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Alberta stands with its toes curled over the edge of a fiscal abyss.

The deficit is expected to hit the astonishing total of $10.4 billion in 2016-17. The federal shortfall, also ballooning, is now estimated at $18.4 billion.

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A province with four million people, in other words, is likely to have a deficit more than half as high as the entire country, which has 35 million people.

Every Albertan would have to pay $2,500 in EXTRA tax revenue to offset that deficit.

Wildrose calculates that if Ottawa’s deficit were as high a percentage of GDP as Alberta’s forecast, the federal shortfall would be $72 billion.

The $10.4-billion deficit would follow the one for the 2015-16 fiscal year, now forecast to be $6.3 billion.

Any way you jiggle this picture, it shows a province in dire trouble.

Only massive boosts in oil and gas revenues can ease this pain. Prices refuse to co-operate, and may not for a long time.