Petro Canada In the early 1970's the Canadian oil patch was largely controlled by U.S. interests, and much of the wealth created accrued to American companies. Canadians were, and still are to a large extent, seen as "hewers of wood and drawers of water". Trudeau Senior, Canadian economic nationalist, in an attempt to give Canada a larger stake in the Canadian oil industry,created Petro Canada around 1975. There were howls from the large U.S. corporations who controlled most of the large Albertan oil interests. Strangely, Albertans were more offended by the Canadian federal government taking a role than they were by Chinese, Korean, Norwegian, etc state owned oil companies buying up valuable properties.Now, happily, many large foreign companies have sold out their Alberta oil properties to companies that are largely, if not completely, Canadian owned. Suncor bought out Petro Canada somewhere around 2005-2009??, at the time Suncor ~60%, PC ~40% interest. The federal government wisely exited the oil industry. We should also keep a close eye on foreign state controlled companies, particularly those controlled by China and other foreign dictatorships.