If someone took $16,896 out of your bank account, would you be grateful if he gave you back $1,600? This is what Premier Klein's latest robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul program amounts to. The Alberta Centennial Education Savings Plan Act provides the Alberta Government with a way to distribute $800 of taxpayers' money to parents with children born after 2004. The government will put five hundred tax dollars into a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP), followed by three more grants, of $100 each, when the child reaches the ages of eight, eleven and fourteen.

Parents whose children were born before 2005 need not apply. They will have to save for their children's post-secondary education without receiving an extra $800 from their fellow citizens.

Good intentions aside, this legislation is seriously flawed.

Every penny of the government's $800 in "funding" was first taken from Albertans through taxation, whether direct or indirect. It is intellectually dishonest to pretend to provide parents with funding for a worthy objective when the very same money already belonged to those parents in the first place.

For example, an Alberta family with two children must pay $1,056 per year in health care premium taxes, which goes into the General Revenue Fund. If both children are born after 2004, the government will take $800 out of the General Revenue Fund for each child, over a 16-year period. During that same 16-year period, that family will pay $16,896 in health care premium taxes and get back $1,600 - less than 10%. Families whose child, or children, were born before 2005 get nothing back.

Why not help all Alberta families save for their children's education by scrapping the $1,056-per-year health care premium tax? Abolishing this regressive and deceptive tax would still leave the Alberta government with over $23 billion per year in revenues. At $7,000 for every man, woman and child in Alberta, this is far more revenue than what other provincial governments collect. In other words, this government could easily abolish the health care premium tax and still spend more, per person, than other provinces.

If families could keep an extra $1,056 of their own money to put into RESPs for their kids, the federal government would add 20%, or $211. At $1,267 per year, over 16 years, the RESP would grow to $20,272. That's far better than distributing $1,600 of taxpayers' money to a small minority of families.

This new spending legislation completely ignores the single major impediment which parents face when trying to save for their children's post-secondary education: governments taking 49% of Canadians' earnings. Each year the Fraser Institute adds up the total GST, income tax, health care premium tax, property tax, business tax, fuel tax and other taxes paid by Canadians to three levels of government. In 2003, the average Canadian began working for herself on June 28. For most Canadians, taxes are the single largest item in the family budget - ahead of food, clothing, and the rent or mortgage payment. Parents are already motivated to save for their children's education, but high taxes stand in the way.

It's an "investment," according to Learning Minister Lyle Oberg and Calgary-Egmont MLA Denis Herard. OK, but why should government take Albertans' money and invest it on their behalf? Why not let Albertans invest their own earnings? Do politicians think they care more about children than parents do? And why help only some families, instead of all Alberta families? Why is a family whose children were born in 2002 and 2004 less deserving than another family whose children are born in 2005 and 2007?

Alberta parents need to be "encouraged" to save for their children's education, says Premier Klein. This is patronizing and condescending in the extreme; this view portrays parents as pathetic people who desperately need the help of government to provide for them. It's this very same attitude - seeing people as inadequate and government as their saviour - which has caused governments to grow to the point where they consume 49% of our earnings. Governments have become our masters rather than our servants.

However, letting people live their own lives, take their own risks and make their own choices would make most politicians feel useless. It's a lot more fun to try to curry gratitude with $1,600 in grants to a minority of families than it is to let all Alberta families keep $16,896. Such is the saviour complex which can afflict a government as it drifts aimlessly through its third term.

Premier Klein and the other 82 MLAs should celebrate Alberta's Centennial by reining in their greed for more tax dollars, thereby empowering all Albertans - not just some - to save their own money for their children's education.