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Emergency Budget Pod
61 Plays5 years ago
The UCP have dropped their first budget and it's the cruel and brutal austerity they promised. Producer Jim steps out from behind the mixing board to join us as we sift through this awful budget to bring you everything you need to know.
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview of UCP Budget
00:00:15
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're here recording an amiskwichiwa skygen, otherwise known as Edmonton, here in Treaty 6 territory. And folks, the UCP budget has dropped. And it sucks. There's really no other way to sugarcoat this.
00:00:35
Speaker
We have been talking about the brutal austerity and class war that was coming and we got it. That's what's happening. That's what we're talking about today. This is in fact, our very first emergency podcast and in honor of our very first emergency podcast, uh, producer Jim is stepping out from behind the board to talk with us. Jim has been here with us from the very beginning. He is my colleague here at progress Alberta. You can just call him Jim. You don't have to call him producer Jim, but Jim, yes, thank you so much for doing this emergency podcast.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, we gotta talk about it. This budget is pretty fucking bad, Duncan. It's got that classic mix of pointless cruelty, vindictive swings at all of the UCP's perceived enemies, or just people who don't like to vote for them.
00:01:22
Speaker
And then a bunch of kind of dumb stuff. Yeah, it is a fundamentally brutal and cruel budget. You know, there's really no other way to put it in.
Corporate Tax Cuts vs. Social Program Cuts
00:01:31
Speaker
And I think the kind of top level tax policy thing that we do have to just mention off the top, and really the government that makes no bones about it, the UCB make no bones about it when they talk about this budget, the four and a half or 4.7 billion dollar corporate tax cut, essentially this corporate tax giveaway.
00:01:49
Speaker
this undergirds kind of everything else. The reason why we have to cut the things that we are going to be talking about later in this podcast, the things like rental assistance for the working poor or drug coverage for seniors or maintenance for university buildings is we've got to pay.
00:02:06
Speaker
for corporations. That's a funny thing. You, you add up all of the cuts over the next four years, at least all of the cuts they've announced now. I mean, it could be more down the pipe, but the number looks a lot like that $4.5 billion tax cut number. You know, you could get rid of both of them at the same time and the budget would look pretty similar.
00:02:28
Speaker
I mean, again, you said it, Jim, but the people who eat the most shit in this budget are the poor, post-secondary students and public sector workers. I mean, everyone eats shit in this budget unless you're like the Southern family or Murray Edwards or Michael Binion of Questare or something, if we're just going to call out some supervillains.
00:02:48
Speaker
But yeah, everyone in Alberta eats shit on this budget. But those folks, the poor, the post-secondary students, and the public sector workers get it the worst. And I think where we should start off is talking about simply the kind of most cruel part of this budget, the greatest hits, if you will, and that's de-indexing-ish.
00:03:04
Speaker
Aish is assured income for the severely handicapped, which by the way, we should probably cancel that name. This is essentially welfare, right? Yeah, when you think of the word welfare, I think this is exactly what you're thinking of. Benefit payments that go to people who just can't work, you know, could be a health reason, could be something else, but like these are folks who just can't be in the workforce. Aish was not high to begin with.
00:03:33
Speaker
I think we were all a little disappointed in the former government for not increasing it. But at least, you know, at the very least, they indexed it to inflation. So Asia has been pretty much at the same level for a decade, over a decade.
00:03:48
Speaker
But the cost of living has been steadily going up.
Impact on Healthcare and Social Benefits
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, you get inflation or whatever. Every year, the cost of shit gets higher, right? Yeah, yeah. Usually between 1%, 3%, if it's a real bad year, maybe a little higher. So those benefits were already not keeping pace. And what indexing did was say that when inflation goes up, that your age payments will go up a little too, so that they at least keep pace with the cost of your rent and the cost of your food.
00:04:17
Speaker
And so the UCP are balancing the budgets on the back of like our most poor and like our most vulnerable people.
