The province is currently over $12 billion (link is external) in debt and is projected to run a budget deficit of $500 million this year, the seventh consecutive year in the red for a province that prides itself on having a sharp fiscal pencil.
Resource prices often go through boom and bust cycles, and this is certainly not the first in Alberta, as evidenced by a certain iconic bumper sticker. (link is external) Yet to fully grasp Canada's colossal lost opportunity, we need to look toward our Norwegian neighbours.
Norway, like Canada, was scaling up its petroleum industry in the early 1970s. It endured the same cyclical rides in resource pricing, and negotiated terms with many of the same foreign companies.
Yet Norway now has over $1 trillion socked away (link is external) in its sovereign wealth fund, a dedicated repository of all petroleum revenues. Even if oil was worth nothing tomorrow, the country would still have no public debt, fully funded social programs that we can only dream of, and a very large nest egg to transition to a new economy.
So where is our nest egg? The Alberta Heritage Fund was started almost 15 years before the Norwegian oil fund, yet the province has not contributed a dime of resource revenues since 1987. This moribund fund has only two per cent of the value of Norway's pile of cash, which is now the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
The difference is what Alberta had that Norway didn't have. The Norwegians didn't have Ralph Klein. They didn't have Ed "Special Ed" Stelmach. They didn't have Alison Redford and they sure as hell didn't have Sideshow Steve Harper or Joe Oliver. They also were spared the sophomoric and ultimately self-destructive ideology these morons inflict on all and sundry in their rush to maximize bitumen extraction at any cost.
Ignoring the oilsands altogether, Alberta has produced 18 per cent more conventional crude and natural gas than has Norway, and the province didn't have to venture hundreds of kilometres into the North Sea to get it.
Alberta's Debt Clock
Canada's National Debt Clock : The Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Resource prices often go through boom and bust cycles, and this is certainly not the first in Alberta, as evidenced by a certain iconic bumper sticker. (link is external) Yet to fully grasp Canada's colossal lost opportunity, we need to look toward our Norwegian neighbours.
Norway, like Canada, was scaling up its petroleum industry in the early 1970s. It endured the same cyclical rides in resource pricing, and negotiated terms with many of the same foreign companies.
Yet Norway now has over $1 trillion socked away (link is external) in its sovereign wealth fund, a dedicated repository of all petroleum revenues. Even if oil was worth nothing tomorrow, the country would still have no public debt, fully funded social programs that we can only dream of, and a very large nest egg to transition to a new economy.
So where is our nest egg? The Alberta Heritage Fund was started almost 15 years before the Norwegian oil fund, yet the province has not contributed a dime of resource revenues since 1987. This moribund fund has only two per cent of the value of Norway's pile of cash, which is now the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
The difference is what Alberta had that Norway didn't have. The Norwegians didn't have Ralph Klein. They didn't have Ed "Special Ed" Stelmach. They didn't have Alison Redford and they sure as hell didn't have Sideshow Steve Harper or Joe Oliver. They also were spared the sophomoric and ultimately self-destructive ideology these morons inflict on all and sundry in their rush to maximize bitumen extraction at any cost.
Ignoring the oilsands altogether, Alberta has produced 18 per cent more conventional crude and natural gas than has Norway, and the province didn't have to venture hundreds of kilometres into the North Sea to get it.
Alberta's Debt Clock
Canada's National Debt Clock : The Canadian Taxpayers Federation
