The Third Edge of the Sword shadow Alberta budget

Editor's Note: this below blogpost was being worked on when the Wuhan Flu crisis changed everything. As a result, the Operational Expenditures section was completed, but the Capital Budgets section was not. In the wake of dumb jock David Staples' "survey of what has happened to the government’s finances since its budget in February we felt this was a good time to point out what the far-left Edmonton Journal will not: Kenney only took baby steps.



The 2020 Alberta budget is a Star Wars: The Last Jedi level massive bungling of what should have been a sure thing. Instead of propelling forward on the momentum and goodwill established in the 2019 Alberta Election/Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it stumbles on its face by trying too hard to be clever and subverting your expectations on what a SW:TFA sequel/UCP budget is supposed to look like. You walk away confused, mistrustful, and fearful for the future.

As Kenny's spin doctors put it:

Budget 2020 takes a measured approach to fiscal management focused on getting Albertans back to work, making life better for Albertans, and standing up for Alberta. This budget provides the means to effectively and sustainably deliver public services, and enable job creation by using all tools at the government's disposal to support private sector growth.

Effectively and sustainably deliver public services, eh? Is that how you describe adding another $7B to Alberta's debt? With a promise to get that $6.8B down to $0 in a mere three more years? Accepting a linear progression (which lines up fairly well with the budget projection as per the graph), that means that Alberta's debt (currently just over $71B) will be $77.9B by this time in 2021, then $80.6B in 2022, and finally a "mere" $79.9B in 2023.If the Alberta government could continue that rate of roughly $3.5B improvement to the deficit per year (as per the chart) then the debt would remain on the books until 2030. And that's an awfully optimistic projection seeing how the entire Alberta budget is $50 billion and we are expecting a $24.5B surplus in 2029-2030. If we decide that a more modest $3-5B surplus can be maintained year-after-year from 2023 onwards, the Alberta debt should be wiped in... *checks notes*...sixteen to twenty-six years, so the 2039-2051 range.

That. Is. Pathetic.

It's not as pathetic as far-left NDP losers on social media suddenly deciding (as they did with Stephen Harper in 2011) that running deficits is a giant mistake, but it's close. And its totally unnecessary. I could have balanced the budget this year. I could get us out of debt by 2030. And, as a final bonus, I could do it while also solving another problem: far left losers sticking around Alberta and gumming up the works.

So let's begin, shall we? (Okay, I promise no more than 3 more Harry S. Plinkett references)

Step one is simple: let's stop wasting money on silly projects. [can we have Step 1a be "have the Alberta government PDFs allow cut and paste from their unordered lists? -ed]

The Petrochemicals Diversification Program isn't the dumbest thing Rachel Arab's NDP government did by far. On the face of it it's fairly sensible: royalty credits that encourage growth in areas the Shiny Pony federal government is actively trying to quash. So what's with this $1.1B commitment? As the Canadian Taxpayer Federation notes, this isn't just coming from "royalty reductions" but from loan guarantees and direct grants. It would be one thing to say "we are willing to forego an estimated $1.1B in theoretical royalty revenue in return for economic activity expected to generate more than $1.1B in tax revenue over the long term" but that isn't what's happening. So the program, which has only cost us $150 million so far, could be scrapped. What impact, you may ask, does that have to the 2019-2020 budget? Um...none, apparently. Seriously, the PDP doesn't appear on the budget at all.

Okay, what other silly projects can we save money on?

Budget 2020 honours the commitments made in the platform and in Budget 2019. Key examples include:

1. Ongoing funding of $100 million for a mental health and addiction strategy, $40 million for an opioid response, and $20 million for palliative care.
   
2. The government established the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation to facilitate up to $1 billion in Indigenous investment in natural resource projects and infrastructure.
   
3. The Film and Television Tax Credit was introduced, supporting the industry with nearly $22 million in 2020-21, $31 million in 2021-22 and $45 million in 2022-23.
   
