Restaurants are full, elaborate Christmas parties are in full swing, shopping malls are jammed.

Oil price plunge? What oil price plunge?

In Calgary life seems to be carrying on as usual even though there is a lot of fretting about resource prices, the lifeblood of the province’s economy. Some are even predicting that disaster is just around the corner.

But is it? Over the last 15 years Alberta has survived several major oil price swings and yet its economy has continued to grow. And if statistical projections are to believed that trend will continue because the economy is now based on huge, industrial megaprojects rather than short-term oil-well drilling and pumping.

The province’s low unemployment rate and high weekly wages are attracting newcomers from other parts of the country and around the world. And even though there was a bit of a slowdown during the 2008-2009 recession the flow never really stopped.

According to Statistics Canada, Alberta has the highest population growth rate of all the provinces and will eventually become the third largest province by population, overtaking British Columbia. Most of the people coming here are young and those leaving are older — seniors move to B.C. for warmer weather. That means Alberta will have a stronger income tax base and lower health care costs.

This age difference is really noticeable if you compare Calgary and Victoria, for example. In Victoria, the traffic is slower, the store aisles are wider to accommodate walkers, and clerks used to dealing with elderly people are much more patient.

In Calgary, ubiquitous BMW drivers show off by zooming in and out of traffic, runners dart out of office buildings for some lunch hour exercise, and young store clerks, confident they can get a job somewhere else if this one doesn’t work out, barely hide their impatience with customers.

Other stats also show Alberta didn’t take much of a pause during the last recession.

Ten years ago, Alberta trailed well behind British Columbia in total restaurant receipts. Not surprising since B.C. has half a million more people. But despite the fact Alberta has fewer people, that gap has closed — and in some recent months Albertans have spent even more — $177 per person per month, a 72-per-cent increase over 10 years.

All kinds of discretionary spending — spending that comes from having extra cash on hand — are soaring. Retail sales reached a record high of $6.6 billion in July of this year. New motor vehicle sales also reached an all-time high last summer. BMWs and SUVs seem to be the vehicles of choice, especially in the inner city.

There’s no question the private sector just keeps chugging along despite the ups and downs of oil and gas prices.

It’s the public sector that suffers the most when the price of oil dips.

As happened last week. Newbie Premier Jim Prentice warned Albertans to prepare for budget cuts because the provincial treasury wouldn’t be bringing in as much revenue as originally anticipated.

This is the automatic response to sliding oil prices because successive Progressive Conservative governments have never figured out how stabilize government revenue so it doesn’t swing up and down with the price of oil.

Consequently, schools, hospitals and social service agencies which help everyone from the mentally ill to abused children never know from one year to the next what they can count on, or how to plan for increased demand.

This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why Alberta leads the country when it comes to another important signifier: income disparity. According to Statistics Canada, the province’s top 10 per cent of earners took home 50.4 per cent of all income in 2012, a rate that is actually higher than the U.S. rate.

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Some boats don’t rise as high as others in a province where oil keeps so many boats afloat. In fact, some boats are getting swamped.

But it’s not likely the most recent oil price plunge will significantly curb Alberta’s expanding economy.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net .

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