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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 percen...

Below is a presentation given to the Institute of Public Administration of Canada's noon hour learning sessions. The presentation and speaking notes address, at a high level, basic elements of public finance administration and policy in Alberta.

Over the past three weeks, the two main parties and two smaller parties have released their full policy platforms or position statements. The following is a high level look at some of the policy proposals by highlighting good, bad, and "ugly" proposals. Animosity between 2 major parties Premier Rachel Notley It goes without saying that much of the campaign has featured personality politics with Rachel Notley spending an inordinate amount of time questioning Jason Kenney's character. At the time of writing, this tactic has not appeared to have improved her party's chances of retaining office. One of the most evident features of this attack is that it has demonstrated significant weaknesses in her party's capacity to articulate visionary policies. The Good The Alberta...

Dear Reader - welcome. AbPolEcon.ca is the successor website to Albertarecessionwatch.com. No more newspaper PDFs AbPolEcon.ca has carried forward most  of the content from Albertarecessionwatch.com  but does not contain scanned PDF documents from Globe and Mail and Edmonton Journal articles. For readers who would like to see news articles related to blog postings, there are over 1800 news articles that are indexed into the classification system of this website. Please contact us for assistance. Improved cross-referencing of posts The migration of Albertarecessionwatch.com to AbPolEcon.ca  includes improved cross-referecning of related articles.  What's Coming As Alberta moves closer to election day, posts will focus on the most pressing issues faced by the province.  ...