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It's generally regarded as bad politics to blame the voters for anything, as Alberta Premier Jim Prentice did this week. Of course Jim Prentice is no ordinary politician and Alberta is no ordinary province.

Mr. Prentice said if Albertans wanted to know why their province is staring into a giant budgetary sinkhole – a deficit that could reach $7.5-billion this year – they need only "look in a mirror." Social media is abuzz with indignation, but Mr. Prentice, who has been unwaveringly blunt about his province's travails, is right.

Mr. Prentice leads a Progressive Conservative Party that has ruled without interruption for 43-plus years. Before that, the Social Credit Party ruled for 36 years. Alberta voters aren't big on political change and with the exception of a briefly popular Wildrose Party (a more right-leaning version of the Tories), rival parties have done little to excite Albertans because few exciting Albertans were drawn to run for them, support them or help build an alternative to the status quo.

And what have Albertans supported? Successive PC governments with no sense of fiscal responsibility that lazily spent away the benefits of the province's natural resources bounty. Leave aside the debate about whether Alberta has undertaxed oil companies, or should, as Alberta Federation of Labour head Gil McGowan argues, invest in refiners and upgraders. This is a province, as the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association noted in a 2013 brief, with "the lowest overall tax system in Canada, with the lowest fuel taxes, no sales tax, no health premiums, no capital or payroll taxes, and low personal and corporate income taxes. Albertans and Alberta businesses would pay at least $10.6-billion more in taxes each year if Alberta had the tax system of any other province."

Rather than make sensible fiscal choices – like collecting the taxes needed to support spending – Alberta politicians, supported by voters, profligately disbursed the proceeds of a finite resource as they came in. In 2012, as other provinces rolled out austerity budgets, then-premier Alison Redford tabled a 3.3-per-cent spending increase, and even dipped into a rainy-day fund to finance the deficit, rather than borrow money.

Meanwhile, the plan by Alberta's last wise premier, Peter Lougheed, to sock away some of the oil bounty for the benefit of future generations in the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund was short-lived. Successive governments stopped investing and then even raided the fund to pay for the needs of the day. Every Albertan should be appalled that this 39-year-old fund contains a paltry $17.2-billion in assets, not hundreds of billions of dollars, like a similar fund in Norway. One Alberta treasury board president in 2008 went as far as to say Albertans would prefer the government spend more on infrastructure than hive savings off to "a bank somewhere to live off some time down the road when, apparently, it might rain."

For years, Alberta governments relied too heavily on resource royalty revenue to cover spending; in one stretch from 1998 to 2007, royalty revenue accounted for an average of 31.1 per cent of government revenue (it is now 21 per cent). When oil prices rose, governments increased spending and once cut $400-cheques to every Albertan. The Heritage fund withered and government budgets remained vulnerable to downdrafts in oil prices, as is happening now. A government-commissioned report prepared by fiscal expert Jack Mintz last decade warned that as revenues declined and spending rose, Alberta would have to raise taxes by 8.1 per cent – per year – for close to 20 years to avoid running deficits. That warning, like others, went largely unheeded.

Something has to give, and now it has taken a collapse in oil prices and a change at the top of Alberta to bring that about. Mr. Prentice is seasoning voters for a severe budget on March 26 and an election after that. As for the tough talk, he can probably afford a rare opportunity to take such an aggressive approach: after raiding the spent Wildrose Party for its key members, Mr. Prentice is both leader of the province and his own staunchest opposition critic. He will be running to keep his job by effectively campaigning against his own party and his own voters. It's an unusual tactic and would be politically suicidal just about anywhere else, but likely won't be for Mr. Prentice. Voters get the leaders they deserve, and if Albertans doubt that, they should take a long hard look in the mirror first.

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