text: 40 years of conservative rule yielded several hundred $billion in transfer payments from Alberta to Ottawa. How much of that came back for purposes of 'economic diversification?  Squat.  Despite a  ruinous National Energy Program under Pierre Trudeau and decades of hide-bound imposition by the  rest of Canada inhibiting  Alberta from accessing world oil markets offshore, the money flowed.  All that time Albertan chemical engineers wrestled the once speculative oil sands resource into a competitive, productive part of the petro economy.
  
  Alberta has a very large, productive agriculture sector and productive forest industry. Calgary is a thriving corporate center and the province  has good universities and good hospitals. Aside from uniformly bad drivers, it has decent highways. All of this while the rest of Canada confiscated $billions, returned nothing and then inhibited Alberta's oil sector.