Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and his MLAs have taken a pay cut to reduce government spending.
Kenney's $186,000 salary was reduced by 10 per cent, while MLAs had their $121,000 salary reduced by five per cent. Alberta politicians remain the highest paid in Canada.
"Even during the election campaign, he was making statements like he wants to set an example," said Lori Williams, a policy studies professor at Mount Royal University. "The example clearly is for others who are being paid with taxpayer dollars; probably he's thinking something along the lines of what Ralph Klein did in cutting provincially-paid people by five per cent for a certain period of time to try help balance the books."
The MLAs' travel expenses were also reduced, and the premier thanked them for accepting the pay cut.
"Right now Alberta is in some difficult times, and so by taking a pay cut, it's not symbolic that we're saying public service is also going to be taking a pay cut," UCP MLA for Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche said. We're simply saying we're going to be doing this because we believe it's the right thing to do."
Williams said that despite the salary reduction, Kenney and MLAs still make sizeable money.
"It represents much less of a sacrifice, much less of a problem for them than it does for workers who are far lower on the pay scale and have far tighter budgets than most of these MLAs."
