EDMONTON, AB: Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews tabled the UCP’s first budget today with a pledge to moderately trim, then freeze spending with an aim to achieving a balanced budget by 2022-23. .The Tories will also raise taxes in Budget 2019. Sin taxes on tobacco will go up an extra $5 per carton as of midnight, skipping parliamentary approval. The budget will also de-index income tax brackets to inflation, raising taxes on Albertans by $600 million a year..While revenues continue to grow, the $48.2 billion budget will shed $1.1 billion this year, and remain essentially frozen until 2022-23. According to the government’s figures, this will yield a modest surplus of $1.8 billion by that same year. .While these numbers represent an improvement to Alberta’s bottom line, they are less straight forward than the simple surplus/deficit number used by the government. Continuing with accounting practices established under premiers Redford and Notley the government to exempts large portions of capital spending from the annual balance, allowing the government to borrow money on a separate set of books. .This means that while an official surplus of $1.8 billion will be recorded in 2022-23, the government’s debt will still increase by $7.3 billion that same year, bringing Alberta’s total debt $114.2 billion and growing.
