Danielle Smith bets Albertans would rather save than spend — finally

There's paying attention, and then there's paying for attention. The latter has become quite an Albertan habit.

Premier Danielle Smith has picked up the habit that Ralph Klein started in the early 1990s and delivered her second paid-time premier's televised addresses Wednesday — though all the other premiers in between these two former broadcasters have also done so, including Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney.

Smith used her speech to set the tables for a budget that restrains spending in uncertain economic times, just like UCP predecessor Kenney before her. But while he rooted his fiscal posture with a kind-of  "I need to fix what the NDP bungled" message, Smith is offering more of a long view in her justification — a true classic of the Alberta political genre.

Any shortcomings public agencies or others might see in next week's provincial budget will be in service of the future, the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and the need to get off the — stop us if you've heard this before, Albertans — oil revenue roller coaster.

It's more often economic critics, rather than premiers, who bemoan the ups-and-downs of budgeting that relies so heavily on how much natural resource royalties have rolled in any given year. When the province's cup suddenly ranneth over in 2022, both the right-leaning Fraser Institute and left-leaning Parkland Institute took aim at a finance minister seeming to merely enjoy the ride.

In her video speech Wednesday, it was the premier who denounced "bouncing between years of plenty and then having to choose between incurring massive debt or cutting key social programs" as something Albertans have grown tired of.

"Instead of spending all that non-renewable surplus cash on the wants of today, we will be fiscally disciplined, invest in the Heritage Fund annually, strategically pay down maturing debt, and slowly but surely wean our province's budget off the volatile roller-coaster of resource revenues," Smith told Alberta viewers.

The devilish details will be in the Feb. 29 budget, but Smith insisted there are enough of those oil-royalty billions to still spend massively on present-day needs, rather than impose spending cuts.

But she did say Finance Minister Nate Horner will increase spending by less than the rate of inflation and population growth — in other words, with less money than is needed to keep pace on services and infrastructure as costs and demands grow.

That's the sort of restraint the Alberta NDP has already forecast will translate into "cost cuts in an already cracking health and education system."

Smith is also further postponing her election promise of lowering personal income tax rates by a year, on account of shaky oil price forecasts.

To weather any criticism, Smith tees up her budget by urging Albertans to keep their eyes on a bigger, more distant prize: the promise that her government's longer-term plan can balloon the Heritage Fund to between $250 billion and $400 billion by 2050.

We're a few quantum leaps away from there. Alberta's long-term savings fund stood at $17.1 billion just two years ago. When inflation-adjusted, that's much weaker than the $12.7 billion that the fund's creator, former premier Peter Lougheed, left it at way back in 1985.

The latest oil-wealth bump helped Kenney and Smith pump more investment into it, and Smith told TV viewers its value will approach $25 billion in this budget year.