Imagine a place with enough money to build just about all the public infrastructure a population of 3.2 million could possibly need, but there aren’t enough tradespeople to build it. And not enough construction equipment or material, even if there were tradespeople.

Welcome to the alternative reality that is Alberta today.

Whether you’re a homeowner renovating a bathroom, an oil company planning a heavy-oil upgrader or a municipal government building a school, you’re faced with rocketing costs and the necessity of pleading with somebody — anybody — to take on your project.

I just had an unsafe balcony replaced on my home. The bill was 50% more than the original estimate, which is about average for construction projects large and small in Alberta now. I was happy to get it done.

Alberta has approved $1 billion in road construction, and Edmonton and Calgary are awash in infrastructure dollars — courtesy of a $3-billion municipal building program announced by the premier in 2004. A month ago, Finance Minister Shirley McClellan told the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association: “If you have a project and can build it, for God’s sake, build it.”

It has lots of projects. During the lean 1990s, when the Klein government slashed public spending to control an exploding deficit, putting off public building and maintenance was a way of life for municipalities.

Better days have arrived with a bang, drawing people (90,000 last year) and powering development. The result, according to most estimates, is a public works backlog of $10 billion-$12 billion that could take a decade to whittle away.

But public construction doesn’t take place in a vacuum. The government is competing with the private sector for everything from labour to steel and cement. Plumbers and heavy-equipment operators are smiling all the way to the bank, while everything from schools to roads is prohibitively expensive.

Weeks away from retirement, Premier Ralph Klein is urging a slowdown in public spending to cool construction cost anarchy. “I know there’s a screaming demand for more infrastructure. But, folks … the prices are just going beyond belief,” he pleaded.

He’s right. But a retiring political leader has less influence on his colleagues, particularly those campaigning to replace him at the helm of Alberta’s Conservative dynasty.

“Municipalities know what needs to be built. The province just needs to establish the funding agreements, then get out of their way,” says Tory legislator and University of Calgary political science professor Ted Morton. And he’s the fiscal conservative of the eight hopefuls to become premier.

The spending hawk is former provincial public works minister Lyle Oberg, who has made bridging the “infrastructure gap” a major plank in his campaign. He argues increased funding could get the work done in five rather than 10 years.

“With respect to Premier Klein and his call to mothball infrastructure spending because of rising costs, I strongly disagree,” he said recently. “Now is not the time to delay building our roads, our children’s schools and the provincial infrastructure we so desperately need.”

Bold words, but the real restraint on construction in Alberta has less to do with politics than with economics. It has become just too darn expensive! IE