Project Alberta

This article holds some surprising and distressing news for Alberta.



Albertans are supposed to be risk-takers. Such people are on the frontiers of R&D and big suppliers and users of venture capital. If improvements aren't made in those areas, Alberta is dead in the water if oil and gas activity diminishes substantially.

Canada is dead in the water if the world no longer needs our resources, that is not an Alberta issue.

And it is a good thing that Alberta has energy. It gives us power and money, something Canada fears. Canada, while demanding ever more money from Alberta, is at the same time refusing to give it proportional treatment when it comes to many things including R&D funding. Quebec and Ontario are funded way beyond their contribution and beyond what their population would suggest. When it comes to R&D programs Energy and Western provinces are seen as cash cows and get lower funding and this report shows that.

Another thing not taken into account has been the return on R&D dollars. The Oil Sands has been the product of R&D. The dollars invested have been returned many times over. Not something the (for example) Nuclear Industry (an almost exclusively Eastern operation) can claim. The amount of R&D money we've poured into that industry has yet to show any positive return on investment (unless you ignore the taxpayer contribution). So it is with most Federal R&D funding, a failure, yet we still pour millions upon millions into the same sectors, the same provinces. Of course it is not a failure from their point of view because to Ottawa Federal R&D programs are yet another regional distribution programs.

Federal R&D programs are not meant to help regions develop, far from it. Those programs, like most, are meant to transfer money from the colonies to the motherland and in that it succeeds.

But the article still raises some valid points.

Alberta must start demanding R&D funding proportional to it's per capita funding contribution and should start working towards a future were oil and gas are just one of our giants.

To do that we have to set out on our own and we can start that by using the money we presently give away to those that fight us. That makes it a win/win/win. Alberta wins by spending the money at home where it is needed, and it deprives those who fight against Alberta funding. Other regions win as well because then they will have to depend on themselves and fund their own R&D programs, programs that are much more likely to succeed at developing their future.

R&D is just one of the many responsibilities that should be taken from Ottawa and given to the Nations that make up Canada.

A provincial government is an equal partner in confederation and therefore able to do pretty much as it pleases, the feds are actually hamstrung. All it takes is the balls to do it, a spine to support it, and a brain to dream it up.