When Finance Minister Nate Horner tabled Alberta’s provincial budget in the assembly on Thursday afternoon, he and every other government MLA should have been wearing a neck brace. And maybe two for Premier Danielle Smith. This is a government suffering from brutal whiplash. After spending the past two years promising Albertans she would not run a deficit budget, Smith has delivered one…

Alberta’s budget is bizarrely a win-win for both Kenney and Notley It seems fitting in so many ways that the official title of Alberta’s new provincial budget is “Moving Forward.” This is a budget focused on a bright smooth road ahead, not the potholed recession-ridden dirt path we clanked along the past two years. For the Alberta government, this is…

There’s good news and bad news in the Alberta government’s second quarter fiscal update released on Tuesday. The good news: the province’s economy appears to be turning the corner on a path to recovery. The bad news: that path might yet turn out to be a dark alley where COVID-19 and its gang of variants are waiting to welcome our…

Alberta might be sweltering through a brutally hot and blindingly sunny week but there’s a cloud hanging over the provincial government that keeps raining on Premier Jason Kenney’s parade. We got a good look at the ominous spectre Wednesday morning when Finance Minister Travis Toews released the province’s final fiscal report on the 2020-21 budget.

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…