10yr financial plan for Alberta
Posted Mar 4, 2013 11:57 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Days ahead of the finance minister tabling the Alberta budget, a couple University of Calgary professors have outlined a 10 year plan to get our finances back on track.
Professor Ron Kneebone and Margarita Gres of The School of Public Policy say we need to wean our dependence on oil and gas revenues.
“Alberta has a substance-abuse problem. The substance is fossil fuels, and the province has become hooked on the revenues from oil and gas sales to fund its spending,” the authors write.
They say the dependence has created a “Budget Gap”. That is what they call the difference between government spending and resource revenue.
Kneebone and Gres would like to see that dependence drop from $4,273 per person (2012) to $1,500 per person by 2023.
