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1. Report paints bleak picture of Alberta’s fiscal future

   The province's per-person spending is significantly higher than in Ontario, B.C. and Quebec. ...

2. Kenney government must control spending to stop Alberta’s fiscal fall

   Appeared in the Edmonton Sun, December 16, 2020 We recently released a study showing that the “fiscal capacity” gap between richer and poorer provinces has shrunk dramatically in recent years. In a nutshell, fiscal capacity refers to each province’s ...

3. Alberta’s finances—back to the ’90s?

   During the early 1990s, the federal government and many provinces faced fiscal challenges so daunting that many described the situation as a crisis. As governments across the country run historically large deficits in response to the ...

4. Alberta ‘fiscal capacity’ plummeting, Kenney government must react

   Appeared in the Edmonton Journal, December 3, 2020 Many Canadians have long thought of their country as divided between affluent “have” provinces and poorer “have-nots.” The traditional dividing line has been whether a province receives equalization ...

5. The Great Convergence: Measuring the Fiscal Capacity Gap Between “Have” and “Have-Not” Provinces

   Since 2007/08, the fiscal capacity gap between richer and poorer Canadian provinces has shrunk dramatically, with the trend accelerating significantly after 2014–15. Fiscal capacity refers to a province’s ability to raise own-source revenues at tax rates ...

6. Interest on Alberta government debt is skyrocketing

   Appeared in the Whitehorse Daily Star, June 11, 2018 When people think of the long lost “Alberta Advantage,” they often think first about the province’s tax advantage over other provinces, specifically, the 10 per cent single rate personal and corporate ...

7. Alberta’s Rae Days—the 2018 budget shows Rachel is just like Bob

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald, March 31, 2018 When Rachel Notley’s NDP shook Alberta’s political landscape by winning a majority government in 2015, the similarities to Ontario’s Bob Rae NDP government in the 1990s were striking. Both cases marked the ...

8. Why Is Alberta’s Deficit Still So Big?

   Main Conclusions The Government of Alberta has run nearly uninterrupted deficits since 2008/09 including deficits expected to average over $9 billion annually between 2016/17 and 2018/19. Alberta’s deficit today is much larger than the deficit the current ...

9. Alberta government buys another ticket for the resource revenue roller-coaster

   Appeared in the Financial Post, March 23, 2018 Before forming government, Rachel Notley and Alberta’s NDP vowed to get the province “off of the resource revenue roller-coaster.” So it’s ironic that now-Premier Notley’s third budget promises to take the ...

10. Despite improving economy, Alberta government still projects $9.1 billion deficit

    Appeared in the Calgary Sun, March 9, 2018 The Notley government recently released its third quarter fiscal update. While the update contains some good news about the Alberta economy, the outlook for provincial finances remains dire as the province ...