Do you remember all of the big talk from Ralph Klein and his government about how Alberta was in a deficit crisis? Of course you do.

We had to cut education spending and health care spending and privatize our provincial public services so that nasty foreign banks wouldn’t bankrupt the province.

And the brutal truth is that we are still suffering from those cuts today. Our schools are grossly overcrowded – and teachers and students are paying the price. We have whole hospital wings closed because there aren’t enough nurses and support staff to operate them - even though the beds are desperately needed.

Our privatized highways are a mess – and downright dangerous in the winter. Just as depressing, every Albertan who has to pay some small-time hustler to use one of our provincial campgrounds or renew a license cannot fail but realize that we are a poorer, shabbier place to live. User fees have become a way of life, and the quality of our social and public life has deteriorated.

Moreover, thousands of hard-working Albertans were laid-off or forced into unwanted early retirement or took big hits on their earnings.

It was all a big hoax!

Now, thanks to the Parkland Institute’s recently published study (see the centre spread of this issue of Labour News), the real ugly truth is coming out. The crisis – the whole deficit and accumulated debt - were a not the result of overspending on public services at all. They were a direct result of an unprecedented giveaway of royalty revenue to the energy sector.

Thanks to Getty and Klein, we collected substantially less for our oil and gas than we should have. If we had charged as much as Alaska did, we would have had $2 billion a year more in income between 1992 and 1997. If we had charged as much as Norway, we would have had $5.7 billion per year more.

We shouldn’t have had to increase our classroom size, or force every parent into fund-raising for basic education. We shouldn’t have closed a single hospital bed. We shouldn’t have a single waiting list for surgery, or a single private, for-profit clinic operating in Alberta.

None of those Albertans should have lost their jobs – nor should any public worker have been forced to take a pay-cut.

Don Getty and Ralph Klein anf the Conservatives took our health care and our education – hell, they took our future – and gave them to big energy corporations. Let’s present them with our bill in the next provincial election.