AEG dinner with the Premier generates arena discussion

Sun News coverage from AEG's Dinner with Premier Alison Redford

November 24, 2011

By: Angelique Rodriguez

No provincial funding for arena: preem

EDMONTON: Provincial funding for an Edmonton arena is not in the cards, said Alberta Premier Alison Redford Wednesday during a Q and A session with the Alberta Enterprise Group (AEG).

Redford was the guest of honour at the Petroleum Club Wednesday night where she faced scrutiny from AEG members interested in hearing her new agenda, and her economic projections for the coming year.

Among the many questions posed by the group, was the possibility of Alberta funding the remaining $100 million for the downtown Edmonton arena project. While adamant she's entirely in favour of the $450-million proposed arena, Redford says she will not be changing her official tune on the topic. “I'm going to start by saying I think it's a great project for downtown Edmonton,” said Redford.

“But I¶m going to finish by saying our view as a government is that for us to make additional allocations for this project would be inconsistent with where we want to go with the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) Program.”

According to Redford, the province is happy to see the city use MSI funds to cover the unaccounted-for portion of the arena project. “But using that funding has to be decided on a local level,” she said, adding funding one city's project sets the bar too high for the rest of the province.

“I don't want Alberta to have a government anymore that gets into a situation where we step in to fund one project, knowing full-well every other municipality will step forward with a similar one,” she said.

“We cannot afford to govern like that anymore.” The topic of Alberta's deficit, which clocked in last week at $3.1 billion, was also broached with the Premier stating she doesn't foresee a balanced budget in the province's near future.

“There were some people who were quite optimistic about what was going to happen by the end of the year,” she said, acknowledging the province's previous high projections for the first quarter. “I wasn't one of them.”

Last week's figures released by Finance Minister Ron Liepert showed spending has climbed to about $39.9 billion through the second quarter — up $860 million from budget estimates, and a $210-million jump from first-quarter figures. But Redford says in the last 40 days, the government has made significant strides with respect to spending.