4. Fifty new prosecutors were funded.
   
5. An agreement was put in place to enhance the fight against rural crime with more than 500 additional RCMP officer and civilian positions.
   
6. The First Responders and Heroes Fund initiatives will provide $9 million over three years.
   
7. The TIER program was implemented and will support $969 million for climate technologies and emissions reduction over the next three years.
   
8. A Civil Society Empowerment Fund of $20 million was established to help
   community groups expand and thrive.

The Alberta Budget document didn't number these, but I did. Let's examine each line and I'll explain why we shouldn't be spending it.

1. Mental health and addiction strategy is a giant black pit of government spending to which zero positive output has been produced. Despite ridiculous lying propaganda from "mental health advocates" (PDF), mental health spending has been constantly on the rise worldwide in the past half decade, and yet mental health rates are going up. More critically, the generation constantly pushed with "mental health awareness" is the one that's the most crazy. So cut it. All of it. Every penny. It's another occurrence of Parkinson's Law: the more mental health spending by governments, the more crazy people. As for "opioid" response, an immediate implementation of a "Stand Your Ground" law and codifying the rights of landowners to defend their property with the same legal protection as defending their physical person would ensure opioid addicts robbing productive Albertans would be taken care of one way or another. So boom: $140M cut from the budget.
   
2. How's that working out for ya? If we insist on giving Red Indians $1B in resource investment, that same $1B should be deducted from handouts given to Red Indians by other levels of government. So let's start a little mental ledge on that file, shall we?
   
3. Would that be the same far-left media industry that consistently lies about conservatives and promotes their far-left agenda? Sorry, we are giving them $22M/year to cause us harm why exactly? We let Leo the Liar to come to Alberta to film The Revenant, and then he outright lied about global warming in front of millions because of it, and got praise from that faggot Miranda because of it. They can all go piss up a rope and inhale the steam. Let's not even make a change to the budget based on it: let's say that these tax incentives will drive Hollywood and their lying anti-Trump nonsense away. Fine.
   
4. No problem with this. Implementation of the legal system is a legitimate function of government.
   
5. Ditto, though the blockade-ignoring RCMP needs to be replaced with Alberta Sherrifs who will have the mandate to remove Injuns from rail lines.
   
6. Ditt--er, wait. What's the First Responders and Heroes Fund? Oh, it's giving lump sum payments to families of killed police officers. Again, can we ensure this only is used on police officers killed while enforcing sensible laws? Let's just go ahead and say that we can drop the expenses by at least $2M/year that way.
   
7. $969M on "climate technologies and emissions reduction"? Can we take this moment to remind everybody which country reduced their emissions last year while also having record growth, despite no government investment in "emissions reduction"? Yeah, let's scrap that.
   
8. Hey remember in the Lougheed era when any idiot could get $1000 for his family BBQ? Those were good times. They aren't these times. $20M saved.

So just from this preamble we have saved $1.131 billion. Step two is slashing program expenditures. Healthcare spending amounts to $20,616 million in 2020 alone. How on earth can we drop this down? First step is easy:

The Ernst & Young review of AHS was released on February 3, 2020. The AHS review identified opportunities to reduce costs, while improving system performance. The review identifies a range of long-term savings initiatives with the potential to save taxpayers between $1.5 billion to $1.9 billion annually. AHS will engage staff and clinical leaders to develop a comprehensive implementation plan. While the implementation plan is currently under development, Budget 2020 provides stability to the health care system by investing a total of $15.4 billion per year in AHS operations.

Now Third Edge of the Sword World Headquarters in South Bend, Indiana has a limited staff and budget. We certainly can't compare to the Alberta Health Services (109,000 employees), or Ernst & Young for that matter (270,000 employees). So you think implementing this review must be a difficult task. After all, the full review is a whopping 220 pages, and even the summary is 100 pages. I'm sure coming up with an implementation plan is a lot of work and oh wait, I'm done. Here's the steps, in no particular order:

• AHS’ executives[15] are paid more than their BC counterparts, but less than comparable positions in Ontario.

