When I heard that Klein finally shuffled off his loathsome, pickled coil, I donned a funny hat, whirled a noise maker and phoned a couple of friends to make merry.
It’s a horrible way to die. A real shame.
As premiers go, he wasn’t that bad. Judging from the reactions here, Albertans must be really spoiled when it comes to provincial governance.
We’re so spoiled that we want healthcare and education, the two things that Ralph destroyed the most? Are you seriously telling Albertans that you know how it was living under Ralph better than we do?
Alberta has no health care or education?
We want good, affordable, healthcare with reasonable wait times, and post-secondary education that people other than the rich can afford - Ralph didn’t see the value in these things.
Yes, Albertans have had some absolutely spectacular premiers. Aberhart, Manning and Lougheed took the province from a modest, post-depression agrarian economy to a diversified—but largely oil-driven—urban powerhouse economy, with $12 billion in the bank making the province even more money.
Klein took a robust province that was already firmly in the “Have” province category, slashed funding to education (which had always been a priority, going all the way back to Aberhart, who was a former teacher; Klein, being a high school dropout, was never a friend to fancy book learnin’) and slashed funding to the health care system (including eliminating half of the hospitals in Calgary and something in the order of 1,700 nurse and doctor positions province-wide), among other things, in order to “balance the books.” University tuition fees have skyrocketed in the 20 years since Klein became premier, grade school class sizes have bloated to almost untenable levels while school staff have been cut, wait times in the remaining hospitals are dangerously long and finding one of the few general practitioners who still have room for more clients is an ordeal, to put it mildly.
I won’t miss him one little bit, even if I always got a kick out of the “creeps and bums” quote. But please, RickJay, continue to inform me of how great living in Alberta during the Klein years was for you, since you seem to know so much about it. 
Why the hell did you keep voting for him then, if he was so terrible. He was certainly much loved by the Canadian right-wing media. And by that I mean CFRA in Ottawa. Are there any other right-wing Canadian media outlets?
Alberta has a terrible tradition of continuing to vote in regimes that aren’t doing right. Klein was much-loved by lots of Albertans, too - that doesn’t change the fact of the damage he did.
I am proud to say that I have never once voted Conservative in a provincial election. The fact that the unwashed, mouth-breathing masses in this province will re-elect anyone for as long as that person wants to remain in office continues to be a sore spot for me and a number of other people. Case in point: Rob Anders. How that incompetent, loud-mouthed fan of Nap Time in the Commons keeps getting re-elected defies any logic beyond, “Well, he’s the Conservative incumbent. What other choice do I have?”
Yes, Prince Ralph was very much loved by the right-wing media. I’m expecting the Sun to rename their Ed/Op pages the “Ralph Klein Memorial Ed/Op pages.” But frankly, his consistent policy of slashing budgets to eliminate the debt in record time, without any consideration to having an actual plan that might mitigate some of the problems associated with such a strategy, did far more harm than good.
I am proud to say that I have never once voted Liberal in a provincial election for pretty much the exact opposite reason. These guys spend like drunken sailors on a bender in Thailand without any consideration of having an actual plan that might mitigate some of the problems associated with such a strategy.
Welcome to Ontario under the Liberals, a have-not province.
The GTA votes Liberal, the rest of the province doesn’t. Unfortunately about 40% of the province lives in the GTA.
Albertans are richer and likelier to be employed than anyone else in the country.
I don’t know if you realize this, but health care cuts and tuition hikes were a country-wide phenomenon during Klein’s administration (except perhaps in Quebec, who were being sent billions of dollars of Alberta’s money) - the federal government was hacking its transfer payments. Much of what you are ascribing to the provincial government of Alberta was the inevitable result of transfer cuts by the federal government.
There was also the simple financial reality of Alberta’s fiscal situation; it wasn’t good. The government of Alberta prior to Klein becoming Premier had become addicted to oil revenues, but that collapsed in the late 1980s, as a result of which the government Klein inherited was making only 2/3rds as much money in revenues as it had just years before, while spending stayed about the same.
Of course, cuts hurt. But the thing about government cuts is they have to be made. It’s plain math; you cut now or you cut more later. Whatever else is true, Albertans get more health and education spending today than anyone else in Canada. That is possible, in part, due to fiscal restraint under Klein’s government. Ontario is facing a fiscal catastrophe Alberta’s not.
Sounds like you can feel my pain, at least a little, as someone who is a long-time non-supporter of the prevailing ruling body.
I don’t know if you realize this, but I did not live under a rock in the 90s. Yes, there were cuts all around the country during that period. Frankly, if the debt-elimination frenzy was done at more gradual rate—more along the lines of his original schedule and not the highly accelerated schedule Klein went with instead—the cuts in Alberta would not have been so deep and carrying more debt-load as a province would have meant sending fewer transfer payment dollars to Quebec and other parts of Canada since our accounting books would not have looked nearly as tasty.
