With the flood waters receding and families picking through the ruins of their homes, Alberta's government has pledged at least $1 billion in disaster relief. It will come as a surprise to everyone if the final bill isn't a lot higher than that.
The flood devastated my own community of Bowness, yet volunteers arrived in droves with shovels and goodwill to help their neighbours. At the height of the flood, Calgarians patrolled the streets in neighbourhood watches and helped each other in countless acts of good deeds.
As we gutted a basement in my neighbourhood, a poor woman from the trailer park went house to house handing out McDonald's hamburgers to the volunteers.
Since day one, the mayor, the premier, the opposition parties and the prime minister have all put politics aside to do the right thing. Calgary and southern Alberta have come together with a sense of solidarity rarely seen. There will be very few who complain about the massive cost attached to rebuilding our cities, communities and families.
But this massive sum of money has to come from somewhere. Until very recently, Alberta had a ‘rainy day fund' for just such emergencies, known as the Sustainability Fund. In 2009-10, we started the year with $16.8 billion set aside. Unfortunately, we spent our rainy day fund during sunny and fair-weather days. With Alberta now devastated by disaster, we have effectively nothing left.
But the mistakes of the past are no excuse for inaction in rebuilding our communities right now. The money is badly needed, and must be found somewhere.
War and natural disasters are the only two circumstances in which a government should seriously consider borrowing. Anyone who has seen the destruction knows that this is one such circumstance.
The problem is that Alberta is already running a consolidated deficit of $5.1 billion this year and will take on more than $15 billion in new debt over the next three years. To continue borrowing this money while Alberta is required to borrow new billions for disaster relief would be grossly irresponsible.
Then from where should the disaster relief funding come?
Once the urgency of the disaster has passed, Premier Redford should recall the legislature and pass an emergency budget. This budget should reallocate existing dollars from program and capital spending into a dedicated fund for flood relief. All previous budgetary promises in the province became obsolete late last week.
An emergency budget that reallocates money currently earmarked for other spending envelopes towards relief and rebuilding might be tough, but it would be the responsible thing to do.
Spending on items that were ‘nice to have' need to be sacrificed for the ‘need to have' right now.
And debate about what to do with the extra $52 million in property taxes held by the City of Calgary would seem to have been settled by Mother Nature.
So far, few have played politics with the flood, and such an emergency budget may even find support from the opposition parties to rush it through. Albertans expect all of their leaders to work together right now. The debates of last week are a luxury that we can return to in due course.
We also need to address long-term issues around disaster funding.
Between 2003 and 2011, Alberta spent an average of $502 million a year on disaster and emergency relief, yet the vast majority of those funds were unbudgeted for. In 2012-13, the government budgeted just $44 million for disasters. The government improved upon this by budgeting $200 million in the 2013 budget, but history shows that this is still not adequate, even in normal times.
Moving forward, Alberta needs to budget realistically for disasters. They need not know whether it is for flooding, drought or earthquakes, but they know they are going to spend half-a-billion each year, so why not earmark that on day one?
But right now, there is a job to do. Volunteers are rolling up their sleeves and government at all levels has stepped up to the plate.
Albertans are keenly aware of the gigantic task ahead of us. Let's do it responsibly. Together.
Derek Fildebrandt is the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