  Going forward, all thirteen AHS executives are paid minimum wage. However, they will have a generous bonus structure tied to a single metric: for every $200M cut from the AHS budget year-to-year, they will receive $400,000 in executive bonuses (total value $5.2M for every $200M cut). The CEO will receive an additional $250,000 for every $100M cut from the AHS budget year-to-year.
  

• AHS’ unionized employees are paid more than their peers in other Canadian provinces.
  • Alberta pays higher than the Canadian average across employee groups: 7.2% higher for RNs, 5.5% higher for LPNs, 6.8% higher for HCAs, 11.1% higher for HSAA employees and 6.95% higher for AUPE-GSS employees.
  • While AHS has been successful at negotiating a 0% increase to the pay bands in the collective agreements for the past two years, overall costs increased as employees moved up bands.

  Well here's some low hanging fruit. The militant United Nurses of Alberta (currently going apeshit about a 4 year wage freeze) will never be happy. They are already talking about strikes. You will never make them happy. You can never buy them off. So cut their wages. Unionized full-time nurses receive a 12% wage cut that comes into effect April 1st (current contract expires March 31st). Part-time nurses receive a 19% wage cut that also takes effect April 1st. 100% freeze in this "moving up in bands" nonsense. Overtime paid at the standard 50% premium. There's talk about how we need more nurses, right? Cutting union wages frees up some cash. How much cash? It's not easy to say, since the government doesn't disclose how nurses wages impact the system. Doctors salaries represent $5.1B, administration is $482M, ambulance is $510M, $609M in IT, drugs represent $1.7B, and diagnostic services represent $2.4B, so let's cut that out of the budget and drop us down to $9.999B in spending. Let's also assume that nurses wages and benefits represent 1/3 of that remaining chunk which is probably about right. That's $3.3B. Salaries typically only represent half of the cost of an employee, so dropping the wages by around 14% would save $231M per year. Lower salaries tie into lower other metrics, obviously, but let's stick with this one. The E&Y report recommends moving more nurses to FT rather than PT, which I'm on board with, which is why I'm aiming for a 14% reduction. E&Y says moving to FT nurses would save $15M/yr, let's roll that number into my savings.
  
• Implement all of the E&Y "W1-W10" recommendations. W9, the FT move, we've already agreed I won't include. The others, however, add up to $440M in savings (I am using the "lowball" number when a range is posted).
  
• Share admin assistants and save $6M/yr. I'm not sure how quick that can be implemented, but let's say it's only $1M savings this year.
  
• E&Y has six physician optimization opportunities totalling $124M. The final one, radiologist fee reductions, is overly optimistic at $42M so I'm cutting it out. I'm also cutting PO3, the "academic funding review" as it looks long-termish. That's still $77M saved.
  

• The Alberta Surgical Initiative: According to AHS, there are approximately 70,000 people in Alberta waiting for surgery; with 50% of these patients deemed to be waiting longer than clinically recommended targets. AHS and AH have proposed a large-scale business case, requiring $669M of investments, to improve access and the coordination and management of surgery. The cost of this initiative is expected to be absorbed with AHS’ current budget.

  This doesn't pass my smell test, but capital expenditure is something I'll get to later.
  

• Mental health patients experience on average a 13% longer than expected length of stay across the province.

  Crazy people shouldn't be tying up hospital beds. Who knows how much that simple change could save?
  
• Implement an immediate $25 deposit for all non-critical emergency room visits. That deposit would be refunded in all cases where all outpatient evaluations determined that an emergency room visit was required for that particular ailment. The money would be returned with the patient's invoice (which I'll discuss later). Let's say that 1/4 of all emergency room visits are unnecessary. Alberta had 189,852 emergency room visits in 2017-2018. That means that healthcare revenues could be increased by $1.1M by implementing this simple change.
  
• Implement all of the clinical utilization opportunities: combined saving (using lowballs again) is $268M (not counting Sale of Capital Care and Carewest which should be under Capital).
  
