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“No, I don’t think so … no surprises there. I’ve seen a lot of it,” he said.

However, Education Minister David Eggen said the deficit in funding for schools was “quite astonishing.”

“You will see more on it in the coming days and weeks,” Eggen said following Wednesday’s meeting. “There’s some places where there’s more money than we might have thought, but certainly the overall budget is looking pretty lean.”

But PC Leader Ric McIver was skeptical and said he doubted if “ever in the history of democracy” an incoming government praised an outgoing government for its fiscal management.

“Mark me surprised if anybody in Alberta expected them to say anything other than: ‘It’s worse than we expected,’” he said. “It’s what you do in a new government. You lay blame on whoever was there before you so that you avoid accountability.”

The former PC government cooked the books to hide the true size of the province’s expenditures for three years

Wildrose critic Derek Fildebrandt said the New Democrats were likely the only Albertans who believed the PC budget that was introduced in April, but not passed before the May 5 election.

“The former PC government cooked the books to hide the true size of the province’s expenditures for three years now and nobody with any credibility believed them,” said the former Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

But Fildebrandt said the fiscal numbers presented by the NDP during the election campaign never added up in the first place.

“It means taxpayers are either going to have to pay higher taxes than the NDP promised during the campaign, or taxpayers are going to be saddled with even more debt, or the NDP are going to have to significantly moderate some of their spending promises,” he said.

Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark said Albertans should be told what numbers have changed.

“If, in fact, there is a crisis in Alberta, I’m willing to work with Premier Notley on a solution,” he said.

With files from Chris Varcoe and Reid Southwick, Calgary Herald