Ceci defends budget
Posted Apr 15, 2016 9:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s not a position many people would envy.
Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci tabled his first budget Thursday and he was in a virtual no-win situation with low oil prices ravaging the province’s books.
What he came up with was a document thrusting the province into $58-billion of debt by 2019, with no plan to get back into the black.
Now his job shifts to defending the plan, which he did in a one-on-one interview with 660 NEWS on Friday.
When there’s that much red ink, it makes it easy for the opposition to target, but Ceci said the NDP delivered what Albertans wanted.
“We don’t want to brutally cut healthcare and education, which is what the opposition want us to do,” he said.
Ceci says they are playing it safe with oil price forecasts this time, predicting it will be $42 a barrel.
“It’s difficult to predict a long way out,” he explained. “So we’ve risk adjusted it, so we’ve built that risk adjustment which will, if oil does a lot better, get to balance sooner.”
As for all the red ink, Ceci defends the number by pointing out the debt to GDP ratio of 15.5 per cent at the end of the term is still about half the national average.
