Alberta

2015 was not a good year for job creation in Alberta.

In fact, the net 19,600 jobs the province shed marked the worst year for job losses since 1982.

Alberta is of course suffering from the dramatic collapse in oil prices, which look set to remain “lower for longer” in the face of a recalcitrant Saudi Arabia and an Iran which is hell bent on making up for lost time spent languishing under international sanctions.

We’ve spilled quite a bit of digital ink documenting the trials and travails of Alberta, the heart of Canada’s dying oil patch and ground zero for the pain inflicted by 14 months of crude carnage.

At the risk of beating a dead (or at least a “dying”) horse, you’re reminded that violent crime is soaring in the province, suicide rates are up by a third as is food bank usage, and as for unemployment, well, Alberta lost 19,600 jobs last year - the most in 34 years.

Times are tough in Alberta and to be sure, we’ve piled it on heavy when it comes to cataloguing the long list of pitiable outcomes that have accompanied crude’s steep slide.

The province is at the center of Canada’s dying oil patch and as crude extended its seemingly endless decline last year, Alberta saw oil and gas investment plunge by a third. That’s bad news for authorities who count on resources for 30% of provincial revenues.

As regular readers are no doubt acutely aware, Alberta is in trouble.

The province is at the heart of Canada’s dying oil patch and crude’s inexorable decline has had a devastating economic impact.

30% of provincial revenue is derived from resources and as crude collapsed, so did oil and gas investment. O&G spending plunged by more than a third in 2015 and as provincial authorities wrote in their latest fiscal update, “weakness in the oil and gas sector has spread to other sectors of the economy.”

It was just yesterday when we documented the continuing slide in the loonie, which is suffering mightily in the face of oil’s inexorable decline.

As regular readers are no doubt acutely aware, Canada is struggling through a dramatic economic adjustment, especially in Alberta, the heart of the country’s oil patch. Amid the ongoing crude carnage the province has seen soaring property crime, rising food bank usage and, sadly, elevated suicide rates, as Albertans struggle to comprehend how things up north could have gone south (so to speak) so quickly.