Alberta is building on its growing reputation as Canada’s new knowledge frontier. Flush with cash and guided by a veteran premier who’s developing a legacy, S&T and advanced education are emerging as the major beneficiaries of province’s fiscal good fortune.
Just last month, premier Ralph Klein announced an amazing $4.5 billion commitment to knowledge and post-secondary education. The Alberta Ingenuity Fund finally received a concrete commitment to establish a $1-billion endowment for science and engineering research (see page 4). And earlier this year, the government bumped up the province’s endowment for health research to nearly $1.4 billion.
This is clearly a government that does not intend to squander long-term opportunities during a period of fiscal surplus. Compare Alberta’s actions to those of the previous Ontario government. Rather than using its fiscal surpluses to make wise investments, it opted instead to make political hay by giving taxpayers cheques totaling $1 billion. Ontario could certainly use that cash now, as it’s looking at a $6-billion deficit for the current FY.
It took years for Alberta’s S&T community to convince its political masters that a strong knowledge base offered the best insurance against fluctuating resource prices. Now that government has embraced the knowledge economy, one suspects they haven’t finished yet. There are rumours that more money is forthcoming for the only area of research that hasn’t been topped up lately. That news could come as early as this week when the provincial Budget is announced.
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