• Implement all the service configuration opportunities: combined saving is $93M.
  
• Implement all clinical support services opportunities: combined saving is $161M
  
• Implement on-clinical support services opportunities NCSS1-NCSS7: combined saving is $100M. As with all "sustainability programs" (NCSS9) I have little faith of any actual savings.
  
• Dismiss all the lawyers and paralegals on staff. Saves $13M.
  
• Implement all the supply chain opportunities. E&Y posts savings of $44.7M, but from experience I know that supply chain savings estimates are usually inflated by roughly 20%. So let's call it $37.25 in savings.

The Ernst & Young calls for $1.7B in healthcare savings. I'm proposing a savings for this year of $1.422B. Subtracting the $245M I suggested that they didn't, that means that next year AHS execs can benefit by implementing the more difficult or less likely to succeed suggestions that amount to another $523M is savings. But that's mostly just the results of the E&Y audit. There are some other advantages stemming from reforms that were outside the scope of the audit. The first is bringing in invoices for all patients who consume ("free") public sector healthcare services. They won't have to pay (with the exception of the $25 emergency room deposit, along with charges for semi-private/private rooms and enhanced meal packages), but it's important that all patients see what their healthcare dollars are going to. As I wrote years ago, paying physicians per visit only works when the patient gets a quality visit to the doctor out of it. While not a long-term solution, it both helps improve quality of care and also creates an Overton Window for eliminating public healthcare entirely. By forcing the public system to publish and inform patients about how much the system is costing, we can use at the very least a little social media public shaming to improve the quality of doctors visits. There's another solution of course. It's staring us right in the face: introduce private for-profit healthcare, including the right to build and staff hospitals and perform surgeries. Don't give into temptation, at least at first, to let the public system "buy" healthcare from the private system to improve outcomes. Likewise, make sure that the corrupt WCB has to use the public system, and instead offer the private system to everybody else. How much will this relieve the number of public doctor visits? Couldn't tell you: it's like it would be a free market or something. But even a $500M reduction in that huge $5.1B doctor payment chunk will see positive results. As (movie) Gandalf once said, it could be like the small stones that go on to start an avalanche. The cost savings to the public system in the long term would be tremendous: it would easily make healthcare a less of a drain on the budget.

Oh, I almost forgot, speaking of drains on the budget: The Indigenous Health Program needs to be cut to zero. The reserves are a federal responsibility. The myth that "medicine bag" treaty requirements mean anything when it comes to advanced healthcare developed by white man technology has long since been debunked. Between that, the Elbow River Healing Lodge and Kainai Continuing Care Centre being shut down, ending the Indigenous Urban Opioid Emergency Response, a total shutdown of the Mental Health Capacity Building (bonus: ending support for mentally ill trannies), abolishing the poorly named "Wisdom Council", and ending various other outlets by which tax dollars are being wasted on Red Indians who we keep being told are "Nations" and therefore are responsible for their own healthcare. How many tax dollars? Well, unsurprisingly they go to great lengths to keep us from finding out. Nowhere on the Alberta Health nor AHS budgets will they tell us how much the white man pays to provide healthcare to a race that inexplicably thinks they are sovereign.

Take the Kainai Continuing Care Centre for example: 25 long-term beds. Long-term care costs white people an out-of-pocket expense of $1620/mo, which would be $486,000/yr. But Kainai has a staff of 60 people: the out-of-pocket costs would only pay them $8100/year and wouldn't provide a penny to keeping the lights on or maintaining the building. If we assume they make a "palty" average of $62000/yr (unionized, remember!), now the facility costs $3.7M, again not including maintenance. And do Red Indians pay the $1620/month? Or do you and I? According ot the CCIC guidebook they do...unless the qualify for special assistance (so they don't).

We're left having to make some wild guesses: but if Alberta Health Services ended all of its Red Indian-specific healthcare initiatives and either provided healthcare equally to everybody who didn't live on the reserve, and refused to provide any healthcare to those who do live on the reserve, I conservatively estimate a savings of $200M/yr. Remember that $1B from earlier? It's down to $800M now. Yay!

