"The province is facing a fiscal crisis because of a sudden drop in the price of oil. Isn’t this territory as familiar as the back of our hands? Oh, the causes might be new — the COVID-19 virus playing havoc with stock markets as a spat between Russia and Saudi Arabia wreaks chaos with oil prices — but the territory looks sickeningly familiar."

Premier Jason Kenney says Alberta is in “uncharted territory” because of the fiscal crisis facing the province.

But is this really uncharted territory for Albertans?

I mean, the province is facing a fiscal crisis because of a sudden drop in the price of oil. Isn’t this territory as familiar as the back of our hands?

Oh, the causes might be new — the COVID-19 virus playing havoc with stock markets as a spat between Russia and Saudi Arabia wreaks chaos with oil prices — but the territory looks sickeningly familiar.

We have been down this road so many times it has developed ruts.

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Alberta has a long and ignoble history of budgeting for high oil and gas prices — only to see them abruptly fall over a cliff. And then have the government-of-the-day claim the province is facing an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response.

“All options will be on the table, I repeat, all options will be on the table to do everything that we can in our capacity to help protect jobs and Albertans,” Kenney told reporters in Calgary this week. “We are in uncharted territory.”

This is remarkably similar to the agitated message in 2001 from then-premier Ralph Klein when Alberta faced a budget crisis after the 9/11 attacks: “Everything’s on the table. Let’s, if we’re going to think outside of the box, then let’s consider everything.”

Klein raised taxes on alcohol and tobacco (and tried to pass them off as “user fees”) and mused about borrowing from the province’s Heritage Savings Trust Fund.

In 2008, then-premier Ed Stelmach faced a fiscal emergency when the price of oil plummeted — from almost $150 a barrel in the summer to about $30 in the winter — because of the world economic crisis.

Stelmach promised to get spending under control by, among other things, targeting salaries for public sector workers.

But Stelmach and Klein never talked about overhauling the province’s tax regime so that Albertans weren’t chronically suffering from fiscal whiplash because of the boom-bust nature of energy prices. Not that the government wasn’t constantly warned by economists and others.

In May of 2008, for example, a C.D. Howe report argued the province needed to put aside much more money every year to meet the needs of future generations.

“The province must now begin an aggressive savings policy if it wishes to sustain a constant level of per capita expenditure in the future,” said the report.

Stelmach never did that, neither did any premier after him. Alberta has tended to spend like drunken sailors during the good times and panic like drowning sailors during the bad.

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The NDP government of Rachel Notley did try to do something different when faced with a collapse in oil prices in 2015. It began borrowing billions of dollars a year to build infrastructure projects, reasoning that it made good economic sense to borrow while interest rates were low to help create jobs and construct new roads, bridges and hospitals.

But Conservative politicians, including Kenney, relentlessly attacked the NDP for running large annual deficits that had the province on track to hit a $100 billion accumulated debt.

And now what is Kenney thinking of doing just two weeks after his government tabled its new provincial budget?

“Our priority is protecting jobs. Our priority is protecting the economy. And if that means that in the mid-term we need to borrow money to make that happen, we will do so,” declared Kenney this week.

Call him a pragmatist, call him a hypocrite, call him a politician. Kenney is now sounding very much like his political nemesis, Rachel Notley.

He’s looking at borrowing and spending money during the bad times, working more closely with the federal Liberals and has even done the former New Democrat premier one step better by musing about investing government money in the oil sands.

At this rate you have to wonder if Kenney will replace the province’s official song, “Alberta,” with “The Internationale.”

Kenney has reached out to Notley to work together: “We need to try to park the politics,” he said. “This is not a time for partisan politics, this is a time for unity.”

This is what politicians usually say when they’re in trouble and have no workable plan to get themselves out.

It sounds like a reasonable request during a health emergency. But how often has Kenney, a tireless political scrapper, ever parked the politics when an opponent was vulnerable?

Notley has ratcheted down the rhetoric a bit but has demanded Kenney scrap his now-outdated two-week-old budget — and admit his budget was always based on fantasy.

You could argue she’s playing politics. Just as you could argue Kenney is using this most recent crisis as cover for a never-achievable promise to balance the budget in two years.

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A panicked Alberta premier is in trouble over a fiscal crisis as the opposition gleefully pours on the blame.

This territory is all too familiar to Albertans.

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