Other provinces that just live off AB payments are just welfare bums.
Without AB money they would freeze in the dark !!
I can't believe that knowledge can run so backwards... although, come to think of it, Europe was on the verge of an industrial revolution before it slipped into the dark-ages, so I guess it's possible.
In case you didn't know, back in the 60's Alberta was keenly aware that it would be hooped when it ran out of oil.
That's why the Socred government of the day had a policy of letting out only as much oil as was required to balance the provincial budget in order to provide all the services that people wanted (in those days, the big "social service" issue was roads).
But the Lougheed family, with huge investments in Imperial Oil, wanted to be more rich than they already were, so they go their boy Peter to run for Premier on the promise that if they opened the taps, they would save money in the Alberta Heritage Trust Fund, and would pay for social services with the interest.
Of course, when you have a pile of money sitting there like that, the mediocre people incapable of being creative and inventive and industrial but with an ability to get into power will just gut it, and that's what happened.
Now Alberta is out of the liquid oil, and is down to pillaging tar-sands.
If the original 60's Socred Government had stayed in power, their policy would have enabled Alberta's liquid oil to last 300 years. Under the Lougheed government with Peter's family's investments in Imperial oil, the easily extractable stuff ran out in 30 years, and now the tar-sands are being dug up.
When that's gone, Alberta will go back to being what it used to be... the poorest province in Canada.
My goodness... wouldn't that be a great time to be "independent".
I bet (odds ten to one) you don't know that during the Great Depression a lot of Albertans survived on donations of carrots and potatoes shipped to them by charitable British Columbians. Why would they want to do that if you've declared outrageous independence?
Further, you think being landlocked is not a problem?
Ha.
Did you know it costs more to ship wheat by rail from Alberta to the ports in Vancouver than it costs to ship that wheat by sea down through the Panama canal and all the way to Europe?
Some Albertans in the 70's were aware of that, and tried to talk the province into investing in an airship transport system in order to get around the problem of being landlocked, but there were no visionaries in government at the time. At the time, there were only shareholders of oil companies in power, incapable of visualizing anything other than the bottom line of their dividend reports.
I've decided you can't be serious, and you're just saying the stuff you're saying in order to provoke an argument, and what the h-ll does it have to do with Quebec?