'Ralph Bucks' 14 years later: Could the Prosperity Bonus have saved Alberta’s bottom line?

It’s hard to imagine now, but this time 14 years ago Alberta literally had more money than it knew what to do with. A series of seemingly unending oil-fueled budget surpluses eventually peaked at $8.7 billion in June of 2006. With so much cash on hand, Premier Ralph Klein announced the Alberta Prosperity Bonus in September of 2005: a one-time $400 rebate for every Albertans carved out of $1.4 billion of the provincial surplus.  “He came up with a typical populist approach,&rdquo