How do you know when an Alberta Progressive Conservative government is spending irresponsibly?

A: When drunken sailors start telling each other, "Mate, you're spending like an Alberta premier."

B: When NDP politicians across Canada take down their Tommy Douglas posters and start hanging Alberta Finance Minister Lyle Oberg posters.

C: When the Alberta Liberals would be spending $3 billion less if they were in charge.

If you answered C, you'd be correct. Although punch lines A and B are getting closer to being true every provincial budget.

Last year, the Alberta Liberals adopted the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's No. 1 priority for fiscal policy: limiting program spending growth to the combined population and inflation growth rate (6.8 per cent this year). If implemented for Budget 2007, it would have resulted in program spending of $30 billion instead of $32.9 billion, $2.9 billion less than the "conservatives."

The CTF has long recommended spending limits because they not only reflect the growth in the economy (and growth in costs), but the expected growth in tax revenues. If the population goes up by two per cent, tax revenue should also go up by two per cent. If inflation grows by three per cent, wages and therefore income-tax revenues should go up by three per cent as well.

If spending increases are larger than tax revenue increases, governments have to find other sources of financing. In the 1980s and early '90s, the government relied on debt to cover the shortfall. Today, they're using resource revenues.

In this budget alone, the Alberta government increased program spending by $4,400 per family of four. Yet, they cried poor when it came to eliminating the $1,056 per family Alberta Health Care Premium tax.

Alberta now spends $9,581 per every man woman and child - by far the highest in the nation.

This year's 17.3 per cent increase in program spending is being sold to Albertans as "catch-up" or a "one-time" increase in spending to "manage our growth." Unfortunately, this is the same tune finance ministers have been singing for much of the past decade.

In her 2006 budget speech, Finance Minister Shirley McClellan proclaimed: "I'll be honest and say I wish spending was lower - do not expect this rate of spending to continue in years to come. We have learned the lessons from Alberta's past. We will not squander Alberta's future security by spending more than we can afford."

This provided some muchneeded comfort to concerned taxpayers considering the startling 9.9 per cent spending increase in Budget 2006.

It's now perfectly clear this government is addicted to spending and woefully in need of an intervention. Like an addict, they keep saying next year is the year they're going kick the habit. If history repeats itself, the government may need to hit rock-bottom before it gets serious about its problem.

This year's 17.3 per cent increase in spending is the largest budgetto-budget increase since Finance Minister Pat Nelson's infamous 24.5 per cent spending hike in 2001.

Unfortunately for her and all Albertans, oil and natural gas prices collapsed throughout the spring and summer, and even further following 9/11, draining billions out of the provincial treasury.

This collapse in prices, while damaging to revenues, wasn't unexpected. In fact, in her 2001 budget speech Nelson warned, "The reality is we simply don't know what might happen to oil and gas prices tomorrow, let alone three years from now. No one does." And boy was she right. The government reacted to the drop in revenues by cutting one per cent out of every ministry budget, freezing government hiring, eliminating community lottery boards and deferring nearly a billion dollars in capital projects.

And that was when program spending was sitting at $20.8 billion. Imagine what the Stelmach government will have to cut if resource prices drop today?

It's not too late to right the ship, but the government first needs to sober up to steer us in the right direction. Unfortunately, it seems taxpayers are going to be feeling this hangover for years to come.