00:04:24
Speaker
Well, add it up. I mean, over the next four years, there could be a 10% reduction to age payments. And, you know, people are already struggling to live on age. It's not enough to pay your bills. It's not enough if you live in the cities, certainly. It's especially not enough if, you know, due to what you're dealing with, you have some particular care needs or like mobility needs that drive your costs up.
00:04:49
Speaker
to take another 10% off the top of that to give a tax giveaway to billionaires. It's monstrous. The UCB also de-indexed the Alberta Seniors Benefit and a bunch of other programs for kind of like older, poorer folks.
Cuts to Employment and Rental Assistance Programs
00:05:06
Speaker
And again, they also went after seniors in another way. They took an axe to seniors' drug coverage, right? This one's maybe a little complex, but
00:05:15
Speaker
On the Alberta Seniors Drug Coverage Plan, if your partner had that coverage but you didn't, then you could access that coverage, which a lot of people were relying on. Also, if you were a senior and you had a dependent, if there was someone in your household who
00:05:33
Speaker
couldn't work for health reasons or you know you were the primary caregiver for them they could access your senior drug coverage now they're all gonna have to go to pocket which again absolutely monstrous to be considering these giant tax cuts for
00:05:49
Speaker
the super wealthy, and at the same time paying for them by telling grandma that she has to go eat cat food. So this is like tens of thousands of fewer folks who are going to have access to this senior drug coverage plan, right? Yeah. And this is not something where you save money, by the way, by taking preventative prescription drugs away from people. This is not going to work out in any kind of pleasant way. So my heart really goes out to the impacted folks.
00:06:17
Speaker
So not only was that slash but employment support was cut? What was employment support? So I used to do a little bit of casework at an MLA's office before I found out that I was really bad at it. And you know, there are a lot of folks who kind of hit the wall in terms of accessing other benefits like EI or who don't qualify for ASH. And often they just have to go to Alberta Works with their handout and say, you know, please, like,
00:06:46
Speaker
I need to make rent this month. Yeah, like I'm three days away from being on the street, like please help. And so there are some employment supports for those folks. These are again, like pretty desperate people who are in this situation.
00:07:03
Speaker
And that budget, it's a 25% cut, right? They're taking an ax to it. That's a massive, massive cut. Yeah, and then finally on the cavalcade of cuts to the disabled, the poor, and the elderly, we've got rental assistance being cut by 24% for a $44 million savings, savings in scare quotes. Rental assistance is benefit to help low-income people to help them afford housing.
00:07:30
Speaker
So these are people who live in kind of market housing who will get a bit of a top up from this program in order to help them make rent. Again, this is like the working poor. These are the people who are the most vulnerable or on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale who are having their benefits and the cash that usually flows to them from the government cut to far, far, far, far, far less than what they were getting before.
00:07:51
Speaker
Well, I mean it's only Alberta winter on the way. I'm sure people will be just fine without a roof over their heads. I know, I know. Okay, so let's move on to another
Effects on Edmonton's Budget and Infrastructure
00:08:00
Speaker
part. A big loser in this budget as well were the cities. Edmonton, especially. Specifically Edmonton. And you know, when I mentioned earlier this budget being a little vindictive against people who didn't vote for Jason Kenney,
00:08:14
Speaker
There's only one part of the province that really didn't vote for Kenny. It's here in Edmonton. Oh man, does Edmonton ever get its ass kicked in this budget? Yeah, right. They've already killed the super lab, but they've also canceled this child mental health center at the Royal Alex Hospital. The funding for the LRT lines in both Edmonton and Calgary have been pushed back. The provincial portion of that funding has been pushed way back.
00:08:36
Speaker
We had Don Iveson and Nenshi in the news today talking about how they don't see how this won't affect the timelines of these LRT projects, how it won't simply delay them by years and years. Well, Edmonton's got to come up with one and a half billion dollars now for a Valleyline LRT. Cities have pretty limited ways to get at revenue.
