Find the money
The Calgary Board of Education currently faces around a $97 million annual shortfall in funding, due to the budget cuts of 2019. This shortfall in funding is resulting in class sizes that are too large, inadequate mental health supports for students and families, and a growing backlog of deferred maintenance.
As a trustee, I hold it as a sacred duty to advocate for adequate funding for our schools.
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But wait, I hear you say, money doesn't grow on trees!
Are you worried about my efforts to advocate for more money for Calgary's public education system? Are you feeling anxiety about where the money will come from?
Have no fear - on this page you can find my long list of Government of Alberta expenditures that could have been directed to our classrooms, if the people we elected to the provincial legislature had made different choices.
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This is a list of expenditures for which the provincial government found funding, even though these expenditures have a lower impact on Alberta's future prosperity than the funds invested in our public education system.
$ 6,000,000
Creating the the Invest Alberta Corporation, which duplicates existing provincial government initiatives.
$ 249,000
Approving a lavish salary for David Knight Legg as head of the new Invest Alberta Corporation.
$ 250,000
Approving a lavish salary for Dave Rodney to the newly-created position of agent general in Houston, TX for Invest Alberta.
$3,500,000
Establishing an "anti-Alberta" inquiry that found no wrongdoing.
$290,000
Approving a lavish salary for Steve Allan as head of this anti-Alberta inquiry.
$30,000,000
Establishing the Canadian Energy Centre, to "fight misinformation". A drain on resources, it hasn't delivered on its stated purpose.
$195,000
Approving a lavish salary for Tom Olsen as head of this so-called "war room".
$1,300,000,000
Cancelling oil-by-rail contracts.
$1,500,000,000
Backing the Keystone XL pipeline after the private sector had calculated that this bet was too risky.
$20,000,000
Introducing a $100 vaccine incentive program that inter-jurisdictional scans correctly proved would be ineffective.
$4,700,000,000
Legislating a corporate tax rate giveaway that was supposed to create 55,000 jobs but hasn't.
$ 80,000,000
Exempting property taxes for new oil/gas wells, pipelines/equipment, and lowering assessments for other wells.
$ 1,600,000,000
Allowing an unprecedented level of accounting errors accumulate, as discovered by the Auditor General in 2020.
$ 2,000,000
Hiring PricewaterhouseCoopers to do a feasibility study on the potential of re-establishing a provincial police force.
$2,900,000
Approving lavish salaries to partisan staff in the Premier's Office, at levels that are out of touch with the realities facing ordinary Albertans.
$ 366,000,000
Start-up cost alone if Alberta were to go ahead with the money-is-no-object idea to replace the RCMP with a provincial police force in rural areas.
$ 235,000,000
Annual incremental cost of replacing RCMP (for which GoA chips in ~$500 M per year) with new APP (estimated to be ~$735 M).
$ TBD
Forgiving fees for off-road vehicles.
$ 4,819,594,000
GRAND TOTAL COST OF THE RECURRING ITEMS ALONE IN THIS LIST.
So, yes, we can find the money in Alberta to fund our children's future.
We just need to start looking under the right couch cushions.
