Lennie Kaplan is a former senior manager in the fiscal and economic policy division of Alberta’s Ministry of Treasury Board and Finance.Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s new short-term strategy of “government-by-referenda” appears to be politically designed to mollify her independence base, rather than making the difficult choices on spending and revenue diversification needed to fix Alberta’s “severely broken” finances.Putting aside the merits of the proposal, holding referenda on whether to restrict the access of approximately 282,000 non-permanent residents (about 6% of Alberta’s total population) to government programs and services in healthcare, education, and other social services, seems to be “a small drop in an overflowing bucket of red ink.” Is this really the headline policy of the Smith government’s short-term strategy to get back to a balanced budget by 2028/29? I surely hope not. Much more needs to be done to restore Alberta’s fiscal health. Over the past two years, I have talked about many public policy measures that could be taken to get out of this fiscal mess. Here are some of the cold, hard fiscal facts that Premier Smith glossed over in her TV Address to Albertans. Crude oil prices are now projected to average about $60 USD per barrel in 2026/27, $65 USD per barrel in 2027/28, and $67 USD per barrel in 2028/29. This is $5 to $10 USD per barrel lower than initially projected in last year’s budget. Alberta’s total revenue growth is expected to be far weaker between 2026/27 and 2028/29 (about 3.8% annual growth per year), not the 6.9% annual growth rate experienced between 2022/23 and 2024/25. The Alberta government is facing massive fiscal gaps, before fiscal adjustments, estimated at $10.6 billion in 2026/27, $8.6 billion in 2027/29, and $7.9 billion in 2028/29. Alberta’s current legislated fiscal rules still allow budget deficits of about $6.6 billion in 2026/27 and $1.9 billion in 2027/28, before a mandated return to balance in 2028/29. .This means estimated fiscal adjustments of up to $4 billion in 2026/27, $6.7 billion in 2027/28, and $7.9 billion in 2028/29 are needed to stay within current fiscal rules compliance.Let’s face it; the Alberta government mismanaged a resource revenue boom yet again, and now the Smith government needs to own it and right the fiscal ship.Governments are elected to lead and make tough policy decisions. That’s what we as citizens pay them to do. When facing $4 billion to $7.9 billion in fiscal adjustments over the next three years, is this “policy by referenda” proposal the best the Alberta government’s secretive Productivity Review Cabinet Committee (PRCC) program review exercise could come up with? I didn’t know that the Smith government’s short-term fiscal strategy was being driven by the Alberta independence movement, using referenda. Surely, there must be more to come in Budget 2026. A recent Access to Information (ATI) request from me to the Premier’s Office on what the PRCC program review had been doing over the past few months resulted in the return of 2,091 nearly blank pages.Once again, I am calling on the Alberta government to provide a chapter and an accompanying annex on the work of the PRCC program review in the budget documents, similar to what the federal government did with the Comprehensive Expenditure Review (CER) in its 2025 budget. The Alberta government needs to tell us what’s in the PRCC program review files. No more redactions. Lennie Kaplan is a former senior manager in the fiscal and economic policy division of Alberta’s Ministry of Treasury Board and Finance, where, among other duties, he examined best practices in fiscal frameworks and program reviews. In 2019, Mr. Kaplan served as executive director to the MacKinnon Panel on Alberta’s finances — a government-appointed panel tasked with reviewing Alberta’s spending and recommending reforms.
