Dinosaur carcasses are the answer

I don't subscribe to the Grope, so I rarely get its Op-Eds, but I still couldn't resist commenting on this teaser from today's Grope website for an opinion article called "Alberta's model economy" (no linky because I don't know how to get a permalink out of a Grope teaser page):

Key Harper adviser Tom Flanagan argues that the right question for other provinces to ask is not 'how can we get our hands on Alberta's wealth?' but rather 'how can we become as wealthy as Alberta?'

The answer to this question is obvious: hard, hard work.  Hard work finding digging deep tunnels.  Hard work finding dinosaurs, dragging them to the tunnels and stuffing them inside.  Hard work waiting millions of years for them to turn into black gold. 

You mean you haven't done this already?  You lazy bums, you non-Albertans.  Instead you want to (and this is the only part of the article I can see):

When Alberta experienced an oil boom in the early 1980s, we were smacked with the national energy program, designed to transfer Alberta's wealth to the consumers and voters of Central Canada. Today, in the midst of another oil boom, we see a new generation of proposals to achieve the same objective -- enact a carbon tax, change the equalization formula, encourage Alberta to "recycle" its money by investing in other provinces.

Those meanies.  Trying to steal Alberta's hard work.  The hard work that the people of Alberta did, putting those decomposing dino carcasses under the ground.  Fred Flinstone would be rolling in his grave.

Comments

[Kuri]

Googling "Flanagan Alberta Globe" gets you to the full piece where he states that Quebec's hydro & Ontario's location near US markets are just as advantageous as Alberta's oil wealth. Seeing as I work in one of Alberta's "socialist" crown corporations competing with the big banks, I think Flanagan is exaggerating when he says our free market reliance is what creates wealth. But FWIW, that's what he says.

[Josh Gould]

I wonder how much longer the myth of the NEP will live on. I mean, just take a look at this picture, and it becomes blatantly obvious that Alberta's early-to-mid-80s bust was caused by the precipitous decline in global oil prices. So, unless Trudeau had been buying up oil futures for years and decided to sell them all at once, precipitating a global sell-off, and was simultaneously forcing OPEC to increase production, I don't see what the NEP had to do with it.