Motion 16 Debate
Ms Blakeman:
Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m sorry that I had to cut off the Minister of Education when he was in full flight because I know how much he enjoys that.
I’m pleased to have an opportunity to join this debate on Government Motion 16. I have done my best to listen from my Annex office on the Tannoy and to follow up on the parts that I missed by reading the Hansard. I’ll apologize in advance if I have misunderstood or missed somebody putting something on the record, but I don’t think I have.
What I heard in listening over the two days was essentially two debates running concurrently or woven together. One was a debate about the content of Motion 16, and a second was an ongoing debate about the process that we’re involved in today.
Let me look at the debate around the motion itself. I’m just going to remind myself what the motion actually said because it’s worth reviewing at this point. Essentially, we’re looking at the idea of Alberta bonds being considered by the province. I read the remarks from the finance minister as she laid this out on Tuesday, and she had some very good points in the way she laid it out about what she was looking for from people and some questions that she put on the record that she wanted to see answered.
I’m on page 1578 of the Hansard from October 27. She essentially put a couple of things out that she was looking for. We’re talking about Motion 16: “Be it resolved that the Assembly approve in general the issue of Alberta capital bonds by the government in support of the development of public infrastructure projects and facilities.”Then she talks about and a lot of people have talked about how much Albertans want to invest in this. That, of course, is not in the text of the motion, but the minister of finance did mention that Albertans are looking for a way to proudly invest in the province. That is the way she put it.
Then she got into some questions, that she was seeking advice through debate on the motion on a couple of things: the type of bond that should be offered, who should be able to buy the bonds, whether it should be a fixed rate of interest over the life of the bond or a variable rate, shorter or longer, minimum and maximum amounts available for purchase, whether it would be RSP eligible, suggestions on where it could be available to purchase, and what kind of interest rate should be offered. Interestingly, I didn’t hear a lot of debate that answered those specific questions, but there was a lot of sort of visioning and . . .
Mr. MacDonald:
Blue skying.
Ms Blakeman:
. . . blue skying – that’s fair – of what people imagined this could result in. Fair enough, if that’s the way people wanted to debate it. But from our side, the Official Opposition side, we had a number of issues. Actually, we did try a little closer to answer some of the questions that she had raised.
The Minister of Education and others have raised a number of times the credit rating that this province receives, but the idea of fiscal management is larger than a credit rating. It’s not only about comparing ourselves with outsiders but also comparing ourselves with ourselves and with our own performance over the years. Of course, the one big thing that we’re dealing with right now is that we’ve gone from $8 billion up to $7 billion down in a period of about 12 to 15 months, so on our own performance I think that argues that there’s a fairly significant turnaround here.
Is the government responsible for some or all of that? Most definitely. Are they responsible for all of it? No. Clearly not. You know, there are a lot of people who suffered a downturn in their finances. I’m not going to lay that whole issue at their door. But did they make choices that made this worse for us? Yes, I would argue that they did.
Now, the second part of this is the limits that are placed. We brought forward a number of amendments yesterday to try and put some limits on that motion: the idea that there would be a maximum of a quarter of a billion dollars that would be borrowed through the creation of this debt. In other words, we couldn’t embrace a debt larger than a quarter of a billion dollars through the issuance of this bond, that we would not go into debt for longer than 10 years with the issuance of this bond, and that we would have an Alberta-first policy for those who would be the recipients of the contracting work that flowed through the infrastructure projects that were enabled through this bond.
Those were the concerns that we raised. We put them in the form of amending motions to the motion because we wanted to make sure that they were recorded and that we were able to refer to them later, and it’s a way of getting the discussion on the floor, which it clearly did.
Now, Mr. Speaker, there are a number of reasons for debt. Of course, you don’t ever want to be incurring debt for operating because that money is gone, and you have nothing to show for it other than the fact that you ate a meal. But, again, it’s gone. You provided a program, but it’s gone. You have no tangible asset for it.
Going into debt for capital projects is a different matter entirely. You end up with an asset. What we need to be careful of here is that the money that we borrow now so that people can enjoy or make use of the infrastructure today, which is equivalent to someone taking out a mortgage for a home – you’re not going to save your money until you’re 60, and when you’ve saved that $350,000, then you can go out and buy a home. You’re going to buy that home when you’re 30 or 35, get a mortgage, and pay that money off over the life of that so that you can enjoy it at a good time in your life. That’s what we’re looking at doing now, but that’s where we have to be careful that we’re doing that in the right way. We have to be careful that the money, the debt, is paid off before the asset is either used up, we need to rebuild it, or we need to put massive amounts of money into it. So those are the issues that the Official Opposition has concerns about around the issuance of these bonds.
