Opinion: Our subsequent premier ought to take an opportunity on Alberta

Article content material

This week our province’s election formally started and, on Might 29, Albertans will go to the polls to elect a brand new provincial authorities. Whoever Albertans finally select to manipulate them may have massive selections to make about our future.

Article content material

If there may be one factor that Alberta’s subsequent authorities ought to do to arrange the province for many years of inclusive, generational and sustainable prosperity, it might be to launch Alberta’s Prosperity Missions.

Article content material

Over the previous two years, my group spent a substantial period of time speaking with Albertans concerning the future they wished. We bought to listen to from Albertans in practically each nook of the province and from a variety of views, backgrounds and walks of life about what they wished of their future. One factor grew to become clear: Albertans need their province to be one in all options — to resolve massive, world challenges. Challenges resembling feeding everybody, growing power options and enabling wholesome lives. These are our Prosperity Missions.

This want to resolve these types of worldwide challenges, to be a spot of options, is in our DNA. Alberta is the place we discovered a option to take oil out of sand, to make a dusty prairie flourish and to deal with illnesses resembling hepatitis.

Right now, Alberta faces a brand new world of challenges.

On a worldwide scale, we live in a time when we have to navigate the decarbonization evolution, difficult demographics, geopolitical battle, digital disruption, meals and power insecurity, elevated polarization and rather more.

Article content material

Article content material

However Alberta is extraordinarily well-positioned to fulfill many of those challenges. Alberta has lately skilled the quickest and most dramatic financial turnaround of any province in Canada’s historical past. Enterprise sentiment is powerful. Persons are shifting to Alberta at an unbelievable tempo — the very best in twenty years, pushed by affordability and alternative. I wouldn’t name this a growth however our development is respectable. Our subsequent premier will discover herself with a full hand of playing cards.

Our subsequent authorities might launch us ahead by making a mechanism to fund early-stage technological improvement in key areas; bringing collectively enterprise, authorities, post-secondary, finance and different sectors to co-ordinate the coverage, analysis and funding wanted to develop new options, scale and commercialize them, and export that information and know-how to the world.

Within the course of, we’ll create jobs, community-building wages and funding to develop the economic system, encourage individuals to return and keep right here, and finally contribute to making sure a superb life is accessible and achievable for everybody.

Article content material

There are a couple of methods this may very well be operationalized, resembling enhancing the mandate of Alberta Innovates and even probably creating a brand new company. And in the event you assume this can be a newfangled and dangerous thought, let me reassure you, it’s not. In reality, Alberta has a wealthy historical past of taking probabilities and co-ordinating ranges of funding and coverage to resolve massive challenges.

Take, for instance, the Alberta Oil Sands Expertise and Analysis Authority, or AOSTRA, because it’s extra generally identified.

Based by former premier Peter Lougheed practically 50 years in the past, AOSTRA might be probably the most notable and pivotal investments in Alberta’s historical past. From an preliminary funding of $750 million (in at the moment’s {dollars}), we have been in a position to fund the analysis, improvement and commercialization that gave us SAGD, created tens of 1000’s of jobs, attracted billions in non-public sector funding and unlocked generations of prosperity for Albertans.

I imagine that it’s as soon as once more time to activate the imaginative and prescient, co-ordination and ambition of AOSTRA to unlock the potential of Alberta to resolve the challenges in entrance of us.

I’ve mentioned this earlier than: Alberta’s greatest days are nonetheless forward. However we have to plan for them.

When Lougheed initiated AOSTRA practically 50 years in the past, he took an opportunity on a path that held alternative. To Alberta’s subsequent premier: I feel it’s time we take an opportunity on Alberta as soon as once more.

Adam Legge is the president of the Enterprise Council of Alberta.