Alberta's big budget question: What to do with the torrent of cash flooding provincial coffers

Say it slowly: Twenty. Eight. Billion. Dollars.

It's a staggering sum of money, when you think about it.

If you were able to sock away $10,000 per day, each and every day, it would take you more than 7,600 years to amass that much cash.

Thanks to oil and gas, the Government of Alberta only needs one.

Provincial revenues from royalties (and other related fees) are expected to total $28.1 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends March 31. Even accounting for inflation, that is by far the province's largest annual haul from its bountiful, non-renewable resources.

"It's really difficult to overstate how big these numbers are," said Trevor Tombe, an economist with the University of Calgary.

It's also difficult to wrap your mind around. Such vast sums of money are so far beyond most people's day-to-day experience, they can almost lose meaning.

Albertans are accustomed to booms and busts, so this may seem like just another ride on the resource rollercoaster. But even by those standards, this latest upswing has been especially huge, and it's come at breakneck speed.

With a new provincial budget due out Tuesday, a key question will be: What to do with all this extra cash?

To help make sense of just how much money the province is now working with — and how quickly its fortunes have turned around — here are five key things to understand about the current royalty ride.

Two years ago, Alberta's finances were looking very, very different.

When the government released its 2021-22 budget, it expected just $2.9 billion in non-renewable resource revenue for the fiscal year.

What actually happened blew those expectations out of the water: the province raked in an eye-popping $16.2 billion over the ensuing 12 months.

"We've never seen that kind of a massive swing before," said Tombe.