Oil comparisons with Norway were correct
By Letter to the Editor on January 5, 2019.
Re: “Comparing approaches to spending oil revenues,” Dec. 15 Alberta’s own oil patch didn’t like Peter Lougheed and the reason is as follows in his own words: “You have to look at oil and natural gas as a depleting and declining resource. And you have to manage the resource and that means to manage it with good public policy.” Peter Lougheed’s Radical Legacy can be found online. “In the 1970s Lougheed, a long-term thinker, established one of the world’s first sovereign funds or rainy day accounts. Given the finite nature of oil and gas, he believed in saving at least 30 per cent of the wealth for the inevitable economic deluge. Not surprisingly, Albertans wholeheartedly championed the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund.” It was not looked after by those who followed Peter Lougheed. Norwegians copied and bettered the idea with their own pension/oil fund now worth $1.2 trillion, of which 67 per cent is invested around the world while the rest is held inside Norway. A country of five million can be compared with Alberta at over four million people. However Norway was smart. Their government told oil companies we get 80 per cent you get 20 per cent of our resource. Good for them. Newfoundland and Labrador is selling all its oil to the U.S., reaping a measly seven-per-cent return on its latest off shore oil production. One doesn’t have to wonder why this province has a 16 per cent PST. Like Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador did and is giving its oil away. Remember when Danny Williams turned the Canadian flag upside down? He was able to acquire 35 per cent return on Hibernia South. Peter Mueller is correct and that doesn’t make him Liberal, Conservative or NDP. He stated a fact. Anne S. Morris Medicine Hat 10-9
Anne is right. Peter Lougheed didn’t back down. He was looking after the well being of all Albertans and obtained a fair royalty and tax structure everyone could live with. He was collecting 35% of oil revenues. In addition he asked the public if they wanted to pay monthly health care premiums, or a sales tax to help pay for our health care system. The people chose the premiums, as it would be cheaper in the long run, and he ran this province properly while building up the Heritage Trust fund for our children’s future.
Then along came Ralph Klein and as Don Getty admitted to me in 2003 inviting him into the Conservative Party was a really dumb move on his part. This arrogant bully with a major drinking problem that our family had know all about since the early 1960 s was easily manipulated by the oil industry and we are in this mess today because of him, as the oilmen point out, while Norway and Alaska enjoy their oil wealth and the ignorant Albertans who refused to help us try to put a stop to what Klein was doing to us are willing to vote themselves into an even worse mess and aren’t smart enough to understand what Jason Kenney is planning for them..
Those of us who are smart enough to understand what he is planning to do to the people in this province need to speak up, because his supporters certainly aren’t smart enough to understand it and as University Professors point out to me these fools outnumber you two to one, which is why it’s so easy for dictators to become so powerful throughout the world. The majority of any population in the world are easily fooled , easily tricked and that’s exactly what Klein did and Kenney is doing and it’s going to take a concentrated effort by all of us to make certain it doesn’t happen again in Alberta. All we have to do is look at what ignorant fools did in the U.S.A. as my American relatives point out.