To end homelessness, provincial and territorial governments need to adequately finance social spending—especially spending on affordable housing, social assistance, child benefits, and homelessness services. And any provincial government wanting to increase social spending needs a solid fiscal plan to get there.

Here are 10 things to know about the fiscal situations of Canada’s so-called ‘oil rich provinces,’ namely Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador:

This blog is based on a panel discussion (organized and chaired by Nick Falvo) at this year’s Annual Conference of the Canadian Economics Association. The following individuals spoke on the panel: Garry Sran (Slides PDF), Robin Shaban (Slides PDF), Nathan Jackson and Jason Childs (Slides PDF).

Nick Falvo is Director of Research and Data at Calgary Homeless Foundation.

The author wishes to thank the following individuals for invaluable assistance with this blog post: Vicki Ballance, Daniel Béland, Jason Childs, Keith Dunne, Nathan Jackson, Ali Jadidzadeh, Kara Layher, Lindsay Lenny, Janice MacKinnon, Mel McMillan, Kevin Milligan, Lars Osberg, Robin Shaban, Joel Sinclair, Garry Sran, Trevor Tombe and one anonymous source. Any errors lie with the author.

An earlier version of this blog post appeared here.

[1] See p. 38 of this document.

[2] Readers should note that the Notley government has already increased some taxes. See point #3 of this previous blog post.

[3] For a brief overview of Newfoundland and Labrador’s 2016 budget, see this article.