We can also, obviously, stop wasting money on coddling faggots. Again, dollar figures are not available and this probably only comes to $2M/year. Still, every little bit helps, and they deserve not a dime of it anyways.

So I have dropped healthcare spending in Alberta by $1.6B in Year One, plus whatever drop in doctor fees gets paid out. Not bad, now let's move onto one that's even easier: Education.

The first step in Education is again immediate and easy: as you may recall from last year, Alberta teachers are supporting so-called "climate strikes" every Friday. As a result, STARTING IMMEDIATELY ALL TEACHER SALARIES WILL BE CUT BY 20%. Take 20% of the week off school? Lose 20% of your pay. And since roughly 65% of the cost of education in Alberta is teacher's salaries (not including 6% being their taxpayer-funded pension) then we are talking an immediate savings of $1.31B. The Fraser Institute says in 2015/2016 Alberta spent $4.5B in teachers salaries which would mean a savings of $900M. I'm going to guess the gap is caused by Rachel Arab blowing taxpayer money on lazy and ineffectual ATA teachers who spend classrooom time teaching lies to your children.

Now that we've got the low hanging fruit, what else can we delve into? First is easy: since the Alberta Teacher's Association is a criminal enterprise, declare war on them. That 6% ($393M) pension top-up? Eliminate it. Today. Again, the ATA is a criminal organization. Jason C. Schilling is a criminal. Arrest and convict him within days, or give up on saving Alberta entirely. And take away their funding streams. Cut the evil criminal organization off at the head.

Next, Red Indians who live on reserves will no longer have their schools paid for by Alberta taxpayers. It's a waste. A complete waste. Their culture doesn't take education seriously. Their children disrupt classrooms and make education less efficient for the students whose parents value learning. They don't even attend. The numbers almost speak for themselves.

In 2018-19, 43.1 per cent of self-identified First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students achieved the acceptable standard on grade 6 and 9 provincial achievement tests in Mathematics and 5.2 per cent achieved the standard of excellence.

In 2017-18, 64.4 per cent of self-identified First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students completed high school within five years of entering grade 10. (2018-19 data available June 2020)

What a waste. I know people who have worked schools near reservations: the students there have truency rates exceeding 50%, and the school board mandates that teachers don't take action against the students. White Alberta taxpayers are getting ripped off, and it's time that ended. I would instantly cut all public funding for Status Indians. Your "nation" can pay for your child's education. Unless we're bringing back Residential Schools, I'm not interested in spending the cash. And with 43.9% of 2.8% of the Alberta population living on-reserve, that means a guaranteed cut of $81M. Likely more, since I'm going to wager than Red Indian education isn't as cost-effective. If we want to cut off Status Indians entirely, that increases the savings to $183M.

Next we can move onto Advanced Education. Recently the Doug Ford government made news mandating a free speech code for all post-secondary institutions. Alberta can go one further: to avoid situations like Ryerson or University of Ottawa, Universities and their student unions will be required to have free speech codes. Failure to comply will result in immediate funding cuts. For those keeping track, that means the University of Alberta will have their funding immediately cut for this year. That alone will represent a one-time savings of $637.7M dollars. Now the UofA, and all post-secondary institutions, can eliminate this threat in the future by also enacting policies that require all student union fees be optional and opt-in. That will include surcharges related to workout facilities and student newspapers. Additional savings going forward would involve a 10% overall cut to operational funding this year, and an additional 8% cut next year. As per the chart, you can see that this would represent a $1.19B savings over two years.



So there's the two biggest drains of the provincial budget taken care of quite nicely. I have just saved $2.36B in Education and $1.6B in healthcare, which represents just under $3.9 billion cut from the provincial budget without even doing the one thing for future years that will solve this problem forever.

Now let's take a giant mallot to some other departments. [PDF] (all lines and references will be from this document) This is less of the "angry scalpel" method I have been using up until this point.

