Capital Spending Archives

3Mar

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Fiscal History, Government Finances, Opinion/Research, Politics

Alberta Budget 2025- deficits return

On 27 February Treasury Board President and Minister of Finance Nate Horner tabled the budget for the fiscal year 2025-26 and as required by law the budget sets out targets for fiscal years 2026-27 and 2027-28. I was privileged to be the guest of NDP MLA for Edmonton-Goldbar, Marlin Schmidt. For over 40-years I have been able to attend budget addresses, work on about 10 budgets while at the Treasury department, and attend half a dozen budget lock-ups while at ATB Financial and the Institute for Public Economics. I have watched the performance of many finance ministers under 9 premiers (excluding the caretaker David Hancock). I note that no finance minister over these 40-years has ever become premier. Notable were Jim Dinning, Doug Horner, Ted Morton, and Travis Toews’ challenges for t...

23Feb

By Bob AscahNo Comments

ATB, Budget, Capital Spending, Fiscal History, Government Finances, Opinion/Research, Politics

Budget 2025- Matters to watch for

The budget on 27 February is watched very closely by the usual suspects which include think tanks, credit rating agencies, government lobbyists, and provincial agencies (e,g, Alberta Health Services), the education, health care sector and post secondary institutions). Oil prices As is customary the number that will be focused on is the assumption for bitumen prices and the value of the Canadian dollar. Analysts will also look at the forecast for the fiscal year ending at the end of March. A key consideration in the broader economic forecast is whether U.S. trade policy will cause a recession in this country and how Alberta’s fossil fuel exports will fare. Even with the Trans Mountain extension, most Alberta oil and natural gas flows to the United States. We can expect e...

17Mar

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Credit Ratings, Education, Government Finances, Politics

Budget 2024- 13th Post-mortem- Panelists’ presentations

On Monday, 11 March I moderated a panel of experts who provided different perspectives on Alberta's 2024 budget tabled by the Honourable Nate Horner on Thursday, 29 February 2024. Our panelists included: Shauna Feth, the CEO of the Alberta Chambers of Commerce gave her Association's views on the Budget. See PDF of slides below. The ACA's perspective (slides 10-15) is generally approving of the budget which supports business competitiveness, growing trade, building healthy communities, and improving government accountability. Two areas of concern regarding competitiveness were Land Titles Office fees increasing which will effect commercial real estate, and the insurance premium tax. The Chamber was pleased with increased investment in the First Nations Development Fund and Alberta...

26Feb

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Credit Ratings, Energy, Environment, Fiscal History, Government Finances, Opinion/Research

Kaplan-Ten major reasons why Alberta’s new fiscal framework won’t bring a long-term sustainability focus to fiscal planning.

In this critical and timely essay- a few days before the province's 2024 Budget is tabled, fiscal planning expert Lennie Kaplan provides an in-depth analysis of problems embedded in the Smith government's Sustainable Fiscal Planning and Reporting Act (SFPRA). Kaplan argues the SFPRA must be fully re-opened to meet Premier Smith’s commitment to long-term fiscal planning. This analysis reveals there is a great deal of flexibility in the government's framework in spite of the impression that the government has little fiscal flexibility to spend. In her televised address on February 21, 2024, Premier Smith promised to bring a long-term fiscal sustainability focus to Alberta fiscal planning, including building up the assets of the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund (AHSTF) and paying d...

E. Preston Manning- Management Consultant circa 1983

19Jul

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Fiscal History, Government Finances, Politics

E. Preston Manning- Management Consultant circa 1983

In this extraordinary document, found in Lou Hyndman's papers deposited with the Provincial Archives in 1986, is a 12-page submission by Manning Consultants Limited to pitch a "Citizens' Committee on Productivity and Economy in Government." It was proposed that Manning Consultants co-ordinate the organization of "information request forms," workshop and final report. As the document reveals, the proposal is highly moralistic in tone. The document is a response to unfortunate stories in the media about government "extravagance and waste" and lifestyle choices of elected government officials and senior civil servants. The document's fiscal conservatism is vintage Preston Manning whose Reform party publicized government waste and inefficiency. This remarkable document sheds light on Mann...

