The purpose of this appendix is not to suggest that Alberta would resemble any of the countries below. It is to provide context for the scale of population, economic activity and public finance at which sovereign governance is routinely conducted.
Alberta’s population of approximately five million places it among a substantial group of successful sovereign states. The question is therefore not whether a jurisdiction of Alberta’s size can govern itself — countries of this size manage the full institutional apparatus of sovereignty as a matter of routine. The question addressed in this paper is the narrower one of whether Alberta’s revenues and expenditures support that apparatus under the assumptions disclosed.
| Alberta | New Zealand | Ireland | Finland | Slovakia | Denmark | Norway | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Population, millions | 5.06 | 5.36 | 5.53 | 5.66 | 5.40 | 6.03 | 5.64 |
| Output, US$ billions | 346 | 259 | 377 | 317 | 154 | 462 | 531 |
| Output per person, US$ | 68,400 | 48,600 | 69,100 | 56,500 | 28,500 | 77,000 | 94,500 |
| Government revenue, US$ billions | 94–101 | 98 | 166 | 170 | 68 | 233 | 313 |
| Land area, thousand km² | 662 | ~268 | 69 | 304 | 49 | 42 | 304 |
| Landlocked | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Sovereign or state fund, US$ billions | Heritage | 56 | 39 | 31 | none | none | 2,285 |
Basis note. The population, output, output per person and land rows are directly comparable. The fiscal ratios that previously appeared here were not, and have been removed. The comparator countries are measured on the International Monetary Fund’s general-government basis, which consolidates central, state and local government together with social-security funds; the Alberta revenue figure is the revenue of an independent Alberta government from Table 1 and excludes municipal revenue and Alberta Pension Plan flows. The gap is not small. On the IMF basis, Canada’s general-government gross debt was about 110 per cent of output in 2024, against 23 per cent for Alberta’s taxpayer-supported provincial debt [IMF-DM]. Any fiscal comparison with these countries has to be rebuilt on a consolidated basis before it carries meaning, and the revenue row above should be read with the same caution.
Fund row: New Zealand Superannuation Fund; the Future Ireland Fund with the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund; Finland’s State Pension Fund; and Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global. Denmark’s ATP is statutory and member-owned rather than a state fund. Alberta’s Heritage Fund is shown without a value because the relevant comparison is the institutional design rather than the present balance. Comparator figures are for 2025 from the International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook of April 2026, Eurostat and the national statistical offices; fund values are the latest published. Alberta output is nominal gross domestic product at market prices for 2024, C$473.9 billion, from Statistics Canada [SC-222], converted at 0.73. Alberta government revenue is the independent-Alberta range from Table 1, not current provincial revenue, and its debt figure is Alberta’s own taxpayer-supported debt. Ireland is shown on modified gross national income rather than gross domestic product; see below.
Two cautions on the table
Ireland must be read on the right measure. Irish gross domestic product is inflated by the accounting treatment of intellectual property held by multinational companies, to the point that the Irish Central Statistics Office created a separate measure, modified gross national income, to describe the real economy.
In 2025 Irish gross domestic product was 1.8 times modified gross national income. On the headline measure Irish output per person appears to be about US$125,000; on the measure the Irish authorities themselves use for fiscal analysis it is about US$69,000, and the debt ratio rises from 33 per cent to 62 per cent. The corrected figures are used above.
Norway is not a template. The Government Pension Fund Global stands at roughly US$2.3 trillion, built from four decades of petroleum revenue saved rather than spent, beginning while production was still rising. Alberta would start later, against a mature resource base, with an existing spending baseline to defend. Norway is useful as evidence of what the institutional design achieves over time, not as a destination that can be reached by deciding to reach it.
