Highlights from Alberta budget 2019

Alberta’s United Conservative government tabled its budget Thursday. Here are some of the highlights:

• $8.7-billion deficit on revenues of $50 billion.

• Debt projected to rise from the current $63 billion to $72 billion by the spring, on track to reach $93 billion by 2023.
• Three more years of deficits with projected surplus of $584 million in 2023.

• The public sector to be reduced by almost eight per cent over four years, mainly through attrition.

1:56 Alberta Budget 2019: Finance Minister asks public sector to ‘work with us’

• No budgeted pay increases for public sector workers.
• Program spending to drop 2.8 per cent over four years to $47 billion by 2023.
• Health funding maintained as $20.6 billion.

• Education funding maintained at $8.2 billion.
• Corporate income tax revenue to fall by $700 million to $4.2 billion in 2019-20.
• Operational spending to be reduced by 0.5 per cent this year and eventually by 2.8 per cent to $47.1 billion by 2023.

0:56 Alberta budget breakdown in less than 1 minute

• A one-time payment of $1.5 billion to end the crude-by-rail shipment plan announced earlier this year by the former NDP government.
• $1.8 billion in new capital funding for schools and new modular classrooms.

3:51 Political scientist Duane Bratt weighs in on Alberta budget 2019: ‘This was not a shock’