Lou Hyndman’s reply to Preston Manning’s proposal

19Jul

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Fiscal History, Government Finances, Health, Politics

Lou Hyndman’s reply to Preston Manning’s proposal

In an earlier post, in the fall of 1983, Preston Manning, then President of Manning Consultants a firm his father established wished push fiscal policy changes. The timing may be significant because by that time Peter Lougheed had been in office for 12 years and there was speculation growing about when her would exit. Lou Hyndman's somewhat testy reply to Preston Manning's circulation of his groups report to all M.L.A.'s and to Progressive Conservative delegates at the annual convention was especially cool. The displeasure is evident in Manning's courageous and naive proposal to reduce the size of the Alberta Legislative Assembly consistent with principles that fiscal discipline should begin at the top. His reference to the earlier Social Credit government allowing the civil service to r...

6Jun

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Capital Spending, Economic Data, Education, Energy, Government Finances, Investment

Ideas, Thoughts, Experiments- Alberta 2023 Conversation with thought leaders Episode 3- Lindsay Tedds

To watch the conversation go to Youtube This conversation was recorded at 1 p.m. on Thursday 18 May, before the leaders' debate with Professor Lindsay Tedds Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Calgary. Her research interests are eclectic and range from tax policy and public policy design and implementation involving a trans-disciplinary approach to harnesses the strengths of economics, law, public administration, and intersectionality. Our talk ranged widely from income inequality, building an inclusive workplace, the importance of policy stability for investment, societal values, contradictions between the UCP's socialistic spending promises and its free markets' position, education policy, municipal property taxes, environmental liabilities, the challenge of fu...

<em>A Better Future </em>– Recommended Reading

26Mar

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Fiscal History, Government Finances, Opinion/Research

A Better Future – Recommended Reading

Updated 27 March 2023 A Better Future: Fiscal Recommendations to Position Alberta for Success, authored by Todd Hirsch for NDP leader Rachel Notley was released Friday 23 March. Hirsch, ATB’s Chief Economist (2007-2022) is deeply knowledgeable about Alberta’s economy and the financial system having worked earlier in his career at the Bank of Canada (full disclosure: I hired Todd while I was at ATB Financial). In short, he is a respected economist and a consummate communicator, A Better Future is a valuable contribution to a long overview discussion of Alberta’s public finances. In the Introduction, Rachel Notley observes the following. Albertans want and deserve excellent healthcare and a top-flight education The Government of Alberta relies on natural resources revenue. Natural resourc...

15Jan

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Government Finances, Uncategorized

Hyndman Papers- Speech to Alberta Municipalities- 1982

Excerpt from Speech to Alberta Municipal Districts & Counties (pp. 12-16) (Undated- likely late November 1982 after 2 November 1982 provincial election) The following speech given by Peter Lougheed in November 1982 set the stage for the Alberta government's post election Alberta Economic Resurgence Program. (The PDF of the excerpt of the speech in below) The speech is notable as signaling the government's intention to restrain government spending and holding public sector wage costs to below the private speech. His language was unusually blunt to this gathering of Alberta's municipal councilors, reeves, and mayors. Crucial to the financing of the resurgence program was a return to direct borrowing of the province- a rare event in the post-war period- and tapping all investment incom...

10Sep

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Capital Spending, Government Finances, Opinion/Research, Uncategorized

First Quarter Update- Sunny update reveals some cracks

Jason Nixon, Treasury President and Minister of Finance Source: CTV News Edmonton However, there were several dark clouds covering the sun in the first quarter numbers that merit a mention. AIMCo has had another trying quarter like other investment managers Investment income is down $2.9-billion “due entirely to negative Heritage Fund and endowment fund income as financial markets deteriorated. These market losses could be reversed although with interest rates rising bond prices will continue to fall.” Hedging debt service costs hasn’t worked out very well Even though debt is declining significantly, debt servicing costs are rising because of debt swap costs. This is unusual because with rates at historic lows one would want to protect against rising rates by entering interest rate swap...