| Ontario should look to socialist Norway if it wants to capitalize on the rich mineral deposits of the far north's Ring of Fire. Like Canada, Norway has a resource-based economy, exploiting extensive reserves of oil, natural gas minerals and lumber. Half its export revenues come from oil and gas. The money was invested in financial markets outside Norway. It grew. Their sovereign wealth fund, created a mere 20 years ago, now controls about one per cent of all publicly traded shares in the world.
It's a rainy-day fund, set up because oil won't flow forever. And Norway's oil production has dropped to one-half of what it was in 2001, according to Huffington Post business editor Daniel Tencer in a recent article. Alberta established a Heritage Trust Fund in 1976, but stopped contributing to it. According to a report last month by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, the total topped out a $17 billion, about one-tenth what it could have grown to with a strategy like Norway's...............................................Full Article: Source
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