Agriculure and Forestry: Having a little more familiarity with this ministry than several others, I can tell you that several lines are relatively trimmed down. However, "Agriculture Income Support", "Processing, Trade and Intergovernmental Relations" and "Canadian Agricultural Partnetship" can be take a 10% cut. Unfortunately debt servicing is non-negotiable. The remainder can be cut by 5%. Total savings of $52M

Social Services: Again applying Parkinson's Law, let's stop pretending that more social workers does more good. The Ministry of Children's Services will have its budget cut by 35%, bringing its operating expense from $1.6B to $1.063B for a savings of $573M. One of the key notes from the budget is this line:

The federal government’s An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families came into effect January 1, 2020. It affirms Indigenous people’s jurisdiction for Indigenous child and family services, and sets national standards and principles for Indigenous children.

Sounds like an important job...for the Ministry of Social Services run by the Stony Creek Indian Reserve. Going forward the Alberta Ministry of Children's Services will not spend a single dime on a single child who is the offspring of a Status Indian. If these are really "nations" who have "national standards and principles" then let them pay for it, not white Alberta taxpayers. I will only include the $10M wasted on "Policy, Innovation and Indigenous Connections" in my payback of lost Red Indian monies, but the end result should be minimal impact on non-Injun Albertans: after all, Red Indians have much higher rates of child abuse and neglect than all other races for reasons which escape me.

The ministry supports Alberta’s communities to be strong, resilient and violence-free. There is $135 million budgeted in 2020-21 for Community Supports and Family Safety, which includes a new $7 million Civil Society Empowerment Fund to support non-profit organizations and charities to address pressing social challenges, and an additional $1.2 million for sexual assault services. In 2020-21, the ministry will invest an additional $5 million to build on successful partnerships supporting employment opportunities for Albertans with disabilities.

To modify Elaine on Seinfeld: cut, cut, cut cut cut.

From 2015 to 2019, caseloads increased by 17 per cent for Assured Income for Severely Handicapped (AISH), 14 per cent for Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD), and 30 per cent for Family Support for Children with Disabilities (FSCD) over the same time period. AISH benefit rates continue to be much higher than other provinces.

That's because everybody on AISH is faking it. fake, fake, fake fake f...wait I just did this one. The Ministry of Community and Social Services has a Kenney operating budget of $3.9B. I would cut AISH entirely (since every "recipient" is a lying fake). Similarly, Homeless and Outreach Support Services would be gone. I would cut the remaining budget by 20%, for a total savings of $1.97 billion dollars.



Again, since administration of justice is a valid function of government, I will be relatively easy on the Ministry of Justice and Solicitor General: the entire Alberta Human Rights Apparatus would be utterly destroyed and cancelled: those involved in that department would be fired and blacklisted to ensure they and their SJW nonsense never troubles the Albertan citizenry ever again. The other major structural change, in accordance with this report from the Canadian Constitution Foundation (PDF) the Victims Restitution and Compensation Payment Act (2001) will be revoked and a fresh Civil Fortfeiture Act will be implemented in which civil forfeiture is a funded office (resulting in an additional $10M/yr in administrative costs) that will only be permitted to initiate civil forfeiture when a specific victim of the illegal property is identified and after a court hearing in which both sides will be permitted argument but only the property owner will be permitted cross-examination. The only revenue to the Government of Alberta will be civil fortfeiture cases in which the Crown itself was the victim. Otherwise the only cuts I would engage in this department is drop the Correctional Services and Resolution and Court Administration Services by 5% each. The total savings for this department therefore would be $21M ($31M in savings, $10M in new expenses).

The Ministry for Culture, Multiculturalism, and the Status of Women can endure some pretty significant cuts. The Frogophone Secretariat (what, is he a horse?) can go away and never come back as can the "Status of Women and Multiculturalism" and the entire Arts grant program: there's no reason for conservative Albertans to be working to fund their political opponents. Community and Voluntary Support Services can be cut by 10%, the remaining departments cut by 25% for a savings of $74.67M.



