The Nordic country’s fund — now worth C$3 trillion — is explained at the Norges Bank Investment Management website:

The pension fund was established after Norway discovered oil in the North Sea. The fund was set up to shield the economy from ups and downs in oil revenue. It also serves as a financial reserve and as a long-term savings plan so that both current and future generations of Norway get to benefit from our oil wealth.

Each year, the Norwegian government can spend only a small part of the fund, but this still amounts to almost 20 percent of the government budget.

There is a broad political consensus on how the fund should be managed. The less we spend today, the better the position we will be in to deal with downturns and crises in the future. Budget surpluses are transferred to the fund, while deficits are covered with money from the fund. In other words, the authorities can spend more in hard times and less in good times.

Amounts measured in the trillions are almost impossible to grasp, but Norway’s financial position becomes easier to appreciate when viewed on a per‑person basis. The country’s oil and gas fund works out to roughly C$533,000 for every resident.

If British Columbia had a resource fund with the same per‑capita value, its size would greatly exceed the provincial government’s projected 2025 revenues. Such a fund would be a large multiple of the provincial government’s accumulated debt.

Yet both the governing NDP and the Conservative opposition maintain that natural resources primarily belong to the companies extracting them today. Taxes are kept low, subsidies are plentiful, and the idea that future generations deserve a share of today’s resource wealth is effectively dismissed.