The Province of Alberta is showing some fiscal growth despite the impacts of the wildfire season.
Finance Minister Nate Horner says the fire situation has used quite a bit of money in their contingency fund.
“About $980 million of the $1.5 billion contingency has either been spent or is earmarked for wildfire. $750 million in presuppression and response for wildfire. In years past, they may have just shown the actual money spent in a first quarter report like this.”
Horner says by the end of July they had spent $514 million on wildfires.
“We’ve earmarked it and left some room out to $750 million to get us to the end of the season and there’s $175 million in the disaster response program provincially. We think we may get up to $75 million of that back from the federal government over time and then another $55 million almost entirely to support evacuees through evacuation payments.”
In his first quarter update, Horner said the province is on track to record a $2.4-billion surplus at the end of 2023-24 fiscal year.
He says the surplus is $94 million higher than forecast in Budget 2023.
We asked a couple of questions to the minister during his update today.
Based on the first quarter update, Alberta plans to eliminate $2.6 billion in taxpayer-supported debt this fiscal year.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
