Shocking report confirms PCs decimating Alberta's wealth: Anderson

AIRDRIE, AB (October 23, 2013): A report released yesterday confirming a stunning 65% drop in Alberta’s net worth in just six years is just the latest example of the PC government’s legacy of fiscal mismanagement and incompetence, Wildrose Finance Critic Rob Anderson said today.

The Fraser Institute report concludes that chronic deficits brought on by years of overspending has diminished Alberta’s net assets from a high of $34.5 billion in 2006-2007 to $12.1 billion in 2012-13 – a spectacular $22.1 billion decline.

“If your investment manager lost 65% of your portfolio’s net value in six years, you’d fire him in the blink of an eye, yet that is precisely what this government has done,” Anderson said. “Revenues have remained at near record levels and our economy remains the envy of the country, if not the entire world. There is simply no reasonable excuse for the PCs to have destroyed our fiscal situation and squandered our wealth to this extent.”

The $22.1 billion hit to Alberta’s net worth equates to:

• $3.7 billion a year
• $307 million a month
• $10.2 million a day
• $426,000 an hour
• $7,105 a minute
• $118 a second

Anderson said the report’s central message is that Alberta is about to repeat the mistakes of the 1980s and 1990s, in which the province’s net worth fell $36 billion leading to record levels of public debt and years of painful cuts to core services in order to get Alberta’s books back in order.

“We have been down this road before and the PCs insist on taking us down this road again,” Anderson said. “Albertans remember the era that this government seems to desperate to bring back. We must do what we can to start controlling our spending now so our children aren’t forced to pay for this government’s incompetence.”

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