Alberta’s auditor general says budget shortfall jeopardizes ability to do requested work

Alberta’s auditor general Doug Wylie says his office's budget will be $1.5 million short next fiscal year.

A legislative committee, with a majority of UCP MLAs, gave Wylie’s office just under $2.4 million in supplemental funding to finish out this year, but opted not to grant the full increase it had requested for 2026-27.

Wylie told CBC News he is disappointed and felt he was clear with the committee that his office had already taken voluntary cuts, and anything further would have consequences.

“The budget reduction is really going to jeopardize our ability to complete all the financial statement audits that have been requested of us,” he said.

The government requested that Wylie’s office audit eight new health-care agencies, as it broke up Alberta Health Services and restructured the province's health-care system.

The extra money, Wylie said, is needed for those audits, to pay mandated salary increases that the government approved, and to update software.

The Standing Committee on Legislative Offices, which approves budgets for legislature officers, including the auditor general, met Friday. Supplementary funding requests were part of the agenda.

During the meeting, UCP MLA Scott Cyr moved that the fiscal 2026 budget for the Office of the Auditor General be amended from almost $38 million to roughly $36.5 million.

The initial ask was a year-over-year increase of about 19 per cent, Cyr said. The amendment would result in a 14 per cent increase.

He noted that, during a presentation last week, Wylie had said he'd be able to do his core duties.

“Just finding efficiency, along with government, is something you would hope that our auditor general would strive to do,” Cyr said.

NDP members of the committee repeatedly said Friday that not giving the money amounts to a cut, because the requested budget accounts for costs the committee previously approved, that are baked into the office's work.

NDP MLA David Shepherd raised the issues Wylie’s office had in investigating, what he called, the government’s attempt to privatize community lab services. Wylie's report noted a lack of co-operation and obstruction of information by AHS and the provincial government.

Wylie’s audit into flood mitigation, one of eight auditor general reports released Thursday, also noted that the Department of Municipal Affairs denied access to records.

“If the government wants to reduce costs in [Wylie's] office, then maybe provide the documents he needs,” Shepherd said.

Wylie was granted $1 million extra in June for a probe into allegations, raised by former AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos in a court filing, about overpriced private health-care procurement contracts and possible government interference.

Wylie said that investigation remains a top priority.

“I am not going to let this [denied funding] distract me from the work that we need to do,” Wylie said.

“We are still going to be everybody-on-deck, 110 per cent; we're not modifying that at all and we will not be cutting any resources going to that work.”

None of the offices of the legislature,including Elections Alberta, received the total funding amount they requested for next year.