Strathcona County
October 15, 2014 By
AltaLink consultation – open houses and information centres
October 15, 2014 By
Castle Rock Ridge to Chapel Rock Transmission Project
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
4 – 8 p.m.
Lundbreck Community Hall
304 1 Street
Lundbreck, AB
Castle Rock Ridge to Chapel Rock Transmission Project
Saturday, October 25, 2014
1 – 4 p.m
Heritage Inn & Convention Centre
919 Waterton Ave
Pincher Creek, AB
Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with Jim Prentice, Premier of Alberta
October 14, 2014 By
Calgary, AB
11 October 2014
Prime Minister Harper and Premier Prentice held their first meeting today in Calgary.
The discussions were constructive and included a range of issues of importance to both governments, including Alberta’s economy, energy and the environment, the need for cooperative work to address the importance of skilled labour, and strengthening relationships with Aboriginal peoples.
The Premier looks forward to continuing to work together with the Prime Minister to address the priorities of Albertans.
– See more at: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2014/10/11/prime-minister-stephen-harper-meets-jim-prentice-premier-alberta#sthash.GwPKzpom.dpuf
Rising power rates a shock to system
October 9, 2014 By
By Lethbridge Herald Opinon on October 8, 2014.
We once had a slogan in this province – The Alberta Advantage.
It was a hallmark of the Ralph Klein era, when seemingly nothing could go wrong for Alberta. The premier, who came into power in 1992, made austerity a trend long before it would catch on decades later in the European Union, as cuts to spending and the creation of a business-friendly environment, partly through corporate tax cuts, made our province the envy of everyone else in Canada.
As oil and gas revenues skyrocketed, and billion-dollar surplus budgets were the norm, large companies, and a substantial amount of newcomers, made their way to Alberta to bask in the glow of success. The province was a juggernaut and not only were corporations raking in solid profits, but everyday, average workers were also making strides.
On both of those fronts, that momentum has stalled. Alberta has not been able to balance the budget in recent years and while a select few corporate entities have been able to thrive, the business community is feeling the squeeze, just like regular Albertans.
Coverage from Monday’s finance committee meeting paints that picture on a few fronts, as “rising costs” is a common theme. Council learned homeowners and businesses will be hit with more electricity rate increases, with more substantial increases on the way. Alberta’s transmission access fees could be hiked by 10 per cent each year in the near future, a direct result of the province’s steadfast support for new high-capacity power lines linking Calgary and Edmonton.
Already, power users are saddled with charges and fees which make actual power consumption a small percentage of an actual bill. Local access fees, administration fees, rate riders and transmission charges are factored in to a bill the government seems powerless to help control. It has left homeowners with yet another expense which is climbing out of control and business owners questioning their long-term futures in the province.
Electricity rates are only part of the equation as to why Alberta’s economy is not as red hot as it once was. Truth be told, the type of roll the province was on during part of the Klein years really was not sustainable in the long term. Boom-and-bust cycles are all too common in Alberta, and the boom helped skew the equation for many long-time residents and newcomers alike.
But what it did do was help give a handful of large corporations a very significant leg up, which still exists today, to the detriment of many. Citizens and businesses are paying the collective price of deregulation, which has shifted the balance of power in this province, literally and figuratively, as Albertans continue to be on