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1. Lax Heritage Fund rules allow governments to plunder Alberta's future

   Appeared in the Red Deer Advocate and Winnipeg Free Press In 1987, the value of Alberta’s Heritage Savings and Trust Fund stood at $12.7 billion. That year, the province faced a massive budget deficit and transfers to the fund from resource revenues were ...

2. Reforming Alberta's Heritage Fund: Lessons from Alaska and Norway

   The governments of Alberta, Alaska, and Norway have all created funds in which to deposit some of the revenues they receive from non-renewable natural resource activities. Despite Alberta?s rich natural resource endowments, its Alberta Heritage Savings ...

3. Before adding new taxes, cut health care spending

   Appeared in the Sundre Round Up and Innisfail Province Having spent itself into a considerable deficit problem, the Alberta government seems to be considering a sales tax as part of its plan to dig provincial finances out of the red (or at least they’re ...

4. Long waits and queue jumping go hand in hand

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald The idea that some Albertans might be getting their publicly-funded health care more rapidly than others because of who they happen to be, or who they know, or indeed if they have greater ability to pay, seems to have ...

5. Why Alberta is broke

   Appeared in the National Post and Calgary Herald 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 ...

6. Alberta's $22-billion Lost Opportunity

   Alberta's $22-Billion Lost Opportunity calculates the economic cost of the province's inability to hold government spending to the rate of inflation plus population growth. The report examines the history of Alberta budgets starting in fiscal ...

7. Why higher Alberta taxes are a dumb idea

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald The last time Alberta was in a fiscal mess due to low energy revenues and over-the-top government spending, some politicians and pundits said what Albertans really needed was higher taxes. That was back in the late 1980s and ...

8. The big pay advantage in big government

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald When Alberta Premier Alison Redford took to the television screen the other night, she paid much attention to the revenue side of the government's books. On Alberta's massive budget deficit, the premier blamed the ...

9. The compensation gap; why it pays to be a government worker in Alberta

   Appeared in the Calgary Sun and Edmonton Sun More than three years after the end of the recession and Alberta’s provincial government continues to struggle with deficits, which as of the last quarterly update could reach $3 billion. Relying on revenues to ...

10. Time to reconsider Alberta's planned north-south electricity transmission line

    Appeared in the Red Deer Advocate A year ago the Alberta Government appointed a Critical Transmission Review Committee to determine whether the Alberta Electric System Operator's (AESO) proposal that two high voltage direct current (HVDC) north-south ...