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“We are going to lay out our fiscal plan, we have a good track record,” the minister said. “For the one year we have been in government, we told them what we were going to do and we have delivered on that and so I will be using that as the leverage … to get them back.

“Ultimately we will be in a place that shows we are responsible, we are true to our word that we are delivering on what we put in our fiscal plan. That’s what they look at.”

A company running a huge budget deficit, without a defined plan to grow revenues and income while asking for its debt to be granted a higher rating, would likely get laughed out of bond rating agency offices.

The fact the government is streamlining 26 agencies and saving more than $300 million — while a tidy sum — is not a significant amount on a budget of almost $50 billion. It’s a rounding error.

“That’s the bigger issue for me. While we can be a shock absorber for a certain period of time at some point there has to be a conversation of how you bridge that $9-billion gap,” said Legge. “You can’t cut $9 billion and you can’t raise $9 billion. You have to find somewhere in the middle.

“What I saw that I liked was when he said, ‘there’s no PST (provincial sales tax) but if there are enough people telling me that we want to do something I am open to the conversation.’ So let’s find a way to open that conversation.”

Ceci did allude to being open to the sales tax discussion during the morning’s question and answer session. But asked later in the media scrum why the government was not hesitating to change legislation so it can increase the amount of money it can borrow, but would not do the same to institute a sales tax, he appeared to back track.

“I am not ready to do that. This government has said we will not do that. That commitment is pretty ironclad and we have to find other ways to make this happen,” Ceci told reporters.

What those ‘other ways’ look like, however, remains a mystery.

And that’s small comfort to Albertans, who may be relieved programs and services are not being cut but remain justifiably concerned about the province’s long-term economic prospects.

Deborah Yedlin is a Calgary Herald columnist

dyedlin@calgaryherald.com