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Graphic courtesy the Prairie Centre Policy Institute and presented to undermine the popular myth that the only factor in Alberta's success is an energy-based "fluke of nature" economy.

As you might have deduced from the graphic above, successful resource development involves a little more than sticking a pipe in the ground and standing back with a bucket to catch the falling toonies. Government regulation, taxation, royalty structures, labour laws, environmental policy - all influence whether or not fields are developed, or even explored.

Capital is a finite commodity - and a discriminating one. It tends to flow to jurisdictions that not only offer a good chance of returning a profit, but exhibit the willingness to leave as much of it as possible in the hands of the risk-taker.

There is no mystery as to why Prairie energy reserves seem to have been walled off at the Saskatchewan border - the much heralded Tommy Douglas chased the oil companies from their headquarters in Regina to Calgary with policies that were openly hostile to the industry.

Read more at source .

Kate McMillan is a good writer and has a blog at SmallDeadAnimals . Recommended by Mark Steyn.

This election WILL be a watershed, one way or the other - either the beginning of a Conservative reform, or the continued downward spiral into Liberal kleptocracy.

Either way, the Trudeaupian state is doomed.

So much of that province's fortunes are tied to its blessings - the resource, the global price of the resource being well past the cost of extraction and the kindly division of powers that gives the province exclusive benefit to the resource - that holding it up as an example of anything for the rest of us is a bit of a leap.

This sentiment is apparently quite common among Canadians, but is utter baloney. Two specific points refute it . . .

1. Some geologists estimate that Saskatchewan's oil and gas reserves could be even greater than Alberta's, but that province is an economic basket-case because it is one of the most business-unfriendly jurisdictions in North America.

2. Some of the most robust growth in Alberta's recent history occurred in the mid-1990s, when the price of oil was much lower than it is today. Alberta's economy was humming along even when oil was trading at $12-$15 per barrel in 1998-99.