The Stelmach administration continues to ignore the Auditor General’s recommendations for saving taxpayer dollars, even as they rack up a deficit approaching $10 billion.

This is a government that has totally lost control of its budget, lost any respect of Albertans around its lack of management and has created a fiscal deficit that is the largest in our history.

I am especially angered by the Stelmach administration’s decision to willfully ignore important recommendations from the Auditor General. This government clearly doesn’t care. It has a total disregard for basic management principles and has the arrogance to ignore 250 recommendations of this Auditor General over the past decade.

I am outraged by the Stelmach administration’s complete mishandling of Alberta’s public health care system. The report revealed that the Stelmach administration has spent over half a billion dollars on creating electronic health records, with no clear plan or goals and no completion date for the project.

The $80 million spent on so-called “transition costs” created by disbanding Alberta’s health regions was actually just a huge payout to former health care executives, providing some lucky former executives with pensions of $22,000 per month for only eight years’ work. Achievement bonuses were doled out to executives even after they were fired.

It appears the Stelmach administration occasionally used the wrong contracts when calculating severance. No sensible business would make that kind of mistake.

The report also shows that the Stelmach administration completed only 64 percent of their routine food inspections in 2008 – a serious threat to public health. Food inspection is one of the front lines in preventative medicine. If you want to save money in the health care system, you invest in food inspection and get the job done.

Furthermore, the Stelmach administration’s method of calculating the value of bitumen is so poorly managed that the province could lose $100 million in royalties this year alone, proving that the Stelmach administration has lost control.

The lack of transparency is clearly a problem with this government. They have not managed in a responsible way that Albertans can respect, and this is again an example of failure of leadership in the Stelmach administration.

David