Labour leaders expressed outrage last month after Premier Ralph Klein used the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States to justify sweeping cuts to the provincial budget.

"This just doesn’t make any economic sense," said Les Steel, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour. "On the one hand, we have world leaders – including the Canadian Prime Minister - urging people to continue to spend to avert a full blown recession," said Steel. "Now, the Klein government is choking vital public spending."

On September 27th, the Klein government announced a freeze in discretionary spending, and a one-percent reduction in base spending for every government department. The Premier also announced an immediate hiring freeze for the provincial government – meaning that no current or future vacancies will be filled.

The Premier suggested that such cutbacks were necessary to avoid a deficit," observed Steel. "Yet the government’s own forecasts match those of private economic forecasters in predicting that the Alberta economy will remain the strongest in Canada this year."

Steel believes that people should be suspicious about such obviously contradictory statements by government.

It is no coincidence, suggests Steel that the sudden imposition of public sector restraints should occur now. "The majority of direct employees of the province, represented by the Alberta Union of Public Employees and public school teachers represented by the Alberta Teachers Association are now in major contract negotiations," said Steel.

Steel suggests that these restraints are being introduced to derail free collective bargaining in these two key sectors and to force punitively low wage increases on public sector workers.

"Let’s face it," said Steel, "both teachers and crown employees have suffered substantial decreases in their real wages and increases in their workloads over the past decade. Now, with a buoyant economy, these workers finally appeared poised to win substantial, long-overdue wage increases."

"According to the government, economic growth and the cost of living will continue to rise in Alberta, and I believe they created this little mini-deficit panic simply to rob public sector workers of their due," said Steel.

Another reason that the Klein government may be rushing to cut its budget is to ensure that the provincial debt is completely paid off by 2005, the province's centennial year. Many observers have said that Klein would like to mark the province's birthday by "burning the mortgage."

But Steel says cutting the budget to meet such an arbitrary and frivilous deadline is shameful.

"What we're talking about here is taking a billion dollars out of budget," says Steel. "That means no more nurses or other medical personnel to ease the staffing crunch in out health care system and no more teachers to reduce class sizes in our schools. If all this is being done simply to let the Premier have bragging rights, then he should be ashamed of himself."

Steel adds that most Albertans would rather see the debt paid off a few years later than cut essential services like health care and education -- services that are just now starting to recover from the cuts of the mid-nineties.