Susan Ormiston is one of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s senior foreign correspondents.
Her career spans more than 25 years reporting from hot spots such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Haiti, Lebanon and South Africa.
Last week she filed a major report on Norway and oil, contrasting the position of the province of Alberta with that of Norway.
They are both oil producing areas facing up to the oil downturn.
She was full of admiration for our near neighbours across the North Sea and had some tough comments about what their experience should teach Canada.
Susan pointed out that Norway today sits on top of a £600,000 million pension fund established 20 years ago to handle the huge returns from oil and gas.
That capital has been invested in more than 9,000 companies worldwide, including more than 200 in Canada.
It is now the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
But Susan’s report was not just about facts and figures. It was about people.
She interviewed ordinary Norwegians to ask what they thought about their country’s approach to oil.
She interviewed some of the so called “oil kids” of Stavanger, the Norwegian Aberdeen, about the lifestyles of these wealthy second generation beneficiaries of Norway’s offshore oil riches.
“If you compare to our parents or grandparents who built this country, I think we’re a little bit spoiled,” admits Bjorn Knudsen, whose father worked for a large North Sea oil company.
“We are extremely lucky,” says Bjorn’s wife, Kristin Alne, a production engineer for Det Norske Olijeselsksap, an offshore oil company.
“There are only five million of us and someone several decades ago was really smart to deal with the income from the oil industry to generate the welfare of this country as a whole.”
Susan’s report was comparing Norway with Alberta.
It is a good job for the London Treasury’s less than dynamic duo of George Osborne and Danny Alexander that she was not comparing Canada with their suicidal stewardship of the North Sea.
In this newspaper last week Osborne demanded plaudits for relieving taxation on the industry.
He omitted to say that he was largely just reversing the swingeing tax increase he imposed in 2011.
The investment allowance was welcome but the exploration incentive for the future is inadequate.
Meanwhile, Alexander wants credit for helping oil workers.
He seems oblivious to the fact that oil workers are being sacked right now because this desperate duo at the Treasury forgot to gain assurances on employment from the oil companies before they agreed the tax concessions.