Quote:
Originally Posted by aaronck
Those light bulbs were sure expensive...
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I know you're being facetious and making a point that the NDP government of 2015-2019 is not entirely to blame for the debt, but it bears repeating for those that don't know: other than the 2014-15 fiscal year, which was just a flukey one-off at the end of the Redford/Prentice PCs' term buoyed by higher than expected oil prices and deferring billions in capital borrowing to later fiscal years, the Alberta government—no matter which governing party—has had deficits every single year since 2007-08.
We were already about $11B in debt at the beginning of the NDP's reign and yes, they added about $32B to that debt over four years, but the UCP government racked up over $29B in its first two years. They can be somewhat forgiven for the 2020-21 and '21-'22 Covid-impacted budgets, but their first budget, the 2019-2020, was entirely unaffected by Covid-related spending and it was the
single biggest deficit year in Alberta's history, at $12.2B.