Norway’s Oil Riches. Canada’s Poverty. Guess Why?

[Oscar]

Norway’s Oil Riches. Canada’s Poverty. Guess Why?

[ http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca ... verty.html ]

By Robin Mathews/May 2015

Finally, and one might say suddenly, Norway’s experience, and Canada’s, with Oil Revenue Savings are under a bright light of comparison. It’s a painful comparison … for Canada. Especially since (a) Canada has far greater fossil fuel production and reserves than Norway, and (b) Canada began operating a non-renewable resources fund well before the Norwegians.

Today Norway has a trillion dollars in its reserve fund and no deficit, combined with excellent universal social insurance. Alberta is in painful deficit with a meagre resource fund, and the federal government (pretending to balance its annualized budget) is in deep and growing indebtedness.

The subject is being discussed widely in Canada now. In 2012 Mitchell Anderson visited Norway and wrote (for TYEE) probably the best report on what Norway’s Oil Fund has done for the lives of all Norwegians in comparison with Canada. The benefits Norwegians have (which Canadians don’t) are stunning.

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The National Energy Program (1980-1985), viciously misrepresented now, and scurrilously attacked in its time was “designed to promote oil self-sufficiency for Canada, maintain the oil supply, particularly for the industrial base in eastern Canada, promote Canadian ownership of the energy industry [as Norway achieved], promote lower prices, promote exploration for oil in Canada, promote alternative energy sources, and increase government revenues from oil sales through a variety of taxes and agreements “[as Norway succeeded in doing]. (Wikipedia]

Norway’s Oil Fund is not a brilliant and accidental creation of an eccentric group of administrators who “lucked” upon a saving system and a major standard-of-living guarantor. It is the product of an independent people seeking to use resource wealth to guarantee the safety and security of the whole population. An independent people.

In an economic colony like Canada, no real independence exists and any breakthroughs on behalf of the whole population begin to be undermined as soon as made. [Universal Health Care??] What operates in a country like Canada is the embarrassing service of Canadian “leaders” to foreign power and foreign greed … employing, at the same time, smoke-and-mirror propaganda and lies to lull the population into acceptance of colonial inferiority, colonial passivity, and sell-out of their rights and their wealth.

The tragedies of Petro Canada, the NEP, and the E. Peter Lougheed Heritage Fund are absolutely predictable in an economic colony. Until Canada’s colonial status is erased, Canadians will be at continuous war among themselves to better the condition of all Canadians, expending huge amounts of effort that are undermined by a combination of the “imperial masters” and the cooperating “colonial administrators” (called Canadian governments).