IT USED TO ALWAYS SEEM LIKE 1633 FOR SOCIALISTS. Not so much any more.

It always seemed like the year the Pope told Galileo to go home, deny reality and dummy up about his crazy idea that the earth revolved around the sun. The Pope ran the world. So, Galileo went home.

But to the end of his days Galileo shuffled around his villa muttering to himself: “And yet it moves.”

Reality cannot be denied

Socialists have endured the same fate, pretty much. We’ve been told to sit down and shut up and deny economic reality ever since Marx discovered Saint-Simon’s writing about utopian socialism and started promoting the crazy idea that rearranging the world for the common good was not only desirable, but possible.

But reality—celestial and economic—cannot be denied.

Our “free-market” economy flatlines. The “invisible hand” fails to automatically restore balance. “Socialistic” ideas pop out of the closet. Leaders of the one, true free-market faith are deers in the headlights. They find the once-hated socialist ideas not so hard to resist. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is one of those deers.

Good debt vs. bad debt

Kenney has made a career out of visceral opposition to two things: government spending and government intervention in the marketplace. He jettisoned both positions on June 30.

Kenney did what he said he never would. He broke the first commandment of neo-liberalism: he will spend public money to boost the economy. Just as many socialist governments have.

Kenney will happily take on debt to provide $10 billion for public works infrastructure projects, including roads, health-care facilities, and schools.

Finance Minister Travis Toews was quick to explain that in Alberta all debt is not created equal. He said there’s “good debt and bad debt.” Any debt the United Conservative Party government takes on is good debt. The kind other governments took on was bad debt.

The $10 billion expenditure will be the largest infrastructure build ever in Alberta, and by far the largest in the country on a per-capita basis. It is about a 40-per-cent increase over what had initially been budgeted in the province’s capital plan for this fiscal year.

This year’s budget deficit is expected to balloon from $7 billion to $20 billion.

None of which seems to bother the one-time “all debt is death” premier.

Of course, Kenney had already soiled his “let the free market be free” reputation in March when his government ponied up $1.5-billion in cash and a $6-billion loan guarantee to help Calgary-based TC Energy Corporation to complete the KXL pipeline.

Another part of the “in for a penny, in for a Kenney” remedy includes an Innovation Employment grant to encourage high-tech companies and investment. More direct government intervention in the so-called free market—the kind Kenney has attacked over and over again.

Those hoping for child care or renewable energy in Kenney’s recovery plan will be disappointed. He may have wobbled a little—but he remains Margaret Thatcher in  man’s clothing. The arch-conservative premier is not for turning.

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