Ceci’s fiscal report contains some good news. However...

It’s not that there’s no good news in the Alberta government’s latest fiscal announcement.

It’s just that for every bit of good news, there’s equal and opposite bad news. It’s like Newton’s third law of motion for fiscal updates.

In this case, the good news/bad news update is the government’s final report for the 2017-18 fiscal year that ended March 31.

Finance Minister Joe Ceci released the numbers on Thursday.

The good news: the provincial deficit ended up being $2.5 billion less than originally forecast in the 2017-18 provincial budget.

The bad news: the deficit was still huge at $8 billion.

The good news: Alberta’s economy grew by 4.9 per cent the past year, the best rate in the country.

The bad news: despite that growth, the province is still climbing out of the fiscal hole created by the 2015 recession — we won’t be back to pre-recession GDP levels until 2019.

The good news: government revenue was $2.4 billion higher than forecast.

The bad news: half that increase was thanks to higher prices for oil and gas (meaning we’re still on the resource-revenue roller coaster).

Even though the province added 90,000 jobs last year, not all Albertans are feeling the economic recovery. Alberta’s unemployment rate is dropping — it was 6.2 per cent in May (down from 6.7 per cent in April) — but the rate is 7.7 per cent in Calgary.

“While we’re happy to see our economy on the right track forward, we know the economic recovery has yet to reach every kitchen table in this province — and for us an economic recovery that doesn’t reach every kitchen table is no recovery at all,” said Ceci. “That’s why we’re going to keep fighting to make sure the Trans Mountain pipeline gets built.”

Ah, yes, Trans Mountain. Listen to an Alberta cabinet minister long enough and he or she will mention the pipeline.

It is the government’s great hope, the $7-billion project (soon to be owned by the federal government) that will boost Alberta’s revenue, jobs and NDP government.

But it remains tantalizingly out of reach. Construction has yet to begin on the expansion project.

Ceci said he asked his federal counterpart, Bill Morneau, at a meeting of finance ministers in Ottawa on Tuesday when shovels are going in the ground.

“He told me that his expectation was that it would be restarted shortly,” said Ceci, who didn’t get a definition of what “shortly” meant.

(The federal government might be waiting for a ruling from the Federal Court of Appeal. The court is reviewing a legal challenge to the pipeline from a group of First Nations who argue the federal cabinet was wrong to approve the project. A decision is expected, um, shortly.)

Ceci also used the finance ministers’ meeting to push Morneau to make changes to the federal fiscal stabilization program designed to help provinces hit by a dramatic year-over-year decline in revenue.

Alberta received a one-time payment of $251 million under the program in 2016. But that was a drop in the bucket compared to the $6.5 billion the province lost in resource royalties when the recession hit.

Ceci told Morneau the program’s formula needs to be changed so hard-hit provinces get more money.

“He said that he would get his officials to look into it and I will continue to press this, to stand up for Alberta,” said Ceci.

Yes, but how would modifying the fiscal stabilization fund help Alberta, now that our economy is improving?

“It may help other provinces in the future,” said Ceci, not answering the question. Or rather, I suppose, implying it won’t help Alberta.

When asked by journalists whether he raised his concerns over the federal equalization program at the meeting, Ceci said he did, along with other “have” provinces including Saskatchewan and Newfoundland.

But it would seem those talks went nowhere. Rather than answer the question directly, Ceci attacked Jason Kenney, leader of Alberta’s United Conservative Party. Ceci said Kenney is being a hypocrite for criticizing the equalization program today even though Kenney was part of a federal Conservative government that introduced the equalization formula.

“The UCP leader had a hand in creating those, the things he’s complaining about today,” said Ceci. “He had a hand in creating them and not changing them and leaving this province bereft.”

But, the good news: the province is less bereft than it was just a year ago.