The good (it's balanced) and the bad (fuel taxes) from Alberta's 2024 budget | Kris Sims

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Last week, Premier Danielle Smith's government unveiled Alberta's 2024 budget. The fiscal plan from the United Conservatives drew mixed reactions, with some municipalities complaining about a lack of infrastructure spending while the party focused on positives like a new to lobby Western issues in Ottawa.

On Wednesday night's episode of The Gunn Show, host Sheila Gunn Reid was joined by Kris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation for a proper breakdown of the Prairie province's plans for 2024.

One of the negatives buried in the budget is the return of Alberta's previously-suspended fuel tax. This, Kris told Sheila, went against Premier Smith's pledge to cut taxes for all Albertans:

They haven't done that. They have partially reinstated the fuel tax, so it's nine cents a litre instead of zero. I also noticed in their budget, that they're planning on hiking the provincial fuel tax back up all the way to 13 cents on April 1.

So the same day Trudeau nails us with a carbon tax hike, the Alberta government is planning on bringing that all the way back up. So they're going to add an extra four cents per litre of gasoline and diesel.

But the biggest positive, Kris said, was that the budget was balanced:

We're hearing that there's going to be a deficit next door in Saskatchewan, we see we a gimongous deficit — like billions of dollars — next door in British Columbia. I don't know what they're doing over there, they've lost the plot.

The good news is, the budget is balanced. It's a little teeny-weeny, baby surplus. It's like $360 million, but it's balanced and we're really happy to see that.

There's a big element that I am super keen about, and all of [the Canadian Taxpayers Federation] is that gets lost a lot of the time. They're keeping spending reined in, which is an excellent thing. 

And they're not just keeping it reined in on their own parameters, they passed a law so that they must keep spending increased below the rate of inflation plus population growth.