Alberta’s budget surprise — a genuinely prudent fiscal framework: Jack Mintz in the Financial Post

Pre-election budgets are rarely admirable. Money is spread around like pixie dust to curry the support of voters and to knee-cap opposition parties by borrowing their ideas. To a certain extent, the pre-election good news budget that Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews delivered Tuesday follows this time-honoured political path, helped by $27.5 billion in oil and gas revenues in the 2022/23 fiscal year.

And so it is easy to chide the budget for populist policies like freezing insurance rates and capping post-secondary tuition fee increases at two per cent and for industrial policy measures for politically favoured industries (such as agricultural processing and film and television production). And there is the usual scattering of minor tax credits instead of a general cut in personal taxes — with no mention of a tax review geared to major reform, which the United Conservative Party proposed when it took office.