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From Stampede! The Rise of the West and Canada's New Power Elite by Gordon Pitts. Copyright 2008 Gordon Pitts. Published by arrangement with Key Porter Books.

It is 5:30 p.m. on a cool March afternoon and there is a man in a tuxedo hitchhiking on busy 12th Street in the northwest quadrant of Calgary. He looks as forlorn and out of place as a peacock in a henhouse.

I am that man. Let me explain.

The cab that was supposed to transport me from my friends' home to a black-tie dinner at the downtown Hyatt Hotel did not show up. I waited for 20 minutes and pondered what to do. My hosts were in Portugal on a holiday. As a stranger, an intermittent guest from Toronto, I had not met the neighbours. I kept phoning like mad, but the taxi line was busy. After about 4 p.m., it seems, you cannot get hold of a cab company in overstressed, underserved Calgary.

I faced the prospect of having flown all the way from Toronto for this event and then missing it entirely. Desperate times demand desperate measures. I decided to hitchhike. After less than five minutes on 12th Street, a major north-south artery, a black BMW pulled over to the curb, and a guy with a goatee beckoned me over. It turned out to be Rob Adamson, a Calgary architect, who happened to be heading downtown himself to meet a colleague at a hotel. He took me straight to the Hyatt, and I made my dinner on time—although I had to cut short my libations at the cocktail hour.

Welcome to Calgary in the 21st century. That bit of hitchhiking was the nadir of my experiences with the Alberta service industry. By the time the new millennium dawned, the mere act of calling a cab had become a nightmare for anyone used to the smooth flexibility of transportation in Toronto, Halifax or Montreal. Alberta was clearly a province out of control, with too many demands and too few people chasing too many dollars, as it tried to cope with an overheated, energy-mad economy. Beth Diamond, a Calgary public relations consultant, commented that the city had become like the movie Running with Scissors, and we were all feeling the sharp edges.

And it helps explain why many Albertans almost welcomed a slowdown in 2008 as energy exploration shifted to Saskatchewan and British Columbia and environmental impacts tempered the oil sands boom. The province had become an ordeal for anyone who wanted service promptly or efficiently—a cab on time (or at all); a waitress who could open a wine bottle without shredding the cork; a fast-food worker who did not snarl at you; a car rental clerk who had been in town from Mexico long enough to know the best route out of downtown Calgary. It was like Alberta was trying to act all grown-up at the table but still hadn't learned the basic rudiments of using a knife and fork.

Yet my hitchhiking in Calgary was also indicative of the best of Alberta. Even when things don't work, the day is saved thanks to the kindness of strangers—people like Rob Adamson. Albertans are open, friendly and co-operative, and have generally remained that way through the indignities of the latest energy boom. Even at its worst, Calgary is usually a much more welcoming place than Toronto and its suburbs. It would be only natural for Albertans to stop and pick up a hitchhiker in distress. All that may change as the province "grows up," but I hope not.

The shortage of cabs also has an upside: It reflects the reality of a province that ripples with energy and ambition. Alberta possesses a heartbeat of optimism that Ontario and Quebec used to boast of, but now sadly lack. I was wearing my tuxedo because I was attending a gala dinner at the Alberta College of Art & Design, featuring a speech by U.S. innovation thinker Daniel Pink. My dinner jacket and my evening in Calgary symbolized the other side of Alberta, and the entire prairies: the yearning to be taken seriously, to be forward-thinking. It is a West that has accumulated great wealth, entrepreneurial spirit and legions of millionaires, but that is now working on the other side of the equation—how to bridge the reality from the stranded hitchhiker on 12th Street to a region that is smart, sophisticated and engaged with the rest of Canada.

Canada will be a different place with Alberta on top. Over the next 20 years, the country will become more entrepreneurial, less class—ridden and more deregulated; and taxes, particularly business taxes, will fall as all provinces tumble toward the Alberta model. Health care may be increasingly available as a private service. Not all of the changes will be positive for all Canadians; the rest of Canada will not become a carbon-copy version of today's Alberta. And Alberta will change too, as a result of the influx of hundreds of thousands of people from other provinces and abroad. The province will become more urban, more diverse ethnically and politically, less conservative, and less monolithically Christian in its faith. Its economy will be increasingly built around services and technology, as new businesses are spun off from the oil sands and the conventional energy industry.

