Alberta debt plan risks financial future, Wildrose says

The Wildrose Party says Premier Alison Redford is risking Alberta's financial future by planning to borrow billions of dollars without a plan to pay it back.

Wildrose leader Danielle Smith says the Conservative government's intention to borrow $17 billion by 2016 to pay for infrastructure could easily balloon to $40 billion under legislation governing how much it can borrow.

Smith says without a plan to pay it back, the interest payments soon begin eating into operational spending, putting day-to-day programs and front-line care at risk.

Smith made the comments after her party released its alternative budget to the Tories' 2013 fiscal spending plan.

The Wildrose says the true deficit this year is about $5.5 billion, almost three times what the government claims.

Smith says her government could cut that figure in half by prioritizing capital projects, reducing the size of government and ending government support for speculative public-private ventures like carbon capture and storage.