In government as in so much of life, success depends first upon getting lucky. So it is with the Government of Alberta that announced today that it is sitting upon an $8.3 billion surplus. Nobody saw that coming..After all, when the Danielle Smith government announced its budget last year, few people thought they would make even the modest $355 million surplus projected. Oil prices were down and while Premier Smith talked a good deal about cutting costs, her many critics scoffed that her government had no idea how to actually do that.To some degree they had a point: Government expenses announced today were up a massive $3.8 billion, year over year. On the other hand, with Alberta's galloping population increase it is incumbent upon the critics to explain just how much less would have been exactly right. More people means more children, means more schools and hospitals. And so on. .Alberta posts unexpected $8.3B surplus .Nevertheless, as things worked out oil prices held and resources revenues surged by $2.7 billion, year over year. All those extra hard-working Albertans paid nearly a billion dollars more in income taxes. Same with corporate taxes. Income from government enterprises — gambling and liquor sales — was up..Yes, transfers from the Government of Canada were down. But Alberta had a good year and here's the luck, a billion dollars less was spent on disaster relief.It also became a little wealthier. The report notes that the market value of the Heritage Fund increased more than $4 billion to $27.2 billion, with $1.9 billion in annual net investment income left in the fund as well as a $2 billion deposit from 2023-24 surplus cash, committed in Budget 2024.This is a significant Smith-driven departure from past practices; for decades, the Government of Alberta routinely skimmed the interest into general revenue. For decades before she became premier, Ms. Smith excoriated them. Now it's her turn and the fund is getting built up for a time when other revenues crater..Altogether then, a happier day in Alberta than in Ottawa. A few hours before Finance Minister Nate Horner took the stage in Calgary's McDougall Centre, Statistics Canada reported that Canada’s gross domestic product fell 0.1% in April, and was on track to do so again in May. Could Ottawa get lucky too? It's hard to imagine. Certainly Alberta has had a favourable trade environment and some reasonably capable handling. Ottawa's problems however, are demonstrably more attributable to bad policy than to bad luck.That is, until Prime Minister Carney and the hackers he inherited from his predecessor decide to drop anti-growth policies like Bill C-69, there is going to be no growth in GDP.Until they start balancing budgets and stop borrowing money, Canada is not going to even begin to emerge from the debt hole in which it presently languishes. And until they learn to value people more than they do their intellectually and morally bankrupt theories about net zero emissions, there will be no luck about their house.Luck? Yes, Alberta had a good year it wasn't expecting.But then, Alberta tends to make its own luck. Ottawa does not.
