody else who is just making a packet of money. Because of a philosophical disagreement and ideological bent this provincial government will not put in place temporary rent controls because, horror of horror, it might adjust the marketplace. Well, I would argue that the marketplace is not functioning if we have that kind of thing happening. But, no, instead of that we’re going to pay landlords, many of whom, I’m presuming – and please prove me wrong – are actually taking the money out of the province, so it doesn’t even recirculate here.
How many of these landlords are multiple unit holders versus a small owner-operator who lives on the premises and owns the building and their income is from the rent in that particular building? In addition, how many of these have their head offices registered outside of Alberta, telling us that the money is leaving the province?
I don’t see an end to this. We’ve gone from $7 million plus $26 million to a total of $33 million in not even one year. How long does the government anticipate keeping this up and increasing this fund without addressing the root cause of the problem? For a government that says it wants to be fiscally responsible and analyze the risks and the benefits and the cost benefit, blah, blah, blah, and all of this, they get themselves into situations like this one which appears to have no end, and nothing in what I’ve read said we will do this for two years or we will do this to a hundred million dollars or any of that. This strikes me as a very odd financial management scheme from this government.
Also, I’m sorry. I did look for this, and perhaps I missed it: an explanation of the strategic economic corridor investment initiative “to address better than expected progress on approved projects,” appearing on page 38 of the booklet under Transportation. Now, does this have anything to do with better transit and transportation linkages in the Edmonton capital region? I know that one of the things that I keep hearing about as the MLA for Edmonton-Centre is: how are we going to be able to get support from the province to support what the municipalities are trying to do with a wider regional transportation plan? I suppose this could fall into that. It’s under Transportation. I’m just not quite sure what it is that it’s covering.
Those were the questions that I had. Thank you very much for the opportunity to raise them. I look forward to hearing the responses from the respective ministers – or I’d be happy to get an e-mail – during Committee of the Whole on appropriation, Bill 5.
Thank you very much.
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