[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by nik-

Ok. They still handed over an insane amount of money to the government that then pissed it away. It's not the oil companies' fault.

If you give me a bunch of money, and I blow it, I shouldn't blame you and make you give me more. I should probably clean up my act.

This exact post could be applied to the argument about cutting public sector pay.

I'm not cheering the damage to Alberta's oil economy or anything as I've personally been impacted by it as well as many members of my family, but some of the chickens have come home to roost here.

Behind boom lurks a bust
'80s-style insanity makes a comeback

Don Martin
Calgary Herald

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

There's a residential demolition derby happening in Calgary's most prestigious community.

Dozens of houses have been blown up in ultra-posh Mount Royal. OK, houses is probably an understatement. More like mansions. And not just old run-of-the-mill mansions. At least one dream home was barely a decade old when it was rendered into rubble under new ownership earlier this year.

In the frantic pursuit of bigger and better lifestyles, the cream of Calgary is snapping up Mount Royal's prized inner-city addresses for millions per lot, tearing down perfectly outstanding dwellings and erecting their own customized palatial abodes. One businessman bought the house next door for seven figures and levelled it into grass so his kids would have space for playground equipment.

If there's a reflection of the insanity gripping Calgary's superheated economy, that's it.

A visit to Calgary these days is an eerie reflection of the early 1980s just before the economy collapsed with a devastating crash, collapsing real estate values and turning downtown office towers into "see-through buildings" abandoned by tenants.

That's when a notorious bumper sticker appeared on city streets: "Lord," it bemoaned, "please give me another boom and I promise I won't piss it away."

If they're not pissing it away yet, there are signs Calgary's collective bladder is getting mighty full. And I apologize for that analogy over breakfast.

Remind people about the sudden reversal of fortunes that tend to haunt one-industry towns and they make reassuring noises that the oilpatch is leaner and meaner than those giddy fat-cat days of the early '80s.

But my visit to Calgary last weekend was a head-spinning tour of a city roaring at a frantically unsustainable pace.

You see the first evidence from the air, where the brown smudge circling the city is filled with earthmovers levelling the surrounding prairie for 1,100 new homes per month to handle the 2.5 new Calgarians (including those in maternity wards) who arrive every hour on the 24/7 clock.

Four new office towers are under construction downtown, part of the $1.8-billion-in-new-construction boom started last year, an amount greater than the total of the next 10 Alberta cities combined.

Mayor Dave Bronconnier is bracing for an unprecedented $3 billion in new construction this year, which means another 300 kilometre lanes of road will be paved to feed traffic into the core.

It's even crazier at the provincial level, where energy royalties are threatening to drive the surplus to almost $10 billion.

I gave a lift to a senior member of the provincial bureaucracy on the weekend and asked what was next on the spending spree list, given Premier Ralph Klein had just announced a $1.4-billion hospital upgrade and construction program.

He shrugged: "We're almost running out of ideas."