An actual question that Albertans might ask themselves:
Why does Norway have an oil wealth fund now worth $2 _Trillion and Alberta does not?
Is it the same reason that the UK doesn't have an oil wealth fund the same size as Norway's even though UK and Norway share the _very _same NorthSea oil field?
Is it because Alberta and UK -- both led by "Conservatives" -- sold their oil rights for a pittance and used the proceeds to buy votes, while Norway negotiated steely-eyed royalties and funneled them into a fund now worth over $340 k per Norwegian citizen?
With Alberta:
- current value of Alberta's Heritage Trust: $32 billion.
- finishing TMX cost $35 Billion in _Canadian taxpayer cash -- purely for Alberta's benefit.
- TMX "2.0" will likely cost $50 Billion in _Canadian taxpayer cash -- again, purely for Alberta's benefit.
- Alberta will be asking _Canadian taxpayers to help pay the many Billions needed to clean up its orphaned oil wells, instead of charging it to the subsidised, multi-billions-in-profit oil companies who created them in the first place.
Had Alberta managed its oil the way Lougheed planned, then by now Alberta could've had a Heritage Trust on par with Norway's wealth fund -- turning Alberta into a true economic powerhouse. The interest generated from such Trillon-dollar trust could have covered Alberta's public needs -- including building more pipelines if necessary.
Instead, after Lougheed, Alberta Conservatives cut royalties and spent the reduced proceeds on buying votes.
You are correct, but as the Vertical Dispatch also correctly points out, that is but one of the particulars. In logic, to move from the particular to the universal is fallacious, you can only logically move from the universal to the particular. Socrates' syllogism. I suspect there are more than 9 particulars, certainly historically, that combined have brought Alberta to where it is today.
It might be instructive, when attempting to sort this all out historically, to compare the political evolution in Alberta with that of Saskatchewan. Both created by the federal government in 1905, both at the time, lightly populated and largely agricultural. Yet by the mid-century, the Social Credit were in power in Alberta, and the CCF in power in Saskatchewan. Almost literally at oposite ends of the political spectrum, even though both had significant roots in Chritian theology.
How to explain the difference? Well, one very significant difference was the discovery of oil in Turner Valley in 1914, followed by Leduc in 1947. Sociologically, economically, and politically, one might reasonably deduce all sorts of particulars from those discoveries that taken together, have brought Alberta to where it is today.
And yes, that really does require a thoroughly-researched book. I know who I would like to see write that book, but it's not me.
An actual question that Albertans might ask themselves:
Why does Norway have an oil wealth fund now worth $2 _Trillion and Alberta does not?
Is it the same reason that the UK doesn't have an oil wealth fund the same size as Norway's even though UK and Norway share the _very _same NorthSea oil field?
Is it because Alberta and UK -- both led by "Conservatives" -- sold their oil rights for a pittance and used the proceeds to buy votes, while Norway negotiated steely-eyed royalties and funneled them into a fund now worth over $340 k per Norwegian citizen?
With Alberta:
- current value of Alberta's Heritage Trust: $32 billion.
- finishing TMX cost $35 Billion in _Canadian taxpayer cash -- purely for Alberta's benefit.
- TMX "2.0" will likely cost $50 Billion in _Canadian taxpayer cash -- again, purely for Alberta's benefit.
- Alberta will be asking _Canadian taxpayers to help pay the many Billions needed to clean up its orphaned oil wells, instead of charging it to the subsidised, multi-billions-in-profit oil companies who created them in the first place.
Had Alberta managed its oil the way Lougheed planned, then by now Alberta could've had a Heritage Trust on par with Norway's wealth fund -- turning Alberta into a true economic powerhouse. The interest generated from such Trillon-dollar trust could have covered Alberta's public needs -- including building more pipelines if necessary.
Instead, after Lougheed, Alberta Conservatives cut royalties and spent the reduced proceeds on buying votes.
You are correct, but as the Vertical Dispatch also correctly points out, that is but one of the particulars. In logic, to move from the particular to the universal is fallacious, you can only logically move from the universal to the particular. Socrates' syllogism. I suspect there are more than 9 particulars, certainly historically, that combined have brought Alberta to where it is today.
It might be instructive, when attempting to sort this all out historically, to compare the political evolution in Alberta with that of Saskatchewan. Both created by the federal government in 1905, both at the time, lightly populated and largely agricultural. Yet by the mid-century, the Social Credit were in power in Alberta, and the CCF in power in Saskatchewan. Almost literally at oposite ends of the political spectrum, even though both had significant roots in Chritian theology.
How to explain the difference? Well, one very significant difference was the discovery of oil in Turner Valley in 1914, followed by Leduc in 1947. Sociologically, economically, and politically, one might reasonably deduce all sorts of particulars from those discoveries that taken together, have brought Alberta to where it is today.
And yes, that really does require a thoroughly-researched book. I know who I would like to see write that book, but it's not me.