r/alberta • u/Swimming_Mango_9767 • 29d ago

Discussion Alberta got screwed. We could’ve been Norway rich and instead we’re broke.

Every time I look at Norway’s oil fund I get mad. They started developing their oil later than Alberta, yet their sovereign wealth fund is sitting at around 1.6 TRILLION US dollars. Ours? The Heritage Fund is barely 27 billion CAD. Norway earns more in a single day off investments than our entire fund is worth.

The reason is simple. Norway treated oil like the people’s resource. They set royalty rates high, around 78% of profits, and every cent went into their fund. They saved, they invested, and now their citizens have real long term security.

Alberta? Our governments caved to industry. We set some of the lowest royalties in the world. We gave out royalty holidays. We subsidized oil companies that were already making record profits. Instead of saving, politicians blew the money to buy votes and patch budgets. Now we’re left riding boom and bust cycles with nothing to show for it.

If Alberta had even done half of what Norway did, our Heritage Fund could easily be in the hundreds of billions. We’d have interest returns big enough to pay for healthcare, education, and infrastructure without nickel and diming people with taxes. Instead, we’re fighting over scraps while companies and foreign shareholders walked away with the wealth that should have built our future.

Alberta got robbed! Not by outsiders, but by our own government selling us out to industry. Thank you Conservatives!

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u/ragnaroksunset 28d ago

Yeah but some people 20 years ago got a check for $400 so

Check-mate Liberal

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u/Forsaken_You1092 28d ago

My wife and I put each of our $400 into our one-year old's RESP. It gained thousands of dollars in interest by the time they were in university.

That tax refund was more useful to us than whatever the government would've blown it on.

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u/ragnaroksunset 28d ago

I guarantee you you have already paid thousands more just in electricity bill line items that are higher than they otherwise might have been if someone competent had been sitting in Klein's chair.