alberta deficit

9:39AM
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With a large deficit looming, it's a good time to put Alberta’s finances in longer-term perspective.


11:00AM
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There are many parallels between Alberta’s first NDP premier, Rachel Notley, and Ontario’s only NDP premier, Bob Rae.


1:42PM
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According to a Fraser Institute study released in February, between 2004/05 and 2013/14, the Alberta government’s program spending jumped to $43.9 billion from $29 billion.


9:00AM
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Forty-one billion dollars. That’s the extra amount, over and above what was needed to keep pace with population growth and inflation between 2006 and 2013, this to fund Alberta government program spending in those years.


9:00AM
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Alberta Premier Jim Prentice is in the midst of formulating his first budget and the fiscal path of the province while watching oil prices continue to decline.


2:00AM
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The red-ink budgets that have engulfed Alberta since the last recession—Alberta’s Finance Minister Doug Horner just announced this year’s deficit could hit $4-billion— are not accidental. Such red ink is not just the result of weaker resource revenues, as Alberta Premier Alison Redford regularly claims.


2:00AM
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When governments enter an election year, the political temptation to play fast and loose with budget numbers is strong. The most famous example of this was probably the 1996 budget in British Columbia. That year, then-B.C. Premier Glen Clark’s office injected sunshine into revenue forecasts, this in order to trumpet a balanced budget on the campaign trail. His office did so over the objections of Finance Ministry officials. Post-election, once that became known, the “fudge-it” budget scandal permanently tarred the NDP government.


2:00AM
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Back in the mid-1990s, British Columbia’s New Democratic government published a pre-election budget that forecast a balanced ledger for the then-ending fiscal year. The Glen Clark government quickly dropped the writ and narrowly won re-election.

But soon after the election, the government revised its forecast. A deficit of almost $400-million was predicted, about what some private forecasters predicted back when the original budget was released.