'Rachel Notley, Alberta’s first NDP premier, is smart and personable. But she took over government just as the province headed into a difficult oil-driven recession.She might have the intelligence of Lougheed and the likeability of Klein but she seems to have the luck of Getty and Stelmach.'

There is good news and bad news in the Alberta government’s third-quarter fiscal update released Wednesday.

The good news: the provincial deficit, originally pegged at almost $9 billion, will be closer to $7 billion.

The bad news: pretty much everything else.

This is not a good news update, to say the least. Even the good news is really not good.

The best the government could come up with for its fiscal update news release was, “Alberta’s deficit will drop below budget forecasts for the second year in a row as the province stays on track to balance in 2023-24.”

Put another way: the government is still running multi-billion annual deficits; the accumulated debt is $60 billion and on track to hit almost $100 billion by the time the budget is balanced in 2023-24; oil prices are soft; the province’s economic recovery is faltering; and there’s still no new energy pipeline in sight.

This is Alberta’s fiscal situation on the eve of a provincial election.

If there’s no overtly good news in the documents, there is some less-than-bad-news — but you have to dig to find it. And then you have to spin it.

Alberta, for example, has the lowest debt to GDP ratio in Canada. But that’s the kind of pointy headed comparison that brings a warm tingle to economists, not voters.

Alberta also has the lowest tax regime of any province in Canada. If we hiked our taxes to match British Columbia’s, we could collect another $11 billion a year in revenue (and wipe out that deficit).

On paper, Alberta’s overall fiscal picture is relatively rosy compared to other provinces.

But Alberta’s NDP is not running for re-election in debt-riddled Ontario or taxed-to-the-hilt Quebec.

It is running in a province where voters have been told over the years they can have low taxes, generous government spending, and balanced budgets.

It is running in a province where the official Opposition United Conservative Party is promising to scrap the carbon tax, find “efficiencies” in government spending without resorting to cuts, all the while balancing the budget.

There is so much fiction mixed in with the Opposition promises you have to wonder if novelist John Grisham is on the UCP staff. But this is the kind of whistling-past-the-graveyard campaign strategy that has worked so well in past Alberta elections.

There is something else at work here, too, that has determined the course of Alberta politics: Luck.

I’m not being flippant or facetious.

Alberta political fortunes have risen and fallen on what amounts to luck: namely, the price of oil and gas.

Alberta’s first Progressive Conservative premier, Peter Lougheed, rode an oil boom to fame and provincial fortune in the 1970s. Next came Don Getty who became so unpopular during an oil recession he lost his own seat in Edmonton in 1989. Ralph Klein was born under a lucky star. Not only did he personally win $100,000 in a lottery shortly after becoming premier, Klein had so much natural-gas money flowing into the provincial treasury he paid off the provincial debt and gave away more than a billion worth of “Ralph-bucks” to Albertans on a whim. His successor Ed Stelmach became premier just in time for the 2008 world financial crisis — and quit less than two years later.

Rachel Notley, Alberta’s first NDP premier, is smart and personable. But she took over government just as the province headed into a difficult oil-driven recession.

She might have the intelligence of Lougheed and the likeability of Klein but she seems to have the luck of Getty and Stelmach.

She arguably did everything right on the Trans Mountain pipeline file by introducing a climate leadership plan that convinced Prime Minister Trudeau to approve the project in 2016. But Trudeau has proven to be a troubled and at times fickle ally who has managed to alienate Albertans even after he spent $4.5 billion to buy Trans Mountain.

Just a few months ago Alberta was on track to have one of the fastest growing economies in Canada. Now, it’s near the bottom of the pack.

That’s in part due to Notley’s policy of restricting the amount of oil produced in Alberta. She wanted to increase the price Alberta receives for its landlocked oil. Ironically, the policy worked too well. The price rose so high that some companies said they couldn’t afford to ship oil by rail. Production has dropped to the point that the Conference Board of Canada released a report Wednesday predicting Alberta’s economic growth will slow to 1.3 per cent.

Notley has been trying to make her own luck through green energy initiatives to create jobs, progressive policies to protect workers, and an aggressive pro-pipeline stance to help the oil industry.

As the province’s third-quarter fiscal update would suggest, this is a not a government born under a lucky star.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.