{"id":483368,"date":"2026-02-18T16:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T16:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483368\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T16:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T16:40:08","slug":"albertas-smith-set-to-give-tv-address-ahead-of-provincial-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483368\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta&#8217;s Smith set to give TV address ahead of provincial budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she will give a television address on Thursday, a week <a href=\"https:\/\/calgary.citynews.ca\/2026\/02\/03\/alberta-sets-budget-date-for-feb-26-warns-will-be-tough-one-amid-global-uncertainty\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">ahead of the provincial budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Smith announced there would be a TV address at an unrelated news conference in\u00a0Calgary.<\/p>\n<p>She didn\u2019t share what would be discussed, and a spokesman for the premier\u2019s office says details would come later.<\/p>\n<p>In one of her last major public addresses, Smith promised a referendum on provincial separation if citizens gathered enough signatures on a petition.<\/p>\n<p>Finance Minister Nate Horner is scheduled to deliver the budget on Feb. 26.<\/p>\n<p>The province is projecting a $6.4-billion deficit when the fiscal year ends in March, representing a massive multibillion-dollar swing from an $8.3-billion surplus the year prior.<\/p>\n<p>Smith has said Albertans should expect a tough budget with \u201csignificant\u201d deficits, as the province grapples with low oil prices, but has ruled out tax hikes and deep service cuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she will give a television address on Thursday, a week ahead of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-483368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}