EDMONTON—Facing bleak economic times and a hostile Trudeau government in Ottawa, an Alberta premier decides the time has come for the provincial government to use public money to invest in a struggling oil and gas industry.

Is that the Coles Notes version of this past week’s news, as Premier Jason Kenney dealt with the eleventh hour collapse of the Teck Frontier oilsands mine project?

Or is it a passage from Alberta’s history books?

Longtime political observers could be forgiven for experiencing some déjà vu.

It was in 1973 that then-premier Peter Lougheed sparked an economic revolution in his province, partly by setting up the Alberta Energy Company (AEC), allowing public investment in pipelines, the oil and gas industry, coal and petrochemical processing.

Almost 50 years later, his modern-day counterpart is considering something similar.

Last week, Kenney appeared ready to take his own step toward public investment in oil, saying his government would, “in some cases, (be) willing to step forward to ensure that such projects proceed.”

Invoking the Lougheed era, Kenney said setting up something like the AEC “may be necessary again” to help boost the oil and gas industry during a time of resistance from environmentalists and low oil prices worldwide.

Kenney’s comments are being met with skepticism.

Experts say the days of lucrative market prices and an oil-friendly public are gone — replaced by concerns about barrels of oil selling for a meagre $50 a pop and, more broadly, over climate change.

The 1970s saw Lougheed — known to many in Alberta as the father of modern oil development and others outside the province as a respected statesman — rise to power and begin reshaping the province.

Back then, explains University of Calgary business school professor Bob Schulz, companies used to have to go “cap in hand” to Toronto and hope for start-up money. Lougheed saw the potential in oilsands development and put an end to that through public investment resulting in the robust economy Alberta has today.

“Had Peter Lougheed not done that, that never would have happened, we wouldn’t have had that industry at all.”

Proposed in 1973, an Edmonton Journal article at the time saluted its creation: “Some time next year every man, woman and child in Alberta will have an opportunity to invest in the Alberta Energy Company.”

During his time in office, Lougheed incorporated the AEC, bought an airline and set up the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority, which set out to develop oilsands technology and make it commercially available.

Setting up the AEC was “one of the most imaginative government-sponsored resource development policies in Canadian experience,” read a 1973 Calgary Herald editorial with a headline that wouldn’t be out of place in some Alberta news outlets today: “Liberal cowardice.”

The money would go on to help a company called Syncrude Canada Ltd. expand in oilsands development. It’s now one of the world’s largest oil producers.

Lougheed came to be remembered as one of Alberta’s greatest leaders for some of his shrewd economic diversification policies, including public investment in the oilsands.

He also set up the provincial heritage trust fund, a savings account for Alberta where royalties from oil development would be stashed. Alberta politicians often invoke his legacy when speaking in public.

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As evidenced by Kenney’s remarks, Lougheed still lives on in the minds of Albertans. He’s seen as famously standing up to Pierre Trudeau, former prime minister and father to Justin Trudeau, during a time where Ottawa was viewed as an enemy putting the financial squeeze on Alberta.

Lougheed’s name, for many Albertans, hearkens back to a time of Alberta strength within a country that didn’t seem to understand it — sentiments that still exist.

In principle, some experts argue public investment isn’t a bad thing — but some economists say that the world Lougheed lived in during the 1970s was much different than the one Kenney occupies now, and that betting on oil today is a risky move with money that could be more wisely invested elsewhere.

Moshe Lander, an economist at Concordia University in Montreal, called the current Alberta government investing its “scarce resources” into energy projects “a recipe for disaster.”

“Invoking the idea of Peter Lougheed and creating that nostalgia for the days when Alberta was riding high ... that’s good politics, but I think the reason for the vagueness (in Kenney’s proposal) is because the economics just don’t make sense,” he said.

In the 1970s, the world was goods-based and less services-based, Lander said. Relying on oil from politically turbulent parts of the world such as the Middle East made the choice to invest in oil at home an easier one to make, too.

Not to mention the modern-day struggle with emissions, said Lander, “which weren’t even on the world’s radar.”

Speaking after Teck announced it was pulling its mega project last week, a defiant Kenney pronounced, “We will not be stopped.”

Kenney has laid lay the blame for the project’s demise at Ottawa’s feet, even though the company has said Canada needs to reconcile its climate change goals with its economy.

“We will not be the only of the major energy producers in the world to choose poverty over prosperity,” says Kenney.

Whether Kenney can display the kind of economic foresight that Lougheed did remains to be seen, as does the part it will play in this new Alberta premier’s legacy.

Schulz, who has taught at the University of Calgary with both Lougheed and Kenney in power, says investing in the digital world should be the government’s goal, adding that goes a long way for the oil and gas industry, too.

“The industrial internet of things for oil and gas,” he said. “Then you can monitor the emissions, you can have targets, you can do data analytics, you can do artificial intelligence, and then once we do it for us, that’s exportable.”

“The 21st century is a digital century,” said Schulz.

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