| The Alberta oil & gas industry is down, the province’s unique tax advantage obliterated, and the detractors point to Norway and say “this could have been us!” Both Norway and Alberta are oil producers with sovereign wealth funds. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is $1.1 trillion; Alberta’s is $17.3 billion at 2014 year end.
The assumption is that Norway has responsibly invested its windfall, whereas Alberta has not. This comparison is wholly unfair. As Professor Stephen Gordon argues, the Alberta Heritage Fund was set up in 1976 at a time when reserve life was numbered in decades. It was quite literally intended as a transfer of wealth from the present to the post-oil, near-future...............................................Full Article: Source |