Oil revenues in the 80s were down, to be sure, but were also steadily and predictably rising during Klein’s regime. If he had approached the debt issue in a practical fashion, giving health care and education an actual strategy for cutting costs and time to make the hard decisions, that would’ve been one thing. Instead, he cut hard and deep, crippled the health care system and the education system, two things that used to be part of the Alberta Advantage.
We finally have a fourth hospital opening soon in Calgary’s south. How we’re going to staff the place when so many thousands of medical professionals have been chased out of the province is beyond me, particularly when the current provincial government is once again crying poor and flat-lining health funding.
My last year of university, Ralph’s first year in office as Premier, tuition fees at the U of C were just a tick over $2,000 per year for a full course load. In 2006, his last year in office, they were $4,600. More than double in just over a decade, pushing more middle- and lower-class students out of advanced education and into jobs slinging hamburgers at McDonalds. And that’s assuming they learned anything in grade schools where teacher’s aids have been reduced or eliminated, resources have been wiped out and innumerable new fees have been invented for parents to pay to cover everything else.
If Alberta is truly such a rich province, then why the hell are we dealing with the same kind of problems that the have-not provinces are facing, even as recent governments have tried to throw money at the problems Klein created in hopes that they’ll just magically go away? We haven’t had to clean up a spending frenzied mess like Ontario did after the Bob Rae years, but yet here we are acting like paupers. That is Ralph Klein’s legacy.
Woo-hoo! Timmy comes through!
I have rolled up the rims and have won a coffee and a doughnut!
Livin’ large, my friends, livin’ large!
As someone that just finished a degree, I can tell you that they’re now about $6,300.
Equalization payments don’t work that way. They’re not based on provincial deficits or lack thereof. This wouldn’t have had the effect you’re suggesting.
That’s fairly consistent with other provinces. I wish it was cheaper, too, but* how was Klein’s government uniquely incompetent when it’s the same everywhere?*
I’m not saying (or not saying) that Ralph Klein was a genius. But I don’t see how what you’re describing is in any way unique to Alberta - and if anything, the objective evidence, as opposed to anecdotes, suggests Alberta is better off than most provinces. There just isn’t a lot of objective, fact-based evidence he left Alberta worse off than the other nine provinces were left off by their leadership.
Certainly, Alberta is in FAR better shape than Ontario, but there is no explanation for that aside from pure governmental incompetence on Ontario’s part. The Bob Rae spending years were followed by the Mike Harris spending years - for all its reputation for cost cutting the Harris government never ran a single balanced budget - which were followed by the complete insanity of the Dalton McGuinty spending binges. (I guess Ernie Eves is in there but whatever.) Ontario, 25 years ago, was an economic powerhouse, and there’s really no good reason it shouldn’t be that way today; it has every conceivable advantage, and really should be the far-and-away richest jurisdiction in North America. Instead, it’s crushed by debt, about $280 billion - Ontario’s government is in more debt than the federal government per capita - and it has become structurally and politically impossible to fix. The government’s own hand-picked analyst provided a report last year that said, in essence, “We’re fucked. Everything has to be cut.” If we’d had a Ralph Klein in the 90s, maybe it would have sucked, but maybe the province wouldn’t be in this mess.
So you think Ralph was bad? Be happy you didn’t have Mike and Dalton.
[QUOTE]
If Alberta is truly such a rich province, then why the hell are we dealing with the same kind of problems that the have-not provinces are facing, even as recent governments have tried to throw money at the problems Klein created in hopes that they’ll just magically go away? We haven’t had to clean up a spending frenzied mess like Ontario did after the Bob Rae years, but yet here we are acting But Alberta spends more than any other province (the territories spend more, though obviously that’s for logistical reasons) because you’ve got the money and the budgetary breathing room.
And if Alberta isn’t spending enough, in your estimation, why is that Klein’s legacy? He left the province in a position to spend more. Now, if Alison Redford doesn’t want to write the cheques, I see that being her problem. She could do it, thanks to the fiscal responsibility shown by her predecessors. Kathleen Wynne, and whomever follows that poor, doomed woman in Ontario’s big job, can’t; the province is hopelessly mired in an insurmountable debt and structural deficit that might well bankrupt it.
No, seriously; Ontario is going to go bankrupt. There is, quite literally, no light at the end of the tunnel that you can reasonably predict. It won’t happen next year, but there’s no plan and no possibility the deficit will be brought under control in the foreseeable future, and it’s astoundingly high and piling on to a gigantic debt. Within two years Ontario will have a bigger deficit than the federal government, barring some deficit-cutter somehow winning office. And the cuts would have to be just astonishingly brutal.
If only we’d made them in the 90s.
If Alberta is in financial trouble, I would suggest that it is because Albertans will not let their government raise money. Of course, any raised money would be spent on Albertans, but many Albertans forget that.
As an ex-Ontarian, I am amazed at what the Alberta government (and by extension, Alberta’s municipalities, as they are constituted under a provincial act) does not provide. Things I took for granted in Ontario–curbside recycling, decent public transit, snow removal in winter (among other things)–do not exist here because Albertans will not allow them to. Such things cost too much; “they will raise our taxes!”
