Alberta Chambers of Commerce

After more than 30 years, Alberta’s “rainy day” fund is still only large enough to tide us over during a

drizzle.

Is this scenario in keeping with former-premier Peter Lougheed’s vision for the Alberta Heritage Savings

Trust Fund? Is it in keeping with Albertans’ hopes for their fund? The Alberta Chambers of Commerce

(ACC) maintains it’s not.

When it created the fund in 1976, the Lougheed government started annually depositing 30 per cent of

non-renewable resource revenues into the fund and letting its yearly earnings accumulate.

Unfortunately, in 1982 the Getty government started using investment earnings from the $11-billion fund

to help cover operating costs. At that time, it also cut non-renewable resource deposits to 15 per cent of

annual revenues. Five years later, it stopped them altogether. Since 1982 a startling $30 billion has been

withdrawn from the Heritage Fund.

In recent years, the Alberta government has started to build it up again to the point that its current value is

$16.6 billion, an amount only equal to half of this year’s provincial operating budget.

However, while the Stelmach government deposited $1.8 billion into the Heritage Fund in the 2006/07

fiscal year, it also quietly shifted $1.3 billion of investment earnings into general revenues.

If the government hadn’t removed these dividends, the fund would have increased to $18 billion.

Did the government need to remove $1.3 billion of Heritage Fund earnings? Considering it recently

announced an $8.9-billion surplus, ACC believes the Stelmach government could easily have left the

money in place.

been pressing the government to deposit 30 to 40 per cent of annual non-renewable resource revenues

into the Heritage Fund.

As Alberta earned $12.3 billion in non-renewable resource revenues in 2006/07, one-third amounts to

$4.1 billion – less than half of this year’s record surplus.

Now, let’s add that $4 billion to the $18 billion the Heritage Fund could have grown to had the government

not pinched its earnings – the total would come to more than $22 billion.

Tack on the $30 billion withdrawn from the fund in the past 25 years and the Heritage Fund would sit at

more than $52 billion if governments hadn’t kept siphoning off its earnings.

The Alberta Chambers of Commerce is concerned that if this government does not start setting aside a

portion of our non-renewable resource revenues now, it will never occur.

If you agree with our stance, please let Premier Ed Stelmach and every MLA know that you, too, would

like to see the government build up the Heritage Fund while the non-renewable resources exist to let it do

so.