🤠💸There’s a baked-in analysis in every Alberta provincial budget that is impossible to ignore: Alberta relies too much on revenues from oil and gas royalties to fund the daily operations of government. daveberta.substack.com/p/nate-horne...

New Abacus Data polling shows the Liberals at 44% compared with 38% for the Conservatives. Approval stands at 52%, and turnout intensity boosts the Liberal margin to 8 points among likely voters. The fundamentals remain firmly in their favour. Details: abacusdata.ca/new-abacus-...

local AB niche post: this after-hours move is a +$4.5B move for the Alberta treasury (if sustained for a year)

👀 Alberta’s $9.4B budget deficit is going to evaporate this week if oil rockets up to $100/barrel.

Analysts say there's an 11% crude oil price increase coming Monday and — if the war continues and shipping is disrupted in the Strait of Hormuz — a return to $100/barrel is in the cards. OPEC has declining capacity to up production. www.rbccm.com/en/insights/... m.investing.com/news/commodi...

Regionally, Liberals lead comfortably in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, and Ontario. BC is competitive. Alberta and the Prairies remain strongly Conservative. Age and gender continue to divide the electorate in familiar ways. Details: abacusdata.ca/new-abacus-...

It’s impossible to overstate how important Edmonton Opera is to Alberta’s capital city. I’m honoured to host the annual Dianne Kipnes Valentine’s Gala, surrounded by hundreds of committed arts philanthropists. Check out the 2026/27 season at edmontonopera.com. See you at the opera! 🎶 #yeg #yegarts

Three tankers damaged in Gulf as US-Iran conflict escalates reut.rs/3MNfE3j

If you spend time in the bad place, you’re hearing this claim a lot: Alberta sends $23B more to Ottawa than it gets back. If we separated, we’d erase the $9B deficit and have a $14B surplus. It sounds simple. It’s wrong. Here's why. 🧵

Save the date for May 1st for a special weekend in Edmonton with @colville-andersen.com www.michaeljanz.ca/cityhalltalk3

Also, Albertans DO NOT like to be told that this is what causes their fiscal troubles. Jim Prentice tried and was booted out on his ass for it.

The other baked-in part of the analysis is what Albertans want: well-funded public services without having to pay more taxes for them. From a first glance, it sure looks like that’s what Albertans got in Minister of Finance Nate Horner’s budget tabled yesterday in the Legislature.

🤠💸There’s a baked-in analysis in every Alberta provincial budget that is impossible to ignore: Alberta relies too much on revenues from oil and gas royalties to fund the daily operations of government. daveberta.substack.com/p/nate-horne...

I’d like people to hear this interview bc I’m probably the only person who’s going to read and interpret these 1000s of emails to convey what’s been happening inside the health authority responsible for supervised consumption sites since 2024.

Nobody expected UCP Finance Minister Nate Horner to deliver an NDP budget, but yesterday he did! albertapolitics.ca/2026/02/nobo...

The BC NDP are trying to follow the same route but with mining and LNG. #bcpoli

Alberta exceptionalism is as big a myth as American exceptionalism. We have oil. A geographic and geologic lottery. 50 years of government mismanagement has pissed those lottery winnings away. Now... we'll pay the piper.

Hey remember when we had the fastest growing renewable sector in North America which employed 1000s of people and was over a billion dollar industry annually?

Good read.

I've lived in Alberta since 1972. Every time oil prices drop we hear talk of diversifying the economy. As soon as prices go up, it's forgotten. We can't get off the roller coaster until that happens. #abpoli

No one puts it better than Janet Brown. Albertans aren’t conservative, they’re tax averse.

The other baked-in part of the analysis is what Albertans want: well-funded public services without having to pay more taxes for them. From a first glance, it sure looks like that’s what Albertans got in Minister of Finance Nate Horner’s budget tabled yesterday in the Legislature.

"At $83.9 billion, this is a record spending budget in Alberta. The budget also pushes the government’s debt over the $100 billion mark for the first time in the province’s history — another thing Conservatives in Alberta used to say they would never do." Also, "Consecutive budget deficits". Wow.

🤠💸There’s a baked-in analysis in every Alberta provincial budget that is impossible to ignore: Alberta relies too much on revenues from oil and gas royalties to fund the daily operations of government. daveberta.substack.com/p/nate-horne...

Who is ready for some charts. *Debt to rise $17.9B (up to $128.7B) *Per capita inflation adju spending $15.9K in 24/25, $16.2K in 25/26 *WTI forecast US$60.50 (down US$10 from budget) *Expenses to rise 12% ($88.4B) in next 3 years *Revenue to rise 8% ($81.5B) over same time #ableg #abpoli

Lots of chew on in today’s Alberta budget announcement. I’m planning to have a column out tonight on Daveberta. 🤠💸

🟥 The 3-MP Alberta Liberal Caucus.

