FISCAL UPDATE HAD A GRAVE SIDE BUT WAS SCANT ON KEY DETAILS

Most journalists hate covering government fiscal updates.

They’re usually boring, full of intimidating numbers, and require listening to provincial economists wearily explain complicated concepts to reporters who consider math a sin.

For me, the updates are aggravating because they serve as little more than tedious pieces of historical fiction.

Take the NDP government’s most recent quarterly report, delivered Friday by Finance Minister Joe Ceci.

On paper, Alberta’s finances are edging toward the realm of hunky dory.

This year’s projected deficit is down 15 per cent to $7.5 billion. Government revenue is up. A total of 42,000 new jobs have been created since October 2017.

In reality, it’s a shame the report’s bright white pages aren’t made of self-shredding foolscap — if such a thing existed — because that’s how valuable the update is as a guide to where Alberta’s finances are headed.

The document is a snapshot of the past, a portal back to Sept. 30, when the province reached the halfway point in its 2018-19 fiscal year.

At that moment in time, the province’s financial trajectory definitely was on the upswing, with oil prices above projections, better than expected royalty revenue and more money coming in from income taxes.

But as most Albertans are aware, things have changed a wee bit in the past couple of months. In particular, much of the province’s oil is now fetching bargain-basement prices due to a lack of cheap transportation options (pipelines) to move out rising supplies.

The situation has become dire enough that Premier Rachel Notley is now seriously mulling mandatory production cuts for energy companies, and planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get the province into the railroad business to move oil.

All of which put Ceci in the odd situation of having to present a somewhat rosy financial document at the same time his government seems to be in fullon crisis mode.

It’s likely why the finance minister spent the first 30 seconds of his news conference glossing over the good news in the update, before switching over to the graver messaging of the past two weeks.

That messaging includes the assertion that low prices are a disaster in the making, costing the Canadian economy $80 million a day, and that Alberta deserves more help from Ottawa.

Still, while acknowledging continued low commodity rates will affect the province’s bottom line, Ceci insisted his government remains on track to a balanced budget by 2023-24.

But when asked to offer more detail, particularly a prognosis as to where royalty revenue and the deficit are headed, the minister balked.

“I’m not going to project what they’re going to be,” he said in a somewhat testy response to a reporter’s question.

“You’re talking about a different fiscal update at a different time. What I’m talking about is the first six months of the year, and I can tell you those first six months were good.”

Ceci apparently wants it both ways, asking Albertans to accept an emergency is at hand while simultaneously downplaying or avoiding details of the damage that emergency could cause.

With the minister refusing to fire up the crystal ball, others have been willing to do it for him.

Among them is United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney, who has estimated persistent sour prices could cost the provincial government more than $7 billion in revenue.

A Scotiabank economist report pegged the potential royalty shortfall at between $1.5 billion and $4.1 billion.

These are early predictions, but if losses do trend toward the upper end of those estimates, then the current projected deficit of $7.5 billion will seem like a dream.

Corporate and personal income revenue would similarly suffer, as would Alberta’s job gains.

The province’s touting of 42,000 new jobs over the past year is already somewhat misleading, obscuring the reality that the most recent months have brought job losses and a rising unemployment rate.

In one acknowledgment of the changing landscape, the fiscal update did show the province has revised its assumptions of the price differential Alberta’s oil suffers. That’s now forecast to average US$29.25, up nearly US$7 from budget time.

Opposition parties questioned if that adjustment is still too optimistic, while also bemoaning that government spending is pegged to be up $436 million from budget — even before the purchase of rail cars.

It’s understandable Ceci would not want to share projections of the crisis’s effect, to avoid giving the opposition more ammunition.

But at some point the information will have to come out.

That’s likely to be the thirdquarter fiscal update at the end of February, which could turn out to be even worse timing for the NDP since it may be on the eve of an election call. Mark the date on your calendars.

As government fiscal updates go, that one is shaping up to be a lot more compelling than usual.