Ironically, Albertans happily pay monthly “user fees” for things that are covered by municipal taxes in other parts of the country: water, sewage, garbage collection, and so on. But don’t label these “user fees” as “taxes.” If you’re a homeowner, you’re stuck with these “user fees” just like you’d be if they were assessed once a year as taxes. But do not call them “taxes”–“user fees paid monthly” are fine, but the “paid through once-a-year taxes” sends Albertans into a tizzy. Surprise, surprise, Albertans; my annual “user fee plus municipal tax bill” adds up to approximately the same amount I paid in property “taxes only” for a similar property in Ontario. The difference is, in Toronto, I paid taxes once a year and was able to forget about them for the rest of the year. Here in Alberta, I have to remember to pay municipal [del]taxes[/del]; sorry, “user fees” monthly. Oh, and that’s in addition to the annual tax bill in June. Friends, when we factor in “user fees” with “property taxes,” Albertans are not getting a break with so-called “low taxes.”
Albertans seem to have a horrid fear of the T-word, and there is a very vocal group of Albertans who loudly protest any proposed tax increase. But they do not seem to realize that taxes provide the above, and other, services for all. So, as a result, Albertans save tax money by having Lethbridge’s 911 calls go to a dispatcher in Calgary, who may or may not know how to dispatch emergency personnel to “the sports bar on First Avenue, near the London Drugs.” As a local resident, I’d have a pretty good idea where the caller is talking about, but it is unlikely that a Calgary dispatcher would. Further, we cannot travel to Calgary (or other locations) at times during the winter because all we have are roads and air–the latter is expensive; the former gets shut down by the RCMP in winter. A passenger train would work–but that’s too expensive and would increase our taxes, scream Albertans.
Honestly, I’d like to take the people of Alberta to southern Ontario, so they could see how a province can work when it is allowed to collect and spend money: GO trains and buses, subways that run on five minute schedules, buses that actually go somewhere, roads that are clear 24 hours after a snowfall, and so much more. True, Ontario is currently in financial trouble, but at least Ontarians don’t mind paying for things. In Alberta, “paying for things through taxes” means you’re a Communist. Or worse.
I wholly agree. Alberta’s insistence on not raising a sales tax is what results in it having a modest deficit today.
The thing is, though, that you can fix that tomorrow with the stroke of a pen. A sales tax is an option; curbside recycling is an option. People may not WANT those things, and you and I might disagree with them, but that is their right as citizens of a democracy to do so. The administration of Ralph Klein, in part (he’s not the only person to ever be Premier of Alberta) put Alberta into a financial situation where they at least have the choice.
In Ontario, we’re going to have to either cut that stuff, or, well, cut that stuff. (I have to tell you, though, that it has been a very long time since roads were consistently cleared shortly after a snowfall.) No other options will present themselves. The programs we have now will HAVE to be reduced. They didn’t have to be, but the province has chosen to do things that are flat out insane, like subsidizing electricity generation and consumption for no logical reason at all, that drain billions from the money available for things like health care, education, and public services.
Looking through history - and today - Alberta has been of a single political mind. It’s impossible to create new ideas in such context and, over time, a paradigm develops on what it take to succeed in political life.
I remember not so long ago Provincial Government of Alberta was handing out dividend cheques that amounted to, I think, $1,600 a year per each person. As Ontarian, I recall being really surprised that they could not find some capital investment use for all that cash.
Ontario - or Upper Canada - was always the most progressive part of Canadian society so it’s no wonder that Ontario is where it’s at.
The fact that Ontario has had spectacularly awful leadership since my family had the good sense to get the hell out in the mid-80s does not mean that every subsequent leader of every province outside of Ontario is some kind of superhero.
Redford is absolutely stuck dealing with Klein’s mistakes. With the lack of medical professionals and hospitals that Alberta has dealt with since Klein got rid of them all, the cost of dealing with each individual case has spiked dramatically. A lack of general practitioners means fewer people are able to go in for regular check ups (my wife and I, for example, required several years of looking to find a GP who was willing to add us to his client list). Less preventative treatment means more acute problems. Lengthy wait times for acute issues means easily treatable acute problems are far more serious than they would have been if handled in a timely fashion: the Foothills Hospital in north east Calgary is the primary option for cardiac illness in the city and has one of the highest mortality rates in the country because people who are put on the waiting list for heart surgery, who are in stable condition when diagnosed, have typically degenerated to critical conditions in the following months they have to wait before they can actually get into an OR. Net result: we pay a ton for inadequate medical treatment because we lack the facilities and the personnel to do it right and the current provincial government gets to eat that extra cost.
So again, while it is unfortunate that Ontario has been so badly mismanaged, I don’t see how that automatically means Ralph Klein should be deified.
I have a theory about that - there are A LOT of refugees from Saskatchewan here, and we are well-acquainted with living under a socialist government.