Opposition quick to slam PC budget
Posted Mar 26, 2015 6:55 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Just as soon as the PCs unveiled their budget, the opposition was quick to slam it.
Wildrose Leader Heather Forsyth questioned the document’s credibility ahead of an expected spring election.
“That budget that they tabled today is a pre-election budget and quite frankly, they’ll go to the polls and then they’ll come back and they’ll tax people more,” she said in a release. “You cannot trust them.”
“It’s appalling to me quite frankly that this premier and his government think it’s all right to tax Albertans to death for their mistakes and that’s what they’re doing.”
Liberal Leader David Swann said the main problem is not supporting the middle class and municipalities, as Alberta will have its largest deficit ever.
“We can expect up to a $$30 billion debt by 2018, this is disgraceful financial management and I think Albertans are pretty much fed up with it,” he said. “This government has put us into this place because they wanted to have the lowest tax regime by a country mile.”
Swann echoed the Wildrose sentiment of their plan before an expected election.
“Give us a year to see what they actually do and then have an election, that would be a fair approach to assessing Albertans’ view of this budget,” Swann said.
NDP Leader Rachel Notley said it’s another example of hurting middle class families, while leaving the province’s richest off the hook since there’s no change in corporate taxes.
“This seems to be something that he’s doing in order to protect his backroom, boardroom buddies from paying their fair share or contributing their fair share to fixing this fiscal challenge,” she said. “It means that Alberta families are going to see a serious deterioration in the health care they can count on and the quality of education that their kids receive.”
“It is possible to ask corporate Alberta to come to the table, to contribute a modest, balanced amount of money that would still maintain Alberta’s competitive advantage relative to the rest of the country, but Jim Prentice couldn’t be bothered to make that request.”
