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Albertans may have to wait a few months to get a sense of what the specific financial plan will be for the new provincial government.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

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The former NDP government had been doing prep for its own possible budget in advance of the election, but now that we have a new government, with new priorities, we’re going to have to wait till probably the fall to see a fiscal plan.

But we know that Premier Jason Kenney and Finance Minister Travis Toews are off to a good start.

The pair announced this week a panel to do a deep dive on Alberta’s spending and come back with suggestions to get Alberta out of a deep, wide pool of red ink.

“Path to balance” was a phrase often used by former NDP finance minister Joe Ceci, but he never seemed keen to take a hard look at how we throw our money around.

That’s a key part of the equation if we want to get our books in order.

And, despite concerns that the UCP government will cut wildly, the panel Kenney and Toews have assembled comes with a range of voices, including former Liberal MLA Mike Percy and one-time Saskatchewan NDP finance minister Janice MacKinnon, who has her own experience with overcoming budget disaster.