00:08:57
Speaker
I don't think it's really feasible to expect that they're going to come up with one and a half billion dollars right away to keep this project on track. It's not just the transit funding either. No, I mean the Southwest Edmonton House Hospital got pushed back by another five years or something. The whole city charter agreement, the things that the Calgary and Edmonton negotiated with the province to kind of have much more certainty around their funding arrangement essentially got torn up.
00:09:21
Speaker
Even just the end of the year this year, that's another $17 million that the city of Edmonton and the city of Calgary both need to come up with. Not a lot of days left in this year. 17 million is a lot of dollars. Yeah, like when you get into the details of how the municipality is getting screwed, or even how Edmonton is getting screwed, it's like this relatively complex program that someone had to explain to me, like this taxes for grants.
00:09:44
Speaker
Grants for taxes. This is an interesting one, I think, because it is especially targeted right at Edmonton. This specific one, this is just a big Rochambeau and Don Iveson's nuts. It's like crown properties, properties that are owned by the city of Edmonton don't pay property taxes. In lieu of paying property taxes, they would get a grant every year from the province.
00:10:05
Speaker
Well, it's the properties that the provincial government has their offices in. So this is like the provincial government gets out of paying taxes to the city of Edmonton and instead was giving them these grants. And now these grants are being cut massively by, I can't remember how many percent, but by a significant portion. But the province is also not paying property taxes. In the first place. And so it was a $15 million cut for the city of Edmonton. It was a $5 million cut for the city of Calgary by them rewriting the arrangement of this
00:10:34
Speaker
taxes for grants arrangement. And again, just a big fuck you to Edmonton, because Edmonton obviously has the most crown properties, the most government of Alberta properties because of the capital is here. Well, good job, Don. All that money you spent on consultants in the election campaign really paid off, really paid off. Don Iveson and I had an engineer hilariously ill-equipped to deal with this UCP.
00:10:57
Speaker
I don't see how they can meaningfully fight back considering that they just fundamentally aren't interested in doing politics. Beyond saying mean things in the media, I don't really see what their response would or could
Discussion on Political Response and Recall Legislation
00:11:12
Speaker
be. They don't know how to organize anyone.
00:11:14
Speaker
One interesting tidbit about all of this, you know, Edmonton in particular getting screwed by all of these, these municipal changes. Edmonton's one UCP MLA is, is the minister, right? He's the minister of municipal affairs. He's the minister of municipal affairs.
00:11:30
Speaker
The one person after Kenny and maybe after the finance minister that has the most power to protect Edmonton from these cuts, he's not doing a damn thing. Funnily enough, recall legislation was just introduced. The very first steps of getting that recall legislation was passed in the House this week. Well, perhaps we'll have a little more to say about that on The Progress Report soon.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, and if you are interested in recalling Casey Medew, reach out. Email me. Call me. Hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, whatever. I think it's an interesting project to consider, and there's actually a lot of lead time. By the terms of the recall legislation that's been introduced now, we wouldn't be able to start the process until October next year.
Challenges Facing Post-secondary Education
00:12:10
Speaker
But moving on, the other big, big losers in this budget, post-secondary students as well as the institutions themselves.
00:12:20
Speaker
These are these are big cuts too and these these came out a couple of days before the budget I don't know if it was yeah, they teased a leaker just a teaser but like big big like 10% more or less across the board Although from what I saw in those tables the cuts do kind of depend on what kind of school you were Well, I mean, yeah, let's get to that but let's just run through the fucking damage because it is again
00:12:44
Speaker
when you look at like the most like single biggest dollar values you kind of find them you find all the cuts kind of the biggest cuts in post-secondary so there's a 275 million dollar cut just like from one year to the next to the post-secondary system this year
00:12:58
Speaker
The tuition cap freeze is over with, so tuition can now be raised. The maximum that they will allow tuition to be raised on a year-over-year basis is 7%, so just look at that as essentially a guidepost for universities. And that term for those is three years. So essentially, over the next three years, by the end of the next three years, your tuition will have risen by 21%. They also jacked up student loan interest rates. So student loan interest rates were at prime. Now they are at prime plus one.
