Budget 2019: Debt still grows but path to balance mapped out
Calgary, AB – With a mountain of debt for Albertans to climb out of while being weighed down by low commodity prices for oil and gas, Alberta’s 2019 budget is still boasting the lowest tax rate in Canada, a position it’s held for a number of years, if not decades. But the debt peak will not be getting easier to climb with this year’s budget projecting a $22 billion debt increase over the next four years.
Despite this, Finance Minister Travis Toews called today a, “good day for Alberta,” as he outlined how the province will return to a balanced budget by 2023.
But there will be a price to pay for keeping the province the lowest taxed in the country and making it even more competitive and comparable with all but a few U.S. jurisdictions by the end of the current provincial government’s term.
The bottom line for debt for Alberta will be $93.2 billion by 2022-23. That’s not far off the former NDP government’s $97.1 billion debt forecast for the same year. Deficit projections between the current and former governments for the 19-20 and 20-21 fiscal years are also similar. Budget 2019 projects the combined deficit for those two years at $14.5 billion compared to the NDP’s final budget in 2018 projecting $14.9 billion over the same period. However, the current government is projecting a return to balance a year earlier than the NDP with the expectation of a nearly $600 million surplus by the 2022-23 fiscal year.