Western Standard - March 10, 2026


CORY MORGAN： It's time for the UCP to act conservatively

Topics
spending problem spending restraint
Mentioned
Ralph Klein Smith Nate Horner Gil McGowan Redford
Should temporary workers pay for social programs？ Western Standard News Update ｜ CBC refusing to release names banned from network ｜ 11 Mar 2026

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

175.98

Word count

911

Sentence count

51

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Learn English with Jason Kenney. Alberta's $9B Budget Deficit could turn into a surplus by the end of the year if oil prices continue to rise, but the province still faces a massive $100B deficit. Premier Rachel Notley and Finance Minister Joe Ceci are under fire for their massive spending increases.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The UCP government in Alberta, they inadvertently caught a break as energy prices predictably
00:00:14.100 spiked due to the latest war in the Middle East. So for every dollar the world price of oil rises,
00:00:19.740 the provincial government garners nearly 700 million in royalties. So if the war in Iran is
00:00:25.640 protracted, it is possible the budgetary deficit of $9 billion announced in Alberta last week
00:00:30.740 could actually turn into a budget surplus by the end of the year. The Alberta government should
00:00:35.680 respond to this by cutting spending. We can't allow a fluke of world oil prices to let the
00:00:40.920 provincial government get off the hook for a deficit that was built primarily due to irresponsible
00:00:45.580 spending. Alberta's debt is going to reach $100 billion, and it should be the shame of politicians
00:00:51.440 and voters alike. If the government wants more money to play with, then paying down that debt
00:00:56.260 has to be priority number one. It'll give them four billion a year in saved interest payments
00:01:01.160 they can spend without having to hike taxes by a penny. People, including finance minister Nate
00:01:06.480 Horner, have been floating the notion of imposing a sales tax on Albertans. The response from
00:01:11.400 citizens of this concept should be nothing less than outrage. The government doesn't have a
00:01:15.460 revenue problem. How many times have we got to say this? It has a spending problem. If they can't get
00:01:20.140 their spending habits under control. Revenue from a sales tax would just be dumped into a
00:01:24.680 growing black hole of spending. Sales taxes, they have a declining rate of return as they
00:01:29.080 impact the economy with reduced consumer spending. They raise the cost of living.
00:01:33.640 And, you know, tourism might choose to spend their vacation dollars elsewhere. It's not a magical pool
00:01:38.300 of funds to tap into without consequences, as some are trying to frame it. The UCB government
00:01:43.900 raised the education property tax by nearly half a billion dollars. These taxes impact the cost of
00:01:49.140 housing for renters and owners alike. They also hike taxes on rental cars and hotels, which is
00:01:54.120 going to hit our tourism revenue. With massive tax and spending hikes, the government can't pretend
00:01:59.200 to be fiscally conservative. Yes, mass immigration has put pressure on services in general. The 6% 1.00
00:02:05.040 increase in health spending and the whopping 30% increase in education spending addresses that.
00:02:10.520 Most Albertans are okay with increasing spending within reason, at least on core services such as
00:02:14.820 health and education, but that still leaves a lot of fat to be cut. Why is the province increasing
00:02:18.760 spending on art how much ugly crappy public art do we need why is uh the cost for uh to paying
00:02:25.620 government employees going up 14 in one year why is there still a massive expensive program to bring
00:02:30.920 fiber optic internet services to isolated rural homes when most of them have already gotten
00:02:34.880 starlink they got sick of waiting for the government the list of things to cut is long
00:02:38.520 when the government finds the will to look for them problem is the government isn't looking
00:02:41.540 they're taking the lazy ndp style approach to issues by raising taxes and spending and that's
00:02:46.600 not what Albertans voted for. Did the spending increases buy any love from the teachers unions
00:02:51.140 or socialized health care activists? Of course not. They panned the budget and they're still 0.92
00:02:55.660 doing everything in their power to bring the UCP down. The Alberta Federation of Labor with old 1.00
00:03:00.200 Gil McGowan there's planning mass protests after an attempt to bring down the government through
00:03:04.700 recall initiatives. That failed dismally. So why pander to them further? Premier Smith must trust
00:03:10.380 Albertan voters to accept spending restraint. Albertans have voted for conservative governments
00:03:15.400 for decades because they value fiscal conservatism. It was the gross overspending of the Stelmac and
00:03:20.900 Redford governments that brought the progressive conservative dynasty to an end. Smith can rest
00:03:25.380 assured if she doesn't get a handle on spending soon, an alternative will form on her right and
00:03:30.540 we'll all remember, we do all remember what the consequences of vote splitting are. Look, when
00:03:34.360 Ralph Klein balanced the budget, he didn't wait for better oil prices to do it. He cut spending
00:03:38.760 without apology. Unions and pundits, they went wild at the time. They predicted the demise of
00:03:43.160 the Klein government and protests flourished. Then Klein went to the polls and Albertans rewarded
00:03:47.440 him with a bigger majority government. Klein continued with the austerity governance and
00:03:51.880 union members literally attacked the legislature with protests and they were trying to kick the
00:03:55.800 doors down. After four years of this, Klein was rewarded with a bigger majority. In his last term,
00:04:01.560 Klein started to spend heavily again and it led to reduced support for him. Look, the only thing
00:04:06.540 harder than cutting spending during tough times is cutting spending during good times, but it must
00:04:10.620 be done. Smith must resist the urge to continue tossing money at issues even if the high oil
00:04:15.340 prices flood the government coffers. Alberta doesn't need a larger and more encompassing
00:04:19.740 government. It's hard to maintain the higher ground when complaining about tax and spend
00:04:23.800 attitudes in Ottawa when Edmonton does the same bloody thing. For the sake of the economy and
00:04:28.160 future Albertans, the UCP must remember the C in their name and become a conservative party and
00:04:33.300 wrestle their spending under control because the 2026 budget is nothing less than an embarrassment.
00:04:40.620 Thank you.