00:13:27
Speaker
the biggest kind of hugest single line item budget cut I found in the budget, and I was, just for a bit of context, I was in the media budget lockup yesterday, and it was a really interesting experience. Did anyone try and fight you in there? Well, Loren Gunter was there. I was trying to find and track down Graham Thompson and ask a question, and he was talking with Loren Gunter, and I'd never actually seen Loren Gunter with my eyes. Like, I have seen that picture of him with Ezra Levant on the Rebel cruise,
00:13:54
Speaker
But I've talked to people in the- You know, I hear that you can't see him in a mirror. You have to look at him directly. I mean, I've talked to journal and son, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun reporters, and these people have never seen hide in her hair of Lauren Gunter. So, I mean, the joke is that, like, does he really exist? He's a pen name for-
00:14:12
Speaker
Is he just a bot that like or just just some UCP staffer cranking out copy? No, no, that's that's the Rick Bell account. That's the Rick Bell. I mean, so so he does exist and He didn't say anything. He was he was off by himself. He wasn't like sitting with all the journalists He was at a table by himself just kind of hilariously like Futsing about the only person who I did see speak with him was Graham Thompson Who I think who I believe worked with him when they were both at the journal together
00:14:36
Speaker
You gotta wonder if the UCP staffers feel the same way about seeing you in a scrum, as the NDP felt about seeing rebel people. Well, yeah, I was about to ask a question to Travis Taves, and it was like last question. I got last question right before I got up to the mic. And if we are just delving into the hilariousness of being in the media budget lockup,
00:14:56
Speaker
Rick Bell had a question. I think he was the first on the phones from Calgary. And his question was like the most hilarious softball question. It was like, Travis Taves, can you tell us how this budget is different from the Notley budgets and different from the Klein budgets, which was essentially just like the narrative that Taves had already been pushing that it's like, it's better than Notley, but we're not.
00:15:17
Speaker
doing client cuts and it was just like the most like hilarious planted softball question from rick bell um but anyways uh he loves the boot man he does love licking boot okay so let's not get caught up in the too much of the media bullshit because whatever but post-secondary um the biggest single fucking cut to this in this in the budget that i could find and that all the other folks in media budget lockup could find
00:15:41
Speaker
with 109 million dollars year-over-year difference between in the capital maintenance budget of the universities so this is this would be 120 million dollars or 121 million dollars one year this year is like 12 and and it's not like universities especially Edmonton and Calgary uh have a bunch of old buildings that they have to take care of and to keep running it's like what the fuck
00:16:05
Speaker
These are maintenance cuts, man. Haven't we been through this whole maintenance cut scheme before with the hospitals when Klein did it? You eventually have to pay that bill. And the longer you put it off, the bigger the bill gets. Yeah, and it's a multiplier effect, right? If you don't take care of your buildings, you just end up having to fucking knock them down. And building from scratch is always worse than just maintaining an existing building.
00:16:29
Speaker
Well, I mean, if your household expenses are getting out of control or government is not a house, I get it. I will be cautious with the use of this metaphor. But if you're having trouble paying your rent, you don't sell your windows. You know, like there are some things that you need to keep paying for and you need to keep maintaining.
00:16:47
Speaker
Exactly and it's like what do you just board these buildings up if you can't use them? Like I don't know what that budget what that budget cut does to Well, it puts a bunch of black mold in the walls. I think is what it does. You love to see it. Okay, so Duncan tell me about the distribution of those cuts to those schools
00:17:04
Speaker
Yes, I'm so glad you asked so yeah every university and every college Eats it they get less money this year than they got last year except except except like such August institutions as a Berman University or I think King's College anyways things you probably have never heard of and these are actually quite tiny institutions But these are the Christian explicitly Christian colleges all got no budget cuts. I
00:17:31
Speaker
Well, I guess they prayed. They prayed enough before the budget. They definitely prayed very hard for no budget cuts. If you're that Nate, you got to get some people on the prayer team. And the good Lord responded to their prayers. Finally, I think to round up this kind of cavalcade of evil, just evil budget cuts, we have, again, one of the biggest losers in this budget, the public sector.