🟧 Upcoming Alberta NDP candidate nomination meetings March 3: Edmonton-Glenora March 4: Calgary-Elbow March 5: Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview March 6: Calgary-Klein March 7: Calgary-Edgemont March 20: Calgary-Mountain View 1/2

🤠 Postmedia columnist Don Braid weighs in and grabs a few quotes from my latest Daveberta column. calgaryherald.com/opinion/colu...

This column is getting a lot of readers and generating some very interesting DMs and text messages today. 👀

"They've all told me the same bullshit. They all try to good ol' boy me. They try to glad-hand me like I'm an idiot." @corblund.bsky.social pulls no punches on politicians & coal mining in the Rockies. 👀 FULL: rtrj.info/022326Corb 🎧: rtrj.info/022326 www.waternotcoal.ca youtu.be/XCCqMtgc7VM?...

Rakhi Pancholi is whip-smart and has a ruthless prosecutorial-style that allows her to easily poke holes in UCP talking points. She took centre stage, again, last week as the NDP’s designated hitter to respond to Danielle Smith's nine referendum questions.

i agree with daveberta on nenshi's absenteeism, but i would note that we can't glean much from the polling. by running nenshi, the NDP is locking in to "yeg goes orange, rural AB goes blue, and calgary picks the winner". so they just have to win the FPTP race, which is a much better race for them.

New Angus Reid poll finds federal Liberals have a 13-point national lead over the CPC (45% to 32%). In Alberta, Liberal support has reachede 40%, just 4% behind the CPC.

This column is getting a lot of readers and generating some very interesting DMs and text messages today. 👀

Rakhi Pancholi is whip-smart and has a ruthless prosecutorial-style that allows her to easily poke holes in UCP talking points. She took centre stage, again, last week as the NDP’s designated hitter to respond to Danielle Smith's nine referendum questions.

Mark Carney Approval Polling Among: 18-34 Year Olds: 🟢 Approve: 57% ⚫️ Disapprove: 37% 35-49 Year Olds: 🟢 Approve: 65% ⚫️ Disapprove: 32% 50-64 Year Olds: 🟢 Approve: 63% ⚫️ Disapprove: 31% 65+ Year Olds: 🟢 Approve: 68% ⚫️ Disapprove: 28% Liaison / Feb 21, 2026

The data centre will consume as much electricity as the city of Edmonton. #ableg thenarwhal.ca/olds-alberta...

Alberta immigration trends and Danielle Smith's rhetoric: a visual timeline.

For those who were asking, here is the video of the talk that I delivered in Red Deer (in a snowstorm) last week to the Council of Canadians about Alberta Separatism. www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0bl...

US announces plans to deploy a hospital ship to Greenland, claiming its people are sick and have no access to healthcare (they have free public healthcare) Later same day, Danish military does emergency evac of US naval officer from a submarine and transfers them to a hospital in Nuuk

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people local newspaper reporters are rarified elites instead of ink-stained wretches driving their Honda Civic to a crime scene so you know don’t have to rely on Nextdoor and the police press release.

I just hope they all had fun. They played well and made us proud. 🇨🇦

The US goalie is very good.

Working on a new politics column about [points to everything happening in Alberta politics right now] that I hope to publish in the next few days. I’m also working on a fun new project that I think Daveberta subscribers will enjoy that I’m hoping to roll out in a few weeks (more on this soon 👀).

Wild stat I found: 9 referendums (plus 10 for separation) means that on one October day, Alberta will have more ballot measures than in all 121 Alberta years before that. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Premier Danielle Smith said she doesn't know how much newcomers cost Alberta’s health care and education systems, despite scheduling a referendum to ask whether social services to those residents shd be limited b/c of cost www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alber... By @mattscace.bsky.social and friend

There’s a lot to unpack in Danielle Smith’s TV address last night, and I’ll have a column out on that soon, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the very first column I published on the Daveberta substack back in September 2022. daveberta.substack.com/p/danielle-s...

Net migration in Alberta. Up, up, up, down, down, down. Net international migration to Alberta totalled 197 in Q3 2025, down 99% from 32,046 in the same quarter a year prior.

The hidden costs of political uncertainty are high. We can see that in Canada's job market today. And there's a lesson for those who view Alberta separatism as a costless protest vote. It isn't. My latest for @TheHubCanada: thehub.ca/2026/02/19/... #cdnecon #cdnpoli