Quote:
Originally Posted by lubicon
Sask will likely (and hopefully) continue to improve it's economy but I don't ting you will see growth like you do in Alberta. Despite it's abundant natural resources and potential there are a number of factors that will hold it back IMHO:
1. Rapidly aging population. The average age in Sask is greater than Alberta and growing older at a rapid rate. This is accelerated by the number of young people moving out (if this trend can be reduced or reversed it will help). This will put an ever increasing strain on social services (which are taxpayer funded) meaning higher and higher taxes as the proportion of population that is working shrinks and the financial burden is placed on fewer and fewer workers.
2. Relatively high First Nations population. I believe it's one of the highest per capita populations in Canada. Not to be too negative here but the unemployment rate if very high in this demographic and a lot of them are moving to the larger cities. As in example #1, they put an ever increasing strain on services while contributing very little to payig for these services.
3. The mindset of Sask just does not seem to be condusive to an Alberta style boom. It just seems that people there want to rely on the government to provide for them much more than in Alberta. There is less of an entrepeneurial spirit in Sask it seems. My in laws live there and ALL of them work for the Sask government and are quite happy to do so. One even quite a great private sector job to go work for SaskTel as she didn't like the fact that she had to work OT once in awhile.
I don't mean to paint everone in Sask with the same brush but it's how I see it in general.
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This kind of rhetoric is getting really tiresome. Firstly, Alberta would be in a boom even if it had a Communist government. Klein was probably one of the most innept, albeit charming premiers your province has seen and you still had a boom. If the AB government had planned for that boom at all (with all that oil in the ground, somebody would have guessed it was coming at some point) or had even reacted relatively quickly (ie. if the government had been a little more interventionist- don't faint, keep reading), the boom would be more sustainable. As it is, when the oil is gone, there are going to be problems. Witness the escalating costs of all that infrastructure which was delayed due to "fiscal prudence" despite the obviously growing need. You are now having to build hospitals, roads and transit for 5 times what they would have cost 5 years ago. If they had been built during slower econiomic times as per Keynsian economics, that building would also have helped the economy through those slow times. It also would have meant a larger standing workforce. As it is, the AB government cut when the economy was relatively weak and prices were low and is now forced to build when the economy is overheated and prices are exhorbitant.
Secondly, your point two offers the likely solution to point one. Namely, if we can help the first nations people who wish to integrate, better do so, through education and faccilitation of entry to the work force, they will actually be a huge plus because of their numbers and relative youth. Saskatchewan is sitting on a gold mine of natural and human resources. I only hope we don't screw up in capitalizing on it as badly as Alberta has. BTW, I lived in Calgary for 6 years and there are as many slackers there as there are here. It's just that in Alberta, they all try to take credit for the boom.
I only hope that Saskatchewan can be a little wiser in managing the boom than Alberta has been.
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