By Geoff Smith (@GeoffSmithLNN on Twitter)

Phillips says government won’t cut its way to balanced budget

Mar 23, 2018 | 11:28 AM

LETHBRIDGE – “The pipelines will be built.”

Environment minister and Lethbridge West MLA Shannon Phillips is dismissing concerns that the NDP government’s path to balancing the budget assumes the Trans Mountain, Keystone XL, and Line 3 pipeline projects will proceed. In an interview Friday, March 23, Phillips said it’s because of the government’s Climate Leadership Plan that the pipelines have regulatory approval.

“The only risk is if there’s a Jason Kenney government and the climate leadership plan is repealed, and we return to the old ways of the government that Jason Kenney sat in in Ottawa,” Phillips said. She added that saying the province shouldn’t rely on pipelines is akin to rooting for Alberta to fail.

Phillips also defended the five years of deficits it will take to get back into the black.

“The debt is due to borrowing for things like bridges and roads, hospitals, schools, things that the previous government didn’t do for, in some cases, many, many years,” she said. “Alberta still has the lowest debt to the size of our economy in the country, by a country mile.”

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Phillips added that while the province’s economy is recovering, the government needs to diversify and become less reliant on the booms and busts of resource revenues.

She also stressed that the government intends to balance the budget without cutting public services and that the money being borrowed is paying for things like a new cancer centre in Calgary, which will benefit southern Albertans.

Specific to Lethbridge, the budget includes 50 million dollars over the next two years for completion of the Destination Project at the University of Lethbridge. Phillips said funding to the university will remain stable.

The government also announced funding to build a new public elementary school in southeast Lethbridge. Phillips said upgrades are coming to the courthouse, and in the next few weeks, there will be an announcement about affordable housing.