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I have lived in – and all around - the province of Alberta my entire life. Like all places, Alberta has many things going for it in addition to several I could easily do without. You take the good with the bad.
However, when it comes to the negative things, some parts of Alberta are distinctly more “Albertany” than others. Over the past year I have found myself in a location in central Alberta that has managed to tick off every item on my checklist of things that drive me over the edge about the province of my heritage: pickup trucks jacked up six feet off the ground, a xenophobic outlook on anything that doesn’t subscribe to a given set of redneck life rules, and in general a lot of loutish behaviour driven by a culture of alcohol, drugs and too much money mixed with too little brains.
All of these are symptoms of a far greater disease, however. That disease is the oil patch – to paraphrase Homer Simpson, the solution to and cause of all of Alberta’s problems. I realize I’m treading on particularly dangerous ground here and to an extent biting the hand that feeds me. I recognize that the oil and gas industry has shielded Alberta from some of the worst effects of the global recession. But there are some complaints about the culture of oil that have to be aired.
Education is a particularly large elephant in the room. According to a Statistics Canada study released in 2008, Alberta is home to the lowest high school graduation rate in the country. Although the linked article does not mention the oil and gas industry specifically, anyone who lives here knows exactly the reason why: high-paying oil and gas industry jobs that require little education.
You might ask how that makes Alberta different from any region blessed enough to have a thriving production industry, be they mining and logging communities, factory towns or what have you. After all, it’s base production jobs like these that have built this country, providing well-earned middle class lifestyles to anyone with a strong back and a good work ethic. There aren’t enough college-driven information sector jobs to go around and not everyone is cut out for them anyway. The production and extraction industries fill a crucial void in the job market, and in North America a lot of them are disappearing.
It’s not so much the lack of education that’s maddening – it’s the attitude of so many that they somehow beat the system, that in spite of a meagre education they were able to generate wealth out of their own expertise and cunning. To them, it’s not the pure luck of living in an area with so many exploitable natural resources. It’s not about how political and social policy has enabled and enriched the exploitation of those resources. It’s “I’m a rugged individualist who did it all myself.” And it’s an attitude that speaks volumes about Alberta’s overall negative attitude towards poverty, even as so many of our neighbours in the developed world fall victim to it.
To be fair, the Alberta public does give the oil industry its fair share of kudos for the role it’s played in the province’s riches. Perhaps too much. We have seen from the debacle over the royalty rate hike a few years ago that this is a province firmly in the pocket of Big Oil. Danielle Smith and her far-right Wildrose Alliance party have all but vowed to keep it that way, with little room for alternative energy solutions in their policies.
What’s amazing is that even on those many occasions when oil prices bottom out for an extended period of time, many Albertans still do not recognize the value of diversifying its economic base. Most would seem to rather wait until the next oil boom rather than see if the so-called “Alberta Advantage” is based on anything more than the pure luck of sitting on top of valuable natural resources.
Diversity in this province needs to happen. I would not be so bold as to even suggest what face that diversity should take, but what is clear is that smugness and complacency are not the traits that are going to drive ongoing success in an increasingly interconnected, complex and troubled global economy. Rather, let’s use this province’s oil field advantage as a springboard towards developing new and exciting industries and perhaps – someday in the distant future – as an exit strategy out of the oil industry as the world develops more sustainable approaches to energy.
