Alberta Advantage?: An examination of the long-term challenges of Alberta’s non-renewable resource wealth governance

• Author / Creator

  Salomons, Geoffrey H

• This dissertation applies an intergenerational lens to investigate the historical record of Alberta’s resource wealth governance from Premier Lougheed to Premier Klein. It explores how Alberta has collected, saved, and distributed its resource wealth in order to examine the explicit and implicit intergenerational trade-offs that resulted from key policy decisions made during this forty-year period. To aid in the intergenerational analysis I differentiate between future residents and future descendants of Alberta as two distinct populations of future generations. Future residents are anyone living in Alberta at a future period regardless of their origin. Conversely, future descendants are the descendants of whomever happens to be living in Alberta at a given point in time, regardless of where they reside in the future.
  The research for this dissertation finds that despite the dramatic differences in reputation between Premiers Lougheed and Klein there are remarkable commonalities. The starkest differences stem from the fact that Lougheed viewed the state as a shaper of the economy. Many of his legacies, such as the Heritage Fund and his province-building investments, benefited future residents precisely because of the role of the state in shaping the economy. In contrast, Klein sought to eliminate government involvement in the economy, preferring a more passive approach relying on deregulation and tax cuts to shape economic activity. Despite these differences, this research demonstrates that the single most consistent and troubling policy regarding Alberta’s resource wealth governance is the low tax, high spending fiscal policy initiated by Lougheed and rebranded and entrenched in Alberta’s political culture by Klein as the Alberta Advantage. This fiscal policy framework has become the single biggest handicap to Alberta’s ability govern its resource wealth for the long-term.
  This dissertation concludes with key policy recommendations. In particular, the Alberta government needs to get to a point where it can save 100% of its resource wealth. This will significantly reduce the fiscal policy challenges for the province that is overly reliant on a very volatile source of revenue and, as a result, lurches and stumbles from one oil price boom to the next. Options are then presented to allow for the use of those funds in ways that will benefit BOTH future residents – through investments in physical and human capital – and future descendants – by establishing a reliable and consistent dividend policy that will grow over time.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Natural Resources - Management
  • Resource Policy
  • Alberta Politics
  • Intergenerational Equity

• Graduation date

  Fall 2023

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-famf-3892

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.