Public Service Reductions and Broader Implications
00:17:56
Speaker
And this was kind of teased. I think Don Braid got early access to budget stuff with the Calgary Herald. This was kind of teased that there would be a cut. I think Jason Kenney said somewhere around 10% of a cut to the public service. Anyways, it's a 7.7% cut to the public service. And that works out to around 2,000 jobs. And when we're talking about the public service, what we were talking about is
00:18:21
Speaker
people who are directly employed by a ministry, right? So this is like, if you are a person who might say is confronting Jason Nixon about him shooting some horses on some private property, you would be an employee of the Ministry of Environment. If you're a social worker who's trying to help people figure things out after all of their benefits just suddenly disappeared.
00:18:41
Speaker
A lot of those social workers work directly for the ministries. For, yeah, for human services or whatever. And that is around 27,000 full-time equivalents. That's around 27,000 people who work in the public service. And a 7.7% gets rid of about 2,000 of them. And they've said it'll be a mix of layoffs and attrition and blah, blah, blah.
00:18:58
Speaker
Again, 2,000 people is a huge removal, and it actually just kind of shows how little fat there was in the public service for them to remove. But right after they say that 7.7 cut to the public service, they say that they will find $550 million in savings in the public sector.
00:19:15
Speaker
That number seems a little high compared to the first one. Yeah. And the language here is that they've broadened it from the public service to the public sector. And the public sector includes teachers, nurses, paramedics, LPNs, orderlies, people working in hospitals, et cetera, et cetera, right? This is the entirety of anyone who draws a paycheck from the government doesn't work directly for the government. So you can be working for AHS or a school board or for a university or whatever.
00:19:41
Speaker
Well, give us some context on the numbers there. OK, so those 2,000 people that are going to get laid off or won't be replaced through attrition from the public service, that only gets you, say, if you just back the envelope math, those people are only going to be like $100,000 a year. Let's just to make it easy. Say $100,000 a year with pension benefits and salary. I guarantee you the UCP isn't laying off any of the guys who are making like $300,000. Yeah, right. OK, so if we say that 2,000 people at $100,000 a year, that gets you to $200 million in cuts.
00:20:10
Speaker
So there's still an additional $350 million that's going to be found in savings in the public sector that there's just like no accounting for in this budget. What about efficiencies? Don't you believe in efficiencies? I believe in efficiencies. I believe that they exist. I don't believe you can find $350 million in efficiencies.
00:20:26
Speaker
And this is the kind of huge implicit threat to teachers, nurses, paramedics in this budget, right? Like the idea that they can find $350 million can only happen through two ways. It can happen through layoffs and cuts, or it can happen through wage rollbacks.
00:20:43
Speaker
And I would wager that we're going to see both, right? Like this government has already adopted a like, you're getting zeros in negotiation. And then if you're getting zeros, if say nurses and teachers and paramedics are getting zeros.
00:20:59
Speaker
Well, what's to stop them from trying to legislate wage rollbacks? It's a pretty effective threat, I think, to be holding over folks in these wage negotiations to be saying, listen, we have another $350 million of cuts. We haven't decided who's getting them yet. It could be you. It could be you. You better fall in line.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah. And so this is, I think, the huge implicit threat in this budget is to teachers, nurses, and paramedics. And a lot of these negotiations are happening right now. And I think that there's really no way for these unions to deal with this except to use the tactics that are available to them, including going on strike. Yeah.
00:21:42
Speaker
And I hope they do. I mean, obviously, we'll be out there to support them if they do. But if they don't fight, they can't win. The UCP are not sympathetic to them. No. And I think one thing you can even learn from this budget is that the first people to get rolled were the people who were the kind of most supine, the people who were the most pliable.
