The So-Called "Alberta Advantage" - Spending More and Getting Less

Curious place, Alberta.

The last bastion of small "c" conservatism some say.

Less government, more business has been the impression the Province has traditionally given the outside world.

But taking a good look at the Province of late, in fact, the reality is completely different.

If your view of "conservatism" means smaller government, you would be grossly dissappointed with where we have gone in this Province. 

We have more provincial employees in Alberta than any of the other Western Provinces, per the University of Alberta School of Business:

We have more provincial employes per citizen in Alberta than any of the other Western Provinces, again, per the University of Alberta School of Business:

This is fact.  This is not political hyperbole.  While we crow about being "conservative" and being about "less government", in fact, we have more government than any other Western Province in Canada.

Now -  many will say, "Well, yes, but we make more money than the other provinces, so we SHOULD spend more on providing services to our citizens."

And I might agree with that statement if the citizens of the Province were better off as a result.  But we aren't.
We are not getting the "bang for our buck" from our civil service.

Let's look at education for a moment, shall we?

Firstly, let us see how much we pay our teachers compared to other Provinces.

Alberta education likes to brag about how we have the highest paid teachers in Canada:

Yup.  Clearly, we're spending lots of money on education.  Most in Canada, pretty much.

How is our education system doing? What are graduation rates like in Alberta compared to other Provinces. (Per StatsCan report on Provincial Drop-out Rates):

Aren't we proud?  The highest paid teachers and the second highest drop-out rates in Canada. And we're getting worse.  In the early 90's, we had six other Provinces with higher drop-out rates than in Alberta.. now there is only one - Manitoba.

Ok..  so let's stop picking on education, and have a look at health care, shall we - according to the Fraser Institute Report on "Waiting Your Turn", Alberta wait times from seeing a GP to obtaining treatment were four weeks longer than the national average - 22.1 weeks, compared to the national average of 18.2.

And, as with education, with respect to our expenditure on health care, on a per capita basis - we have (along with Manitoba) the highest per capita expenditure on health care in Canada, according to the Canadian Institute on Health Care Information - with our Government spending approximately $6,266 per citizen.

British Columbia, by comparison, spends the second lowest per capita amount on health care, and yet, has average waiting times from GP to treatment of only 18.8 weeks - approximately the same as the national average.

Yesterday, I alluded to the notion that our Province is really a large corporation, with the citizens being the shareholders.

In any corporation I can imagine, if expenditures were consistently higher than industry average and results were consistently lower than industry average - the Board of Directors would be replaced.

Isn't it about time for a new Board?