The Alberta NDP is taking early aim at the UCP’s upcoming 2023 budget, set to be tabled next week, saying it’s lacking in supports for a struggling health-care system and rampant affordability issues, while Premier Danielle Smith boasts of the plan’s coming investments to tackle those problems.
“The UCP has spent the last four years cutting programs and increasing costs on Alberta families. They’ve cut funding to health care, to economic diversification, while increasing taxes, fees and tuition, and allowing utilities and car insurance to skyrocket,” said Ganley.
The UCP has announced sizable contributions to health care set to come through the 2023 budget in the last couple of weeks, including what Smith touted as a record-breaking boost to mental health and addictions, expanding that ministry’s budget to $275 million, and more than $2 billion to improve primary health care.
Ganley also criticized the government’s attempts to ease inflation-related pains for Albertans via affordability payments, planning for a provincial police force, among other issues ahead of the budget presentation.
“The cost of living is the highest it’s been in 40 years. Yet, under their plan. Alberta has the slowest wage growth in the country. There are fewer businesses open today than when the UCP took office, even as Ontario, B.C. and Quebec have seen growth post-pandemic,” she said.
Meanwhile, Smith boasted of a fourth consecutive year of record-breaking investments in the province’s technology and innovation sector, citing a report from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association that said Alberta attracted $729 million in investments in 2022.
“That’s extraordinary,” said Smith. “I think it’s up 20 per cent while the rest of the country is down. We’re finally punching at the weight that we should from a business attraction point of view.”
Smith’s government is set to table its first budget on Tuesday.