EDMONTON — Alberta will post its first deficit in 15 years at the end of March, but the global financial crisis — not government bungling — is responsible, the province's finance minister told reporters Thursday.
"The dollar losses that Albertans are experiencing today have not come because of things individual ministers have done," Iris Evans told a packed news conference at the legislature. "They have come from forces that are well beyond the control of ministers of the Crown."
<snip>
Scott Hennig, the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, likened the situation to the deficit-financing of the 1980s after oil prices took a massive hit.
"This is 1986 all over again," he said. "That year, (then-premier) Don Getty decided to run a massive deficit of $5 billion, and hope that they could get through the next year until oil prices rebounded. They didn't, and they ran eight consecutive deficit budgets until we had to have a massive cut in 1992-93 when Ralph Klein came in.
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/business/fp/...6789/story.html