These are thoughts that have stayed with me as I travelled the province and the country over the past two years. From those travels, I have drawn up some proposals, some modest, some grand—some relating to Alberta, some to the West, and some to Canada as a whole.

1/ Rebrand Alberta
The Alberta brand is in deep trouble. To the rest of the world, Alberta means dirty oil and foot-dragging on emissions, in defiance of global public opinion. Like it or not, branding is important. It is the global consumer, particularly the U.S. consumer, who will decide the market for Alberta's resources, for its bitumen and coal methane and gas. Consumers in some areas of the United States are turning green in a big way. If they don't like what they see and hear, they will vote thumbs-down on Alberta.

Many Albertans say this scenario cannot come to pass, that Americans are not about to suddenly discard their SUVs, or to turn down the opportunity to tap a secure supply of fossil fuels that is conveniently located on their doorstep. Perhaps that's true, and the oil sands will thrive regardless of how green Canada and Alberta become in the end. But an environmentally inspired slowdown, and a clampdown on carbon pollution and water use, would actually extend the Alberta boom for a decade or two. This can only be beneficial in the long run.

Alberta should be building its brand for another era, after the oil sands, when it will have to live and die by its wits—indeed, its reputation—not by stuff in the ground. The bitumen era will pass, just as the conventional oil and gas industry has settled into gradual decline. In the long run, will Alberta want to be known for dead ducks on toxic pools or for the pristine mountain air of Kananaskis Country? It is time for Alberta to think in terms of the next hundred years, not just the next energy strike. That is a wrenching cultural change because Alberta is, at heart, a short-term society.

Alberta and Saskatchewan have the chance to be the first great energy-producing region that is also an energy-smart region. In a decade, the area between the Rockies and the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border will be one of the world's two great hydrocarbon producers. Saudi Arabia is the other. That presents an opportunity to be a leader in the world of scarce, $200-a-barrel oil—the best in emissions control, the best in sensible development. It is time to make carbon capture the Alberta industry of the future: to ensure a future for coal, oil sands and heavy oil. Whoever solves the puzzle of how to economically capture carbon from oil sands development and pipe it away to a central underground storage location will be the 21st-century equivalent of TransCanada Pipelines, a transmission powerhouse and an economic titan.

2/ Create the Heritage Fund for the Arts, Culture and Social Sciences
Alberta has done well taking its engineering smarts—especially in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing—to the world. The province is a global leader in technology and skills, which is why Albertan engineers and tradespeople can be found on the job in Algeria, Venezuela and Kazakhstan.

The next stage for Alberta is to emerge as an international thought leader. The engineers and scientists will come, attracted by the research money and the challenges of the oil sands. But it is time to think about how to develop the great novelists, political scientists and social thinkers, too. Alberta needs more Tom Flanagans, more Andrew Nikiforuks, more Randall Morcks, more Aritha van Herks. This should be Alberta's next diversification push—intellectual diversification, a major project that should absorb the province for the years to come.

3/ Run a bullet train between Calgary and Edmonton
One of the enduring images of Alberta in my mind is riding the Red Arrow, a terrific bus service from Calgary to Edmonton, on winter days. Each time the bus approached Edmonton, I would begin to see evidence of the previous night's snowstorm: a parade of cars that had slid into the median and streams of yellow incident tape. It was practically a given that the strand of Highway 2 north of Red Deer would be littered with abandoned vehicles. What a waste of time, insurance premiums and productivity—and, above all, of scarce energy resources.

Why not unite the two cities to create the Edgary of the future—two cities that operate as one? A train would be a signal of Alberta's embrace of a future less dependent on the car and jet plane. It would be a dramatic vote for sustainability. Imagine the pitch to Calgary travellers: "We can give you Edmonton in 90 minutes flat." This could be the Ed Stelmach government's defining project, something for the ages.

4/ Establish a task force on the oil sands
It doesn't sound sexy, but remember that a government-industry task force created the modern oil sands. Now the oil sands have reached a critical stage where they need some heavy thinking about the future. This task force would take into consideration environmental degradation, infrastructure development, health effects, social decay, drug addiction, labour mobility, materials shortages, native people's issues—the list of urgent priorities is endless. It would be a government-private initiative that would engage Canadians in an open discussion of these problems.

