One Vancouver weekly newspaper, for instance, ran an opinion piece last month on how the real estate bubble was bursting, which was eerily similar to ones the newspaper ran back in 2003 and 2004.

The same doubters are bubbling up in Calgary, where housing prices rose 50 per cent in the past year, and the rental vacancy rates has plunged to the lowest level in history.

The problem with the bubble predictors is that they don’t realize that the western provinces are not in the midst of a fragile boom but at the beginning of an economic upturn that will run for decades.

One only has to look at Canada’s employment rate for evidence of the historical shift in the country’s economy. Every major city east of Manitoba, with the exception of Ottawa, has an unemployment rate above 6 per cent. Every city in the West has an unemployment rate below 5 per cent. In Calgary it is 3.7 per cent, and Vancouver is at 4.1 per cent, tied as the lowest in the country. And this is despite an influx of people from around the world and across the country over the past few years.

Over the past 10 years, major changes have occurred that have forever altered Western Canada’s role in the global economy:
• The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which once played a key role, exerts far less control today and supplies only 40 per cent of the world’s oil. Saudi Arabia simply doesn’t have the capacity to dictate oil supply.
• Emerging nations such as China, India and Brazil are ramping up oil consumption, adding unprecedented demand. Every year for instance, 40 million more consumers in China buy their first car.
• Most developing countries were once running big current account deficits, so when oil prices rose, they got hammered. Now most major oil-importing countries have large current account surpluses and can afford to pay a premium for energy.

That means places with large and safe oil, coal and natural gas reserves, such as Alberta and British Columbia, are in the driver’s seat.

Louis Theriault, director of economic forecasting for the Conference Board of Canada, believes oil will remain above $60 U.S. per barrel to the end of the decade. There’s upwards of $100 billion in international investment money earmarked over the next decade for oilsands development alone, which is certain to prolong the strong western economy.