It's too bad that there's no government, or party for that matter, in Canada, on either the provincial or federal level, that's fiscally responsible; not just a party that runs small deficits or balances the budget once in a while but a party that actually looks to the future.
Norway's economy, similarly to Alberta, is hugely dependent on oil. In fact, in 2009, 34 per cent of Norway's exports were crude petroleum with another 25 per cent being petroleum gasses. Norway hasn't spent much of its oil money, only withdrawing from the oil fund it created in 1996 for the first time in 2016.
Norway's petroleum fund is the largest sovereign wealth fund at over $1,176,000,000,000, yet according to writers at the Fraser Institute, Alberta is broke.
Similarly, the federal government is running massive deficits despite government debt as a percentage of GDP (2014 OECD data) being over three times as high as Norway's and higher than many other developed countries such as Germany, Sweden, Australia, despite the fact that many of these countries performed far worse during the 2009 recession.
Canadian federal debt levels aren't the fault of any one government or party, they take too long to build. It's just overall poor planning.
Old Age Security (OAS) is another example of extremely poor planning. Rather than setting money aside by current taxpayers for when they retire, OAS uses current taxpayer money to pay current retirees.
This means there is no slush fund (unlike CPP) and why OAS is going from 65 to 67. As the proportion of retirees increases, more money is needed from a comparatively smaller labour force.
Ultimately, whenever there is a downturn in the economy (and there always is) government policy is often to increase spending to stimulate the economy (we're seeing this currently under the federal Liberals and we had it under the federal Conservatives before that).
If we had a party that truly thought of the future of Canada, they would save money when times are good. So that Canada can afford to spend money when the economy slows down without incurring massive debt levels.
So that a province that's been benefiting of historically high oil prices isn't (near) broke the moment oil prices drop. So people who've paid their taxes (including to OAS) for decades can actually retire when they were promised they would be able to.