The governments of Quebec and New Brunswick are the best about sticking to their spending plans, Alberta is among the worst, finds a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute.

The think tank introduced a nation-wide ranking of how well Canadian governments have kept their budget spending promises. All governments tended to spend more than they projected at budget time, it noted, saying that Quebec and New Brunswick have the best records on this front, with average overruns of less than 1%. The worst records belong to Alberta, the Yukon and Nunavut, with average overruns of 7%, 8%, and 9%, respectively. Collectively, they have spent $63.3 billion more than if they had simply respected their budget-time commitments.

This sort of overspending raises concerns about the accountability of legislators to their voters, according to the study. The ranking, unveiled in a speech today by CD Howe Institute president William Robson at the Economic Club of Toronto, concludes that legislators and citizens alike should insist that their governments exercise better discipline in hitting spending targets. They should also recognize that practices such as the “end-of-March burnoff” – the rush to spend at, or even after, the end of the fiscal year – have lasting negative effects on the taxes they pay and the public debts they must support.

The less reliable budget commitments have been in the past, the authors point out, the less confidence Canadians can have that governments will stick to them in the future – thus weakening a key link in the process of accountability to voters. Another key concern is that, as governments have become larger and more complicated, the ability of legislators to understand and control revenues and spending is increasingly under stress. This requires fresh efforts to improve the accountability of the executive to legislators, and of legislators to their voters.