The wealthy? You do realize the gov't has a per barrel royalty on each barrel extracted. And that's why some provinces are wealthier than others?

What a odd comment.

If it's not 100% managed by the government it's only helping evil rich people and multinational corporations... that's how economics works in certain political circles.

Despite the thousands of workers it employs directly, supply chain income it generates to countless smaller firms, the actual oil being transported and exported, etc etc. All of those are heavily taxed and all of that "distributes" income to regular people whether through (often high paying) jobs or a higher tax income for the state.

>while my country decided that the benefits should go to the wealthy and multi-national corporations.

This doesn’t follow. I think Alberta mostly used its oil revenues to fund current operating expenses, spreading the wealth around in a short term way to the populace at large.

Though royalties probably also have been too low.

Ha. Here in the US where we produce more than double what Canada does, there isn't even an oil fund.

The oil fund is Exxon, which is in the S&P 500, which is in your 401k.

Only available to people who have the means or opportunity to invest. We're taking from everyone and giving to few.

There are a lot of people who rely on those investments, whether through their government retirement, their employer's retirement, or through their own holdings. Even many social programs are funded with investments in equities.

Slightly less than half of all Americans have any investment in the stock market. Pension funds were largely replaced with 401k's, but salaries were not increased to compensate.

While you're technically correct, the stock market primarily benefits those with enough disposable income to generate large investments where they do not need to draw down the principle, and that certainly isn't the majority of Americans.

In Alaska they do, they just pay it out every year.

Same as the UK. This was an opportunity squandered, and we can only look to Norway and think of what might have been

It would not have been the same since the UK has a similar amount of oil and 12x the number of people. Proportionately it was far less significant.

I'm fully aware of that, however currently as a population we have nearly nothing to show for decades of oil extraction other than pockets of extremely concentrated wealth. If we make a wild assumption that we did exactly the same with our reserves and somehow contrived to create exactly the same sovereign wealth fund, that'd work out to around £13,000 per person. That's not enough to make everyone a millionaire, but it's much greater than the £0 we put aside the way we did it.

Of course this is speculation, featuring ifs/buts and using numbers plucked from our neighbour across the North Sea ... however it's pretty plain to see that we screwed this opportunity up.