Let's not indulge in foolish fantasies that the oil sands can or will be stopped. There is too much momentum already. The global market wants the energy from Fort McMurray—needs it, in fact, as we bridge the gap between the fossil fuel age and the age of alternative energy. How do we channel the oil sands into healthy, sustainable development that will allow this resource to achieve its full potential? It is not too late: One way or the other, the oil sands—its development, its costs, its economic distortions—will dominate Canada for the next 20 years.

5/ Move a major bank to Calgary
It will happen eventually, so why not now? Westward relocation of a bank would be heavy with symbolism but also a realistic response to a new economic dynamic in Canada, as Ontario moves to have-not status and Alberta leaps ahead of the pack. It would not be the end of Toronto as a financial services centre, just a shift of emphasis. It would be thrilling for Canadian unity and pride to see a CIBC building in downtown Calgary or a new TD tower in Edmonton.

6/ End provincial trade barriers
Okay, it sounds like a motherhood statement but, in fact, the first steps have already been taken with the landmark trade and labour mobility pact between Alberta and B.C. The next steps should be an Alberta-B.C.-Ontario agreement, and ultimately the critical Quebec-Alberta pact. Central Canada would benefit hugely from these changes as the world enters a period of increased economic instability. The credit crunch of 2007-'08 is leaving scars in the U.S. economy that can't be quickly healed. Protectionism is bound to flourish once more. If Democrat Barack Obama captures the White House and joins forces with a Democratic Congress, we may see more barriers to north-south trade erected. It is time to start preparing for that eventuality—whether next month or down the road—by reviving east-west links in Canada. The absurdity of provincial protectionism becomes more glaring every day.

7/ Develop a national talent strategy
My hitchhiking on 12th Street underlines the single-biggest challenge facing this country: Where will we find enough working people in a time of aging demographics and huge talent demands? We need a national labour policy that embraces immigration, training and skills, relocation and mobility, housing and social services. Alberta is just the laboratory for the rest of the country. All the things that are going wrong—and right—in that province will be repeated in countless other markets.

How do we get people from inside Canada, as well as from abroad, to live in off-the-beaten-path resource towns like Fort Nelson, B.C., and Wabush, Labrador? How do we get 50-year-old laid-off manufacturing workers from Kitchener, Ontario, to move to the new boom towns of Saskatchewan? This is not just a regional migration issue. We need more people, period, people to do everything—not just engineers and doctors, but people to wait on tables and drive cabs that can pick up visitors when they expect to be picked up.

8/ Build universities of excellence
There has been enough me-tooism in Canada, as universities have proliferated and competed for the same programs, the same students, the same faculty members. Let's build excellent universities that are global thought leaders in their specialties. There is a chance to start the trend in Alberta, with its small but well-endowed network of colleges and universities. This would not impede a student from getting an engineering degree in Calgary, if he or she wished, or a political science degree in Edmonton. But it would determine where the big money goes. After the oil sands, Alberta will live and die by its talent. The province is investing in those knowledge assets, but it needs to focus its efforts. It's time to get rid of the Calgary-Edmonton, north-south duplication of effort and to simply back winners.

9/ No more Mr. Nice Guy
We need securities and tax laws that give Canadian companies the strength and flexibility to protect themselves and to grow by making international acquisitions. Let's end the Boy Scout era that forced Canada to surrender big parts of its birthright and its economic future. It may happen just in time to save the oil sands from total foreign control as the United States and China gear up for a major confrontation about who gets to control the supply of valuable bitumen. Canada should control its own bitumen, and our companies should also be major actors in extraction, upgrading and refining. We need to be the knowledge leaders who can master oil sands, heavy oil, wind, solar, hydro and carbon capture. That can only happen if we give our own executives a decent fighting chance, and the motivation and will to push out into the world.

10/ Make over the zero-sum mentality
Canada needs a psychological transformation away from regional myopia. When one province thrives, we all thrive. When one city wins the Stanley Cup, it is good for all of Canada, not just for the Red Mile of downtown Calgary, Whyte Avenue in Edmonton or Rue Ste-Catherine in Montreal. What's good for Alberta is good for Canada. Indeed, within Alberta, what is good for Calgary is generally good for the entire province.