Economic Development, Trade, and Tourism is another department that provides dubious levels of benefit. I would suggest a 10% cut across the board excepting Tourism Alberta being cut 5%. That's a $14M savings.

The Ministry of Energy should also get a 5% across the board cut except the entire "Climate Change" budget being eliminated, and Carbon Capture and Storage expenses cut by 50%. There would be a corresponding decrease in the Orphan Well Abandonment and Energy Regulation levies, so those lines would not be counted in the calculation, which results in a $112M savings. Long term I would expect that the cost of Energy Regulation fall by 50% over the next 5 years, and Carbon Capture disappears entirely.

The Ministry of Environment and Parks made big headlines this week over their upcoming closure of (mostly Injun) park areas. In other words, the existing budget did some good work. Let's see what could be done better though. For starters...

In 2020-21, $2 million is allocated to undertake a feasibility study of the three reservoir options within the Bow Reservoir Water Management Project. The study consisting of stakeholder and First Nation engagement, site investigation, geotechnical investigation and a drilling program will identify a preferred site for future dam development consideration.

Cut the $2M to $1.75M because there will be no "First Nation engagement". They can stay on their little reserve and stew while the Big People manage things. This will be part of an across-the-board 10% cut (excepting a 5% cut for Parks, which we've already seen is doing a lot). This would be a $49M cut, however I am going to call it even because the ridiculous "TIER" income would be scaled back by an equivalent amount.

The Executive Council has a budget of $16.64M. It always smells like the Department of Administrative Affairs to me. 10% cut, $1.7M savings.

Under the Kenney budget, the Ministry of Indigenous Relations costs almost $222M dollars, including $10M to manage the infamous Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation. So I guess we agreed to keep that, right? So in other words, this Ministry will be cut by...*does math on a notepad for 45 minutes*...$211.6M dollars. In fact, the management of the Corporation can fall under Labour and Immigration. This Ministry would be gone. Kaput. Destroyed. Would we be missing anything important? Let's look at the "Key Objectives" to make sure:

• 1.1 Provide oversight to the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation to work towards Indigenous groups’ ownership in major resource projects.
  
• 1.2 Administer the Litigation Fund to support Indigenous Peoples’ advocacy for responsible resource development that advances Alberta’s interests.
  
• 1.3 Lead Alberta’s legal duty to consult, including advocating for a streamlined federal Aboriginal consultation process to provide clear timelines and legal certainty for project proponents and Indigenous communities.
  
• 1.4 Lead Alberta’s response to the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
  
• 1.5 Work with other government ministries, the federal government and First Nations to resolve land-related negotiations.
  
• 1.6 Support the economic, social and community self-reliance of Indigenous communities by funding projects through the First Nations Development Fund, the Employment Partnerships Program, and the Aboriginal
  Business Investment Fund.

My turn...

1. Ministry of Labour can do that.
   
2. They can fund their own advocacy. Tides seems to be doing all the heavy lifting for them anyways.
   
3. There's no "legal duty" to consult on a bunch of whiny municipalities.
   
4. Squaws get murdered by their own jackpine savage relations, this is well known.
   
5. Land-related negotiations sound like intergovernmental or municipal affairs issues.
   
6. If they are "self reliant nations" then they can go be self-reliant. Why would white Alberta taxpayers have to foot the bill?

Moving on... Infrastructure is left alone, we'll cover it when we get to the capital side of the budget. Labour would get a 10% across the board cut, excepting "Safe, Fair and Healthy Workplaces" which would be cut by 60% and both Alberta Workers Compensation lines which would be cut out entirely. After all, the Worker's Compensation Board has nothing to do with the government (we're always told by the government). So let's make it true, and get a savings of $70M.

Looking at Municipal Affairs the biggest single expense is something called "Municipal Sustainability Initiative".

