Liberal and NDP voters are to blame for Alberta's budget mess

The #PrenticeBlamesAlbertans hashtag has been big on Twitter ever since Jim Prentice's comments on CBC radio yesterday where he said Albertans upset over the deficit need to look in a mirror.

That the left-wingers in Alberta are the ones who are clearly the most upset these comments indicates that Prentice was hitting a little too close to home with them. As I noted on Twitter on Thursday, the same morons demanding more free healthcare and more free education probably should shut up forever about "not being responsible for PC Party planning". If they really believed this, they wouldn't have rallied would they?

Prentice didn't exactly say anything particularly groundbreaking, anyways. Despite many making noise about PC party issues, people keep voting for them. People march and demand faggots in schools, the PC party will put faggots in schools. People march and demand 142% increases in healthcare spending, the PC party will boost healthcare spending.

Sadly, the Wildrose Party decided to get into the act too, with the party and several of it's followers jumping on this meme. From the National Post story:

Wildrose critic Drew Barnes said he’s amazed the premier would blame all Albertans for the fiscal crisis since the Progressive Conservatives have been in power uninterrupted since 1971.

He noted that just a decade ago, the province had $17 billion in its rainy day contingency fund and that has since dwindled to around $6 billion.

“After 43 years of being in power and having control over the provincial chequebook, how could it be anybody else’s responsibility but the PC government,” said the Wildrose MLA for Cypress-Medicine Hat.

There's a chance Drew Barnes will be the next Wildrose leader, though comments like this must surely give us pause before voting for him. A decade ago, we had a big contingency fund and now it's gone, despite 43 years of the PC Party being in power? Doesn't that speak less to "arrogance and control of the chequebook" and more like "a more recent manager was a piece of shit and she's gone now and it's time to fix what she did"?

The 2015 Alberta budget will be unveiled on March 25th. This is a chance for those who are upset that Prentice is "blaming" them to show their mettle, and demand that severe program cuts be implemented to bring the Alberta budget back down into a surplus position, regardless of how much oil revenue is generated by rebounding prices.

If you won't, then Jim Prentice is right: the upcoming Alberta budget deficit will be your fault. He's just giving you what you asked for.