Premier Danielle Smith spoke to Albertans last night on television.

The taped address touched on what we can expect in next week’s provincial budget.

“Although I’m pleased to report that spending cuts will NOT be needed to balance this year’s budget, lower resource revenues will certainly require us to show more restraint than previously predicted. We will ensure this is done thoughtfully and with priority given to the programs and services Albertans most rely on such as health, education, and social supports.

In addition, promised personal income tax cuts will have to wait a year and be phased in responsibly.”

The Premier also touched on how the government plans to make those changes.

“We’re doing a lot right and have much to be proud of. But as a province, we have also made mistakes. And we need to correct course now while we still have time. Bluntly stated, our province has become unsustainably dependent on non-renewable resource revenues.

As an example, in Budget 2023 our province required about $16 billion dollars of resource royalties just to balance our roughly $70 billion-dollar provincial budget.

Thankfully, we had a good year and will collect enough resource revenues to cover that $16 billion – with a few billion left over to pay towards our provincial debt and savings for the future.

That said, we simply cannot continue to rely on $16 billion dollars or more in resource revenues to balance our budget year in and out.

That is a recipe for massive debt and cuts to health and education whenever the price of oil takes a dip for a year or two – or more.

It is not sustainable.

Some say the answer is higher income taxes or a sales tax. I reject this.”

See the entire speech here. 

The provincial budget will be delivered a week from today on Thursday Feb. 29.