Alberta taxpayers face $603 each in interest payments alone as debt hits $84 billion
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is a great admirer of the late Premier Ralph Klein’s legacy of slaying debt, but unless she shows the same iron will at home, her own “PAID IN FULL” sign will never see daylight.
If Smith wants to defeat the debt and hold up a sign like the one Klein famously waved in 2004 after Alberta cleared its debt over her head one day, she needs to cut spending and pay down the province’s debt.
She must take a page from former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s notebook and say “No! No! No!” to wasteful spending in Alberta.
Smith is already Alberta’s Iron Lady when it comes to putting the boots to Ottawa and sticking up for Alberta on the world stage. She’s demanding that the federal government get out of Alberta’s way and stop strangling its natural resources.
When United States President Donald Trump started snorting about big tariffs on Alberta’s oil and gas, Smith took the bull by the horns and headed down there to deal with it head-on. Those are the right things to do, and Smith is doing them well.
But.
This but is so big it could star in a 90’s rap video, Smith is not being tough with her own cabinet and her own government here at home.
The provincial debt is going up and so are the costs of interest payments on the debt.
Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner delivered the first quarter fiscal update in August. The government projected a provincial debt of $82.7 billion in the 2025–26 budget. The government is now forecasting the debt to be $84.3 billion by the end of the year. That’s an increase of $1.6 billion compared to the budget.
Interest payments on the debt are expected to cost taxpayers more than $3 billion this year. That’s a $37-million increase from the budget.
This year’s debt interest payments cost the same as building three new hospitals. But all that money is being wasted because the government keeps recklessly borrowing money.
The per-person debt interest cost is gross. It’s about $603 each. Before it was gone, that’s about the same amount the carbon tax was costing every year to fill up a pickup truck every two weeks.
For a family of four, that debt interest cost is more than $2,400. That’s even grosser.
Horner said Alberta wasn’t doing too bad compared to other provinces, but that’s like being proud of being the most sober person in the drunk tank.
British Columbia’s debt hit $133.9 billion last year, with debt interest charges costing B.C. taxpayers $4.6 billion in 2024–25. B.C. Premier David Eby has doubled his province’s debt since he took office. That’s in a province that’s literally sitting on gold mines with access to an entire coastline of ports.
The B.C. government’s financial management is deplorable, and Alberta shouldn’t make eye contact with it. Almost every other province is doing poorly, too.
Alberta should stand out on its own, and it shouldn’t compare itself to whatever reckless things other provincial governments are doing with their budgets.
Horner pledged to do a deep dive, department by department, to make sure the government is saving all its nickels and not wasting money.
When he’s in Edmonton, Horner should look across town to the big shiny hockey rink where the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers play. His government committed to handing more than $128 million in corporate welfare to the Edmonton Oilers NHL hockey club so it can build a downtown plaza next to the big shiny rink that taxpayers already paid to build.
The Alberta government can’t hand out buckets of taxpayer cash to billionaire-owned hockey teams when it’s more than $84 billion in debt and still be taken seriously when it says there’s nothing to cut.
The Alberta government must focus on reducing the size and cost of government to stop wasting taxpayers’ money on debt interest payments.
Smith needs to be the Iron Lady and say “NO” to wasteful spending.
Kris Sims is the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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