Similarly, when one province declines, it is a loss for all regions of the country—particularly when, as in the case of Ontario, it is home to nearly 40% of the country's population, the core of its manufacturing capability and its financial services might. Ontario's plight, which might be applauded in some uninformed corners of the West and East, is a problem for us all, for it means the country as a whole is hurting.
As TD Bank economists have pointed out, Ontario's decline in relative prosperity has occurred in lockstep with a rising loonie, surging energy costs and the emergence of China, which together have created a perfect storm for manufacturers. "However, a closer look reveals that the relative decline is not so much a story of Ontario weakness," the economists say, "as it is of booming economic strength in Canada's commodity-based economies." So while Ontario is hurting, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland are thriving. That counter-cyclical imbalance protects Canada economically, but it also threatens the union. The years ahead will be a huge challenge for Confederation because one group of Canadians is doing much better than another, and that always seems to spell envy and trouble.

Instead of kicking Ontario and Quebec when they're down, instead of trying to detract from Alberta's and Saskatchewan's strength, Canadians should be thinking of ways to support all these provinces as they confront their particular demons—slow growth and, at times, hyper-growth. A rescue package for Ontario should not mean simultaneously attacking Alberta's wealth and industrial potential. We do not want another National Energy Program, but Alberta needs a strong Ontario and Quebec as rich markets, as dependable suppliers and as partners in the Canadian economy.

Some things in Alberta are still underdeveloped: venture capital, the service mentality, intercity travel, architecture. In parts of Alberta, there is still a sense that it's a good place to make money, but not a good place to make a real life. That has to change. So it's time to put the great minds and entrepreneurial energy of Canada to work in making Alberta a global destination for industry, culture and talent. As it stands, we spend more time thinking about how to affect the transformation of Shanghai than we do assisting the flowering of Calgary or Edmonton that should be taking place right now.

11/ Learn to love resources
We are a nation of hewers and drawers, but we are also energy processors and resource scientists. It is the one competitive edge we have, the edge that comes from our geography, and also from the resource-savvy brainpower that has sprung up from this geography. We are a resource people, and this has made Canada into the economic titan of the 21st century. Yet resource wealth is often dismissed as somewhat degrading, as an inferior form of wealth. It is not perceived as a sector that spins off great companies, great minds or great technology. But, as Alberta has shown, it is possible to leverage your resources into brainpower, just as Toronto has built an investment and finance infrastructure out of the mining industry.

This has to continue. The oil sands are an energy resource like none other before, because they are so capital-intensive, manufacturing-intensive, technology-intensive and R&D-intensive, with huge industrial spinoffs and environmental effects. There are applications for oil sands upgrading and pollution-control technology all around the world—for instance, in Venezuela, the United States and the former Soviet Union. There's business there for Alberta. And the demand for oil sands technology could help save parts of rust-belt Ontario. Canada should be the leader in carbon capture, the industry that could save Alberta and the world.

I vividly remember sitting with economist Doug May in the restaurant of The Rooms, Newfoundland's magisterial new museum high above old St. John's. It looks out over the Narrows, the tiny passage between St. John's harbour and the Atlantic—one of the most magnificent urban views in Canada. We watched the hive of construction activity along the harbour—equipment being assembled for Fort McMurray, fishing boats from Norway and Iceland, and tankers from Halifax. We talked about Canada's options in a world of a dominant China and dirty, but hugely in-demand, oil sands. May, who has taught for many years at Memorial University of Newfoundland, suggested Canadians are in denial of their true selves. They want to be Americans or Europeans, but not Canadians. After all the laments about the death of manufacturing, why don't we accept that we are a resources-based economy, a smart resources-based economy? "Technology does apply to the natural resources sector as much as to the computer industry," he observed. Resources is a knowledge industry, in fact. "Yet we deny our national competitive advantage. In Newfoundland, iron is important, oil is important, crab is important." And being in resources, being a skilled tradesperson, does not mean you're a second-rate citizen, he pointed out. That is the great lesson of Alberta: The way to succeed is not just through a university degree. People are getting very rich because they are pipefitters and welders, and not necessarily MBAs.

That is not to say university isn't a good thing, but a lot of Newfoundlanders are becoming highly educated in the university of experience, of life in a global economy based on commodities—"smart commodities" with a technological and scientific component.

We are a small population in a large country, but we are hampered by narrow provincial views. We should take our direction from those adaptable Newfoundlanders who have been fearless through the centuries about tackling an ocean, a new country or a vast forested field of bitumen—hearty and hard-working folk who go out into the world with big am-bitions, but who still carry a blazing torch for home.

That is what it takes to be Canadian in the oil sands age.