Before delivering the new provincial budget Thursday, Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews bought himself new cowboy boots.

A pair of ballet shoes would have been more appropriate.

Toews’s budget does a lot of dancing, much of it on eggshells.

This is a budget that is afraid of suffering another embarrassing pratfall like the one performed last year when Toews tabled an overly optimistic budget in February that predicted solid economic growth, higher employment and a balanced budget by 2023 — and was quickly rendered obsolete with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic.