Donald Trump is also a "successful business owner" and I wouldn't take a seconds hesitation to consider him a buffoon in the same light of intelligent thinking. My problem has always been the shady under the table dealings the province has provided oil and gas operations over the last many years. It's one thing to entice employment opportunities for your citizens but lets stop and take a look for a second what was achieved. The Province (Conservatives) essentially created an opening for businesses to come to Alberta and open all doors on as many large scale projects as they could for as cheap as they could. Charging very little on royalties and essentially giving ourselves a bad name in the environmental sector while providing an opening for every person wanting to make a quick buck the chance. Whether you were a business owner, laborer, engineer, etc. you could come to Alberta get hired and live the high life after a few months in camp (which many have). Add to that how the business community has massively reaped the benefits of years or growth.
Now I'm not complaining that Edmonton and Calgary haven't grown for the better. But from day one this was never a sustainable economic plan for a diversified economy primarily in the job market. You can't put all your eggs in the oil and gas basket and pray that it's never going to hit hard times. Which is exactly what happened, so OPEC decided to hit us hard, proving that not only was the model of unsolicited growth in one sector a bad idea but a pretty destructive one at that.
If I were to lay blame on the problems with Alberta right now, I would put 50% on the corrupt leadership of the Conservatives for years in not regulating the Oil and Gas industry in Alberta. 40% on the decisions of OPEC in toppling the current system by making it almost impossible to afford the ridiculous scale operations that were ongoing. And 10% on the overexaggeration of the media and businessowners at the change of guard to the NDP by making decisions which are drastically impacting Albertans because they are afraid of actually doing their due-diligence.
You can call it "anti-business" to not put all your financial and economic eggs in one basket, but look at Detroit for example. They put everything into the automotive industry and look where that got them. Edmonton has hedged the majority of it's bets on oil and gas and it's in the process right now of learning the hard lesson of re-calibration.
There is no "shut down completely" they will continue operations here at a lower or more minimal scale. Operations in Saskatchewan have been ongoing for years. And you can say all you want about them moving to Saskatchewan that's fine. But so long as there is stuff to extract operations will continue in Alberta, it just won't be at the same insane scale we've seen for years.
As another point for you, the reason things became so ridiculously unsustainable was partly due to the massive exodus of people from Newfoundland/New Brunswick/PEI/Quebec for work in the patch. Do you seriously think that was a good economic plan for the province to be propping up the thousands upon thousands of temporary citizens here to work the patch? Gives them all jobs, which is great, but it creates a huge vacuum on all services when they leave. The exodus of people from Alberta has already started, these were never people here for the long haul or a sustainable long term Alberta.
As a guy who works for a company in oil and gas and is directly impacted by everything going on, I'm more than well aware of what's going on here. Precautions could have and should have been made by a responsible government over the last two decades but were allowed to reach astronomical levels due to a complete lack of concern for the bubble they were creating.
If you honestly think the NDP are in any way the reason Alberta is where it is, you need to give your head a shake. That's like blaming the fire department for your house burning down when you dosed the whole thing in gasoline.