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Updated 15 October 2020 with correction to Chart 24 in Slide presentation On Thursday 1 October, I gave the following Power Point presentation entitled "Alberta’s Halting Economic Recovery-  Implications for Alberta’s Public Finances" to a local group of Rotarians. It was a rather sobering and depressing presentation.   The presentation also gave me an opportunity to plug the edited collection A Sales Tax for Alberta: Why and How to published next year by Athabasca University Press.  In my view the present government is doing what a succession of provincial governments have done for decades: accept the myth that Alberta is defined solely by its economy and the economy IS  the exploration, mining, development and production of fossil fuels.  This mindset has clouded the decision-making ...

In October 2015, the newly minted NDP government released their first budget. It was a difficult time for this rookie government as Alberta's economy was in free-fall and Calgary's economy was reeling. Finance Minister Joe Ceci sought something positive and the two major provincial financial agencies, reporting to the minister, were enlisted into a program to support deserving Alberta companies. According to Minister Ceci, there were three cornerstones in his maiden budget: 1) to stabilize public services, 2) a plan to balance the budget, and 3) to act on jobs and diversification. Included under jobs and diversification was a measure to mandate AIMCo "to focus a prudent but significant portion of our province’s Heritage Fund to directly invest in Alberta’s growth. Three perce...