All municipalities in Alberta are eligible for funding based on the terms set out in their long-term MSI funding agreement. For the purpose of municipal grants, improvement districts, special areas, Metis Settlements and the Townsite of Redwood Meadows are considered municipalities. Municipalities determine projects and activities to be funded based on local priorities within the general criteria set out in the program guidelines and are encouraged to take a long-term approach to planning for capital projects. Municipalities may choose to contribute funds for use towards eligible MSI projects to other municipalities, regional services commissions or non-profit organizations.

Non-profit organizations? Seeing how City of Edmonton and City of Calgary waste this money on faggot organizations, I think we can trim some fat here. Going forward, only capital projects related for approved government services will be permitted. No more sodomy crosswalks, no more drag queen hiring libraries. I imagine there can be a good 50% cut on that budget line alone. Similarly, remove "grants in place of taxes" entirely. The Federal Grant Programs expenses won't be changing, obviously, as that's Justin's money. With fewer grants to manage the administrative management line should be cut by 20%, and the balance cut by 10%. That's a savings of $550M.

The Ministry of Seniors and Housing is also ripe for some juicy cuts: the Alberta Social Housing Corporation can have its budget slashed by 75% in its first year. The "Housing" line of the balance sheet can go away entirely. The rest can be cut by 5%. Total savings of $231M. Oh, and in the following year the Alberta Seniors Benefit can be cut an additional 10%.

For Service Alberta we're probably best pushing for a 10% cut across the board except for Enterprise and Shared Services, as it provides ERP Planning for the whole Alberta Government which we're in the middle of shrinking. That activity itself will slightly overtax the ERP system at the beginning but see rapid reduction in expenses. 15% for the first year is reasonable but that budget should be getting 25-50% annual cuts going forward. That should be $95M in savings.

Transportation is an interesting one. A lot of mix of good stuff to keep and bad stuff to chuck.

In 2020-21, $308.1 million allocated for Provincial Highway Maintenance and Preservation will allow highway pavement to be restored to good driving condition at the most cost-effective time and maintain key highway infrastructure to an acceptable level.

Is this including secondary highways? If so, slash it. I don't think so, though.

An investment of $59.8 million is budgeted for the Alberta Transportation Green Transit Incentives Program (GreenTRIP) in 2020-21. GreenTRIP provides funding support for local, regional and inter-municipal public transit throughout Alberta.

Cut it.

In 2020-21, $343.1 million will be invested for LRT expansion in Calgary and Edmonton and pre-construction work.

Cut it.

Collaborate with First Nation communities, through the First Nations Water Tie-In Program, to support solutions for reliable access to safe drinking water to improve human and environmental health, by reducing or eliminating boil water advisories and providing reliable wastewater management systems. This program is allocated $12.8 million in 2020-21.

Why are Red Indians so bad at managing their water? No matter. "Self-governing" and all that nonsense.

Maybe it's the SimCity player in me, but I don't think more than a 5% cut is advisable at this stage. Again excluding federal grant money, and ring road debt servicing, that saves $64M.

Finally on the Operation side we hit up Treasury Board and Finance. Unfortunately, as the Americans say, much of these are non-discretionary spending. Those that can be cut by 5% will be, that saves $54M. Total First year spending cuts: $7.995 BILLION. Remember when I said I could balance the budget this year? I did, with an extra billion surplus. And that's the operational budget. How about the capital expenditures? Again, I will be using this document [PDF] for all the relevent lines.

For AgFor, most of this is devoted to fire protection on Crown lands, and probably should be left alone.

Advanced Education was planning on spending $54M on the University of Alberta. As previously discussed, we'll get that back.

Culture, Multiculturalism and Status of Women was planning on spending a whopping $61M, of which all lines except the "General Information Technology" line can be cut for a savings of $58M.

Education can have the existing captial funding for white man schools as sadly the schools are already under construction. However there are a whopping 43 schools in Alberta exclusively for Red Indians. Sadly we can't sell the buildings for cash, but we can place a stop work on any still under construction. I can't find any records for this, so let's just hope there's some savings there.

Editor's Note: I'm sure there would have been more savings.