[First Lady]

National Post Editorial Board: Alberta’s first NDP budget

Alberta’s budget projects a deficit of nearly $900-million. If Mr. Liepert and Ms. Redford had managed to keep their cheque-writing pens in their pockets, and kept expenditures at 2011 levels, they could have recorded a $400-million surplus this year, rather than run up more red ink.

The province will take on no public debt as a result of its unbalanced budget — the fifth in a row — but it will drain its rainy-day Sustainability Fund. After this free-spending fiscal year, the reserve fund, which stood at $15-billion just three years ago, will be down to just $3.7-billion. If the province’s oversize projections for natural resource revenues — based on a long-term price for oil of $100 a barrel or more — prove overly optimistic, the fund could disappear entirely. Over the next two budget years, the government plans to increase total spending to over $44-billion.

And just for fun have a gander at this.



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