Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

The September 3, 2019 release of the Report and Recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances (the MacKinnon report) argues that both the size and compensation of Alberta’s public sector are higher than comparator provinces, and suggests that the government could reduce the size of the public sector (through employee attrition), consider alternative delivery of government programs and services (through the private and non-for-profit sectors), and recommends that the government establishes a legislative mandate that sets the salary levels for all public sector employees. Those recommendations were largely followed in the provincial budget tabled on Oct 24, but the speaker had argued that in contrast to the MacKinnon report, his research concluded that Alberta does not really stand out in any way relative to the other three large provinces, Ontario, Quebec and BC, both in terms of the size of its public sector and its compensation. If anything, Alberta has tended to have a smaller public secto