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How to Write a Budget Submission That Actually Gets Read
Why This Matters Now
February’s budget projected a $9.4 billion deficit for 2026-27. The first-quarter fiscal update on August 27 now forecasts a $2 billion surplus — an $11.4 billion swing. It is almost entirely one thing: the budget was built on oil at US$60.50, and oil has averaged closer to US$88, lifting resource revenue $9.7 billion above forecast.
Finance Minister Jason Nixon has been clear this is not found money. He warned against mistaking a temporary windfall for a permanent trend, and set out the rule plainly: the province will not commit temporary revenues to permanent expenses. But he also said where new money would go first — relief for businesses hit by U.S. tariffs or Canadian counter-tariffs, and possibly another round of energy rebates.
Read those two statements together and you have your strategy. There is room that was not there in February, the minister has named the arguments he is receptive to, and in that one sentence about temporary revenues he has told you the shape of ask he can say yes to: one-time and time-limited, rather than a permanent increase to a program’s base budget.
The time to act is now, not December. In recent years the written submission window for organizations has opened in mid-November and closed in mid-January, with a telephone town hall in early December and the budget tabled at the end of February. By the time that window opens, ministries have already built their business plans and Treasury Board has largely set the envelope. The submissions that succeed were in the building before the consultation started
The Steps
A practical guide to making your submission clear, credible and compelling.
Put the ask on the first page, in bold.
Not page three, behind the company history. Name the dollar figure, what it funds, and which fiscal year, in a single sentence a reader cannot miss:
We are requesting $4.2 million in 2027-28 to complete the rail spur at Fort Saskatchewan.
One ask. Not a list of five with the real one third from the top — a submission asking for everything reads as an organization that has not done its own prioritizing, and it invites the reader to do the choosing for you.
It helps to know who is actually reading. It is rarely the minister. It is an analyst who has to understand your request and then explain it accurately to someone else, usually in a paragraph, usually alongside a hundred others. Write the sentence you want them to repeat, and put it where they will find it in ten seconds.
State the problem, then your solution — and say why it is government’s to solve.
One paragraph each. The problem paragraph is about Alberta, not about you: what is not happening, who it affects, what it costs the province. The solution paragraph is where your organization appears. Reverse the order and it reads as a company looking for money; in the right order it reads as a company solving a government problem.
Then answer the question every analyst asks and most submissions skip: why is this government’s problem rather than the market’s, and why does it have to be solved now rather than in three years? If you cannot answer both, you have a business case, not a budget submission.
Anchor it to the government’s own words.
Ministry business plans and mandate letters are public. Find the outcome or priority initiative your ask advances, and quote it directly. This is not flattery. Someone inside has to justify your line item against commitments the government has already made, and if you have drawn that connection for them, they can lift it into a briefing note without doing the work themselves. That is often the difference between a file that moves and one that sits.
Mandate letters set out what the Premier has tasked each minister with. Read the one for the ministry your ask falls under, then read Treasury Board and Finance’s. Ministry business plans are published alongside each budget, and every ministry page on alberta.ca links to its own letter.
Bring numbers you can defend.
Jobs created and jobs sustained. Economic impact. Capital investment, yours and total. Money already committed by other levels of government or by private partners — matched funding is the strongest signal available that someone else has done diligence on you and was satisfied.
Every figure gets a source and a date. Every partner commitment gets a letter of support attached, signed, on letterhead. If other organizations share the problem, ask them to co-sign; a submission carrying four signatures is a different document than one carrying yours alone.
Then check that your narrative and your numbers agree. If the letter describes two new positions and the budget shows three, that inconsistency gets noticed, and it costs you the same credibility an inflated figure would.
Make it easy to say yes to.
Governments fund things they can announce. Before you send, ask what the announcement would sound like, who would stand at the podium, and whether it is something the government would be comfortable defending in question period. An ask that is technically sound but politically awkward loses to one that is merely sound.
This year, that means paying attention to the shape of the ask as much as the size. With the minister publicly cautious about treating a windfall as permanent, a one-time capital request or a defined multi-year commitment is a far easier yes than a permanent increase to an operating base
Two documents, and send them to the right people.
A two-page letter a minister can read in full, and a supporting package behind it an analyst can work through. The letter carries the ask, the problem, the solution, your three strongest numbers, and a list of what is attached. The business case, letters of support, financials and maps sit behind it. A single fifteen-page document gets skimmed by everyone and read by nobody.
Send it to Treasury Board and Finance, which runs the process. Copy the ministry whose mandate your ask falls under, because that is who gets asked whether it is a good idea. Copy your MLA. If the project touches two ministries, copy both — and say in the letter that you have, because it signals you understand how the decision actually gets made.
Write all of it on the assumption it could become public. Submissions from organizations are frequently published or released, and anything you would not want a competitor, a journalist, or a member of your own board to read should not be in there. If something genuinely must stay confidential, mark it clearly and separate it, with a reason.
Follow up on a schedule you set before you send.
Decide the dates now, not later: confirmation of receipt within a week, a meeting request within three, a check-in before the town hall, another in January. Put a name against each one, and set a sign-off deadline for the submission itself.
Sending and hoping is not a strategy — most submissions die in the silence afterward rather than on their merits. Ask honestly whether your ask needs more than a letter. If it needs a meeting, a coalition of members, or a coordinated push, build that now. You will not be able to assemble it in January.
THE MISTAKE MOST PEOPLE MAKE
Numbers that cannot survive a question. A jobs figure that turns out to be a consultant’s high scenario. A “committed” partner contribution that is really a conversation. An economic impact number with no methodology behind it. It almost never gets challenged in the room — it gets quietly discounted, along with everything else you wrote, and you never find out that is what happened. One figure you cannot back costs you the credibility of the four that were solid, and it costs you the next submission too.
The fix is cheap: before it goes, hand the draft to someone with no stake in it and ask them to attack it. Where does this number come from? What happens if you do not get the money? Why should the province pay for this? If the draft cannot survive a skeptical colleague over coffee, it will not survive an analyst who reads these for a living. And if the real number is smaller, use the real number — a modest ask supported by letters you can produce beats an ambitious one nobody can verify.
Where AEG Comes In
A word on what we do, and what we do not. AEG does not lobby individual member files. Our advocacy is for the overarching issues — the ones that come up again and again across the membership — and that is deliberate.
Where it does become ours is when several members are pushing on the same problem. Then we coordinate one submission carrying all of their names, and that is the part a business cannot do alone. The same request arriving five separate times reads as five companies looking for money. Arriving once with five signatures, it reads as a sector with a position, and it is considerably harder to set aside. If what you are dealing with is something you suspect others are dealing with too, tell us — that is exactly the kind of thing worth sharing.
We are striking policy committees shortly to work these ideas through — to establish what our sectors need most, and what our overarching advocacy issues will be. That work is grounded in three things: what members told us in the member survey, what we are hearing on the listening tour, and a clear read of the Alberta business landscape as it stands today. If the submission you are preparing touches something you believe is bigger than your own file, tell us before those committees sit.
For your own file, what we can do is help you get it heard. Tips and tricks like the ones above. Which ministry actually owns your issue, and when they are building their business plan — usually earlier than people expect.
And if what you need is someone to carry the file for you, several of our members do that work professionally, and do it well. Ask and we will point you to them.