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Jack Mintz: Alberta manages growth while B.C. hikes spending and taxes

The two provinces delivered very different budgets

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During this past week and half, Canada’s two most western provinces presented budgets with yawning deficits. Slow-growth British Columbia is forecasting a deficit for the 2026/27 fiscal year of $13.3 billion (2.9 per cent of GDP), up from $9.6 billion for this current year. With better growth, Alberta hit the $9.4-billion mark, more than double the 2025/26 deficit of $4.1 billion and the biggest since the pandemic.

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Surprisingly, these two provinces, paragons of fiscal discipline for many years, have joined the likes of Ontario and Quebec, which have also been running big deficits. Yet, despite these growing deficits, B.C.’s net debt for 2026/7 is projected to be only 31per cent of GDP — still much better than Ontario or Quebec, whose net debt is roughly two-fifths of GDP.

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