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EDITORIAL: Provincial budget

Despite posting a $2.4 billion surplus, the UCP's latest provincial budget didn't seem to buy that much support in Cochrane and Airdrie last week. The Alberta government tabled its 2023 budget on Feb. 28, highlighting a $2.
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Despite posting a $2.4 billion surplus, the UCP's latest provincial budget didn't seem to buy that much support in Cochrane and Airdrie last week. 

The Alberta government tabled its 2023 budget on Feb. 28, highlighting a $2.4 billion surplus, a record $24.5 billion invested into health care, and a spending increase of 4.1 per cent from 2022. 

However, despite plenty of good news coming out of the budget, virtually every local stakeholder our reporters in Cochrane and Airdrie interviewed had at least some qualms with it, arguing it didn't go far enough to meet the needs of these ever-growing communities. In the realm of public health care and education in particular, stakeholders seemed quite discontent with the crumbs provided in the province's latest fiscal update.

At the public school board level, Rocky View Schools (RVS) Board of Trustees Chair Norma Lang told us the division was disappointed overall in the lack of commitment from the province to fund new schools in any of either Cochrane, Airdrie, or Chestermere.

While provincial funds were allocated for a Francophone school in Airdrie, Lang argued that future facility will do little to assuage the space crunch RVS is currently facing at many of its schools in those three urban communities – all of which are among Alberta's fastest growing municipalities. RVS has been vocal in recent months how dire of a situation it finds itself in, with many schools operating above a 100 per cent utilization rate.

Cochrane Mayor Jeff Genung seemed a little more pleased with the provincial budget than Lang did, but even he brought up a few concerns about the impending shift from the Municipal Sustainability Initiative to the Local Government Fiscal Framework in the coming years – a shift that could see many Alberta municipalities receive less overall funding from the province. 

While his comments aren't in this newspaper, Genung's counterpart in Airdrie, Mayor Peter Brown, was much more vocal in his criticisms of how the recent budget fell short of supporting the infrastructure needs of his city. Brown even said as much to Finance Minister Travis Toews during the question-and-answer portion of Toews' visit to Airdrie last Friday. 

And Airdrie Health Foundation Executive Director Michelle Bates told us that organization was also disappointed in a lack of concrete support to ease the immediate strains of that city's health-care sector.

Heading into a provincial election a few months from now, it's clear the governing UCP is going to tailor its attention toward appeasing the communities where the election will most likely be decided. This year, that seems to be Calgary – a battleground that could swing either way in determining which party will govern Alberta after the vote in May. Edmonton is considered an NDP stronghold, whereas rural Alberta skews almost universally conservative. 

It's obvious Premier Danielle Smith recognizes the importance Calgary will have in the UCP's likelihood of re-election – particularly looking at some of the Calgary-based projects she's announced funding or support for in recent weeks.

But where do satellite communities like Cochrane and Airdrie fall on her radar? Based on the lack of attention paid to these two municipalities in the Feb. 28 budget, it feels like the UCP may take voters' support in the two communities for granted.

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