CALGARY, AB: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation released its 2020 pre-budget submission outlining ways the Alberta government can reduce spending and address its growing debt problem.

“Finance Minister Travis Toews needs to be tougher on spending to pull Alberta out of it’s $70-billion debt hole,” said Franco Terrazzano, Alberta Director for the CTF. “The last budget increased total spending and piled billions of dollars of debt onto the backs of future taxpayers, this time around we need to see Toews find savings in all departments and outline a plan that will have Alberta’s debt going down.”

Highlights from the CTF’s pre-budget recommendations include:

Balance the budget: Reduce total spending and spending in every department until the budget is balanced and implement a balanced budget and debt retirement act.

Labour costs: Bring per-person government labour costs in line with peer provinces such as British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec to save billions of dollars every year.

Corporate welfare: Eliminate all forms of corporate welfare, specifically dissolving the Alberta Enterprise Corporation and scrapping the subsidies for petrochemical firms and the film industry.

Income tax: Eliminate the bracket creep income tax hike by re-indexing the income tax system to inflation.

Budget 2019 increased total spending from $56.3 billion in 2018 to $58.7 billion in 2019 and projects the provincial government’s debt to increase by $30.6 billion by the end of 2022.  The Alberta government would spend $10 billion less every year if it brought its per-person spending in line with Canada’s three largest provinces and there would be no deficit, according to the Blue Ribbon Panel. The Alberta government brought in more revenue per-person last year than B.C.

“The Alberta government has a spending problem, not a revenue problem so Toews shouldn’t be reaching into our pockets with his sneaky bracket creep income tax hike,” said Terrazzano. “Toews doesn’t have a mandate to hike taxes or impose sneaky tax grabs and he needs to immediately end bracket creep in this budget.”

The CTF’s pre-budget submission is available here.