The interesting thing about government consultations isn’t always what politicians are asking, but what they’re leaving out. Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews recently released his 2021 budget consultation survey, but left out major areas for spending cuts and taxpayers need to fill in the blanks.

In question seven, the consultation survey asks “if government needs to reduce spending, please rank your top three areas in order of importance,” then asks Albertans to choose three budget areas that should be prioritized for savings.

Where is the option to find savings across the board? Alberta’s finances won’t be fixed with cuts to one area. We’ll make progress by finding efficiencies and savings everywhere.

After more than a decade of overspending and Alberta being “the most inefficient provincial government in Canada by a country mile,” to quote Premier Jason Kenney, every single government department should be able to do better.

The finance bureaucrats tasked with creating this survey also forgot to include their own pay as options for potential savings.

Fortunately, there’s a small box at the bottom of question seven where Albertans can provide other ideas for spending cuts. After spending cuts across the board, the next thing to include in that other box is government labour costs. Taxpayers outside government are weathering a storm of pay cuts and layoffs. Government employees need to dial back their own salaries too.

With government compensation making up more than half of the government’s day-to-day spending, leaving out labour costs in a survey about government savings is like asking Canadians about their favourite sport and leaving out hockey.

Alberta’s bureaucracy is a prime place for pay cuts.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s analysis revealed that more than 900 Alberta Health Services management bureaucrats are on Alberta’s sunshine list, which discloses annual compensation above $132,000. The president and CEO of AHS took in a cool $677,785 last year. For comparison, Saskatchewan Health Authority’s CEO Scott Livingstone receives $406,328 in annual compensation.

The average annual compensation for an AHS vice president is $457,356, compared to $288,085 for vice presidents in Saskatchewan’s health authority.

Although it’s clear that Toews needs to find savings at the top of the bureaucrat pyramid, it’s also time for all government employees to share in the downturn. While Albertans outside of government have taken it on the chin for the last five years, the last broad government pay cut was in 1994, according to research by Secondstreet.org.

Also conspicuously absent from the consultation on cuts is corporate welfare. Politicians from all parties have a bad habit of handing stacks of taxpayers’ cash to their favourite businesses. Taxpayers have a golden opportunity to type into the other box that it’s time to end corporate welfare.

Albertans elected the United Conservatives to grow the economy by lowering taxes, cutting red tape and standing up to Ottawa. Albertans didn’t send the UCP to Edmonton to rubber stamps cheques for handpicked businesses. But the UCP have been announcing new subsidies for the petrochemical sector, venture capitalists, tech companies, among others.

Taxpayers could even leave a direct quote from Kenney in the other box: “get the Alberta government out of the business of business, out of the losing business of picking winners and losers.”

Question nine allows Albertans to write out a response on whether we think Toews should increase our tax bills. Something similar to this Kenney quote would suffice:

“I cannot imagine a dumber thing to do in the midst of a time of economic fragility, an oil price collapse and a global recession than to add a multi-billion dollar tax on the Alberta economy and Alberta families.”

Taxpayers need to send the Alberta government a clear message: it’s time to cut spending instead of raising taxes.

This column was originally published in the Edmonton Sun on October 21, 2020.