Less than two years ago, a headline at IN-SIGHTS was “Norway’s oil fund approaching C$2 trillion.” Today, that number has increased to C$2.6 trillion.
Norway’s oil and gas taxation is far different from Canada’s. The northern country ensures that its future citizens will benefit significantly from resource exploitation, while Canadian governments prefer the immediate privatization of resource values.
When Norway chose this path, fossil fuel companies said they would leave, and the local industry would collapse. Today, Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian state-owned energy company delivering record-breaking profits to the citizens of Norway. Despite high taxation, other oil companies in Norway remain profitable after tax.
Categories: Norway, oil and gas
in-sights.ca 
I was on the NDP executive for the Alberta provincial constituency of Edmonton Kingsway in 1986. Our MLA Alex McEachern was the finance critic.
He pointed out to the Conservative government of that time that the Heritage Trust Fund then valued at $16B was already then underfunded based on the mandate given to the fund.
This is the same basic structure that Norway based its fund on. Today, the Alberta find is worth about 20B$.
The point is, don’t ever let anyone ever try to tell you that conservative governments have the first clue how to handle public money.
Imagine where Alberta could be if they treated public money responsibly from the beginning. Norway over 2TRLION$ Alberta 2B$.
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It is important to note what Norway does with their oil and gas revenue. They invest it in assets that grow and pay out dividends, thereby multiplying their return. This is a strategy that few governments seem to embrace. This is how the ultra-rich build their wealth and it is time governments did the same. Unfortunately, most Conservative governments quickly sell off any revenue generating assets the government may have acquired.
It should be mandatory that all nonrenewable resource revenue be deposited into a Norway style Prosperity Fund.
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It is articles like this that make the battle we are going into, feel like we are only defending the interests of the rich who farm us for our labour and leave us nothing but suffering.
Is there a difference for us in which corporate brand we have? Both function on the disaster capitalism premise as the only viable functional economy.
In political policy, in all our north america anything beyond care of the slaves is labeled “communism” “socialism” “interference in the economy” : the tools reserved for the rich.
While I do get the outrage against the conservative hate farming machine we have all been stolen from by all of them . The mice elected cats. That ship has sailed. Representative democracy never represented the people, rich bought the players long ago, and now it only gets worse.
Thus ends my 1/4 Norwegen lament.
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