Critique of Budget Priorities and Call to Action
00:22:02
Speaker
Like the student unions in this province didn't say boo and didn't organize at all in advance of this budget. And who got fucked the most?
00:22:10
Speaker
the students yeah well they you show that you won't fight back and you're gonna get pushed around exactly so
00:22:17
Speaker
Think that that is a very instructive lesson for everyone who is concerned about this budget and the kind of austerity in the brutal class where that Jason Kenny is bringing to Alberta and and it's it is you got to find the like funny parts in this right because This is ultimately extremely dark and like people will die and people's lives will get worse But like all of this pain and all of this shittiness that Jason Kenny is inflicting on us right now it means that if everything goes right and their voodoo economics happen and
00:22:47
Speaker
All the projections come to pass. It means like $4 billion less in debt in four years or something. Again, money is fake and it's especially fake when you start getting close to $100 billion. But I don't care if the money is sad if it means that grandma dies because she can't get her medicine. I would much rather fundamentally take care of my fucking neighbors than worry about some number on a spreadsheet.
00:23:11
Speaker
I think we have to be really direct in saying this too. Alberta does not have a problem with debt or deficit. Look at the numbers. Alberta's got one of the lowest debt loads in Canada. Is it still the absolute lowest? Yeah, and our debt to GDP ratio is fucking the best.
00:23:30
Speaker
Our debt to GDP ratio is fine. We're not forking over tons and tons of money on interest. And a lot of these cuts that they are making are going to cost more in the long run than any of those debt payments would kind of.
00:23:45
Speaker
boils my blood, frankly, to hear the messaging from this government about, well, we're looking after your kids. We're going to make sure that they don't get saddled with debt. Okay, well, your kids are going to get saddled with a hell of a tuition debt now. Exactly. They're going to have to fork over a lot of money taking care of you.
00:24:04
Speaker
Because there are no benefits for for seniors to speak of anymore And you and I both spend a lot of time online and when you spend time online You are like officially not supposed to be mad like being mad means that you lose that you've lost, right? But fuck that like you have to be mad at this budget if you look at this bad budget And you are anything but fucking furious at what's being inflicted on Albertans. You're not a person and and fuck you. I
00:24:28
Speaker
Well, you're certainly not a working class person. I'll tell you that. I think this is definitely a place where people get sorted into one or two piles. This is a, which side are you on budget? And if you're looking at this budget and you're saying, well, this doesn't matter too much to me, you're not on side with regular working class Albertans and you need to do a little more thinking about like the amount of empathy you're having for your fellow people.
00:24:56
Speaker
because folks are going to end up on the street or worse from this budget. People's careers and livelihoods are going to get destroyed by this budget. And some of the most vulnerable people in the province are going to have absolutely no recourse. In closing, fuck you, Jason Kenney.
00:25:14
Speaker
That's it for this week if you like this podcast and want to support what we do Please go to the progress report dot ca slash patrons and become a monthly patron We would really appreciate it if you like our Facebook page if you share our content if you share this podcast if you leave a review all that stuff really does help us out and helps us get the word out especially in these in these times where it's so important the the media kind of like
00:25:38
Speaker
force field around the UCP is definitely getting stronger and stronger. And it's only through independent media projects like this, and getting them into the hands and ears of more people, are we actually going to be able to build something here. So please go out and do all that work. And also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear about, please reach out to me on Twitter. I am at Duncan Kinney.
00:26:00
Speaker
At Duncan Kinney and you can reach me by email at Duncan K at progress Alberta dot CA and Jim where can people find you? I get to do a plug. Mm-hmm Yeah, you can find me online too at Jim story on Twitter is fine My world of Warcraft classic guild is looking for more rating members. Please DM me. There you go Yes, and yeah hit up the ketchup guy on Twitter. He's a fantastic follow Thanks so much to cosmic family communist for the amazing theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye. Bye