The second thing that has happened is a lot of questions about whether we were able or why we were raising issues like this around the motion. In fact, the Member for Peace River just raised it again today. But when I went and looked in my documents, in fact, you are certainly allowed to do that because in Beauchesne 552 it does say quite clearly that you can put a motion on the floor. That’s okay; that’s what you’re supposed to do. You can also amend it. That appears in Beauchesne 567 and 569.
Beauchesne 567 says, “The object of an amendment may be either to modify a question in such a way as to increase its acceptability or to present to the House a different proposition as an alternative to the original question.” It also references Erskine May, page 395. Of course, 569 says: “A motion may be amended by: (a) leaving out certain words; (b) leaving out certain words in order to insert other words; (c) inserting or adding other words.” There’s a second section there as well.
Certainly, what the Official Opposition was doing yesterday was well in order, and that was reflected in the rulings from the Speaker. There’s been some discussion that, well, this is just a general motion, and we should just talk generally to it and trust that at some point we’ll be able to get down to the nitty-gritty of it. But what I looked for very carefully was any kind of a guarantee from anyone that there would be legislation that would follow, and all I could find was remarks that this would come up again in the budget debate.
Well, the way the budget debate is structured now, it’s done in committee, and if we’re lucky, members of the Official Opposition might get in maybe two at-bats, maybe 20 minutes of questions for an entire department. To be able to concentrate on one issue such as the issuance of bonds as a part of the debate on the entire department of finance would not satisfy what we would be looking for as a vigorous give-and-take in debate. So, of course, we have used this opportunity over the last couple of days to do exactly that, and in fact we should be doing exactly that.
Now, the other way is through Public Accounts, of course, and that’s after the fact. We’d be talking about whether it was appropriate to be issuing these bonds in Public Accounts way after the fact, so that’s not an appropriate place either for us to be doing it. I hope that’s helpful to those that were not understanding the process that was being used by the Official Opposition.
I do want to demarcate the difference between a visioning exercise, marketing, which we have also heard some members use, and a business case. I was really looking for the business case of why these bonds would be a good way for the government to be embracing debt, to be knowingly entering into a position of debt for infrastructure. The motion before us does clearly indicate that the monies would be used for infrastructure. Good. Fair enough. But this government has already reached the limit that it set out for itself and that its members all supported in the budget.
It said that it would go to no more than $1.1 billion of debt, and they’ve done that already. To now embark upon a second series of debt, to take on additional debt beyond what the government has already allocated itself in the last budget, the budget that we’re in, is I think problematic.
I need to be much more convinced that there would be a limit on the bonds that are going to be embraced as new debt here, that there would be a time limit set on when the debt would be paid off so that we weren’t in sort of perpetual debt here. I think it’s very appropriate to be embracing an Alberta-first policy. There was a great deal of pretty pointed discussion and criticism of the member for putting that motion on the floor yesterday and all kinds of detailed demands for clarification, which of course was very interesting because they had spent the earlier part of this debate insisting that we should be having a very wide reaching and wide-ranging debate.
But when the opposition starts to speak, boy, the government wants details. You’ve got to love it. I think it’s very appropriate that we say that if we are going to get into debt and the government will owe Albertans that money – that’s what this is all about; it’s about debt – I think it’s more than appropriate to say that we have an Alberta-first policy.
Now, of course, you have to be reasonable with all of that. You’re not going to say, you know, that we would take an Alberta company even if they’re a terrible company just because they’re an Alberta company. Of course you’re not going to do that. Nobody here would be suggesting that you would. But I think that as a general policy to say that if we can look to and encourage Alberta companies to be engaged in these infrastructure projects, which the province has gone into debt to fund, I think that’s very appropriate.
I feel much better as an Albertan knowing that we’re incurring debt that will at the very least benefit Alberta companies rather than saying, “Yeah, boy, let’s go into debt so that we can give money to companies that are in other countries or even other provinces.” The issue of, well, goodness, we’re going to get into real trouble with TILMA – not necessarily. I don’t think that need be a huge issue. I mean, we have trading partners there, and I don’t think that saying Alberta first but Saskatchewan and B.C. second is that big a deal. Again, if we’re embracing debt here, if the government is looking to embrace debt, I would like to see us have a reasonable Alberta-first policy.
I have a union-first policy in my office, for example. I always look to buy products that are made in a union shop first. If I can’t find it, then I’ll go outside of that. I’m not going to say: no, I won’t buy it because I can’t find a union-made article. If I need the article, then I’m going to go somewhere else and get it, but I’m going to look for union-made first. That’s the point of that, and I think it’s a good idea to have an Alberta-first policy here.
That is what I was looking for with this motion, a clarification that we would have a limit on the amount of debt that we were going to incur as a result of these bonds, that we would have a limit on the time that we would be in debt for these infrastructure projects, and that we would have an Alberta-first policy to go along with it. I’m not comfortable with the looseness and the lack of detail in the motion. I’m not comfortable because I don’t see another opportunity.
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