Canada forgot to plan for its future by leaning on oil and the loonie
We had a gov&#x27;t for 10 years full of &quot;Calgary-school&quot; (Canada&#x27;s right-wing ultra free market economic ideologues coming out of the University of Calgary econ&#x2F;poli-sci program). They were overwhelmingly driven by an oil and gas agenda. From the gov&#x27;t down to mutual fund investors, everyone was treating our economy like a one-trick pony, all oil and gas.<p>If you listened to people talk, Alberta&#x27;s oil sector was supporting the whole economy. Snarky message board comments from people from out west (where I&#x27;m from originally, BTW) making comments about Ontario being a &quot;have-not&quot; province being propped up by the superior entrepreneurial hard-working western oil sector.<p>Meanwhile through all of this as a % of GDP, exports in manufacturing were _still_ triple those of oil and gas. Ontario&#x27;s beleaguered auto-sector was still the primary export in the country. Followed by agriculture and other sectors.<p>I said it at the time, and now it is obvious. They were lying through ideological teeth, and telling a story to the country about resource driven prosperity which was factually incorrect. And it has led to our country as a whole inheriting many of the problems Alberta as a province has been plagued with for decades: highly cyclical, with a political culture verging on corrupt, and environmentally dirty dirty dirty.<p>And I&#x27;m afraid the new gov&#x27;t is only half-heartedly interested in remedying any of this.<p>Ontario and Quebec could be the &quot;Germany of North America&quot;; the deliberate assassination of our manufacturing and engineering sectors by everyone from federal gov&#x27;t officials to fund managers has been disgusting.  We have a heavy infrastructure debt, are saddled by decades of ideologically-driven mismanagement, and an ineptitude at actually getting anything done.