By Stephanie Villella

Wildrose MLA Drew Barnes is disappointed with ballooning debt

Mar 16, 2017 | 5:41 PM

EDMONTON, AB — The Wildrose Party of Alberta called Thursday’s budget a “debt fueled disaster.”

Drew Barnes, Legislative Assembly Member for Cypress-Medicine Hat, said the budget is terrible for Albertans and future generations.

He said the NDP government is doing “zero” to look for savings, in fact, he said the NDP is spending $9 billion a year.

Barnes said the NDP government is adding billions of dollars of debt.  It is forecast to top $71 billion by 2020.

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“Think about what we could do for families, think of how many nurses, doctors, schools, teachers, assistants we could hire with that kind of money,” he said.  “Instead this NDP governments lack of fiscal responsibility is going to cost a lot of tax, interest and services.”

Barnes said he would have liked to have seen the NDP use that money make systematic changes in health care and education, reducing the length of weight times in hospitals and ensuring schools continue with top notch education.

Barnes said on a local level, he was “advocating strongly for money for HALO, money for Highway 3 and for money that could help our petrochemcials industry, I’m disappointed to not see any of that in there, ” he said.

The local MLA said this type of “big” spending and deficit scares away big businesses because they know it’s future tax on companies.

Barnes suggested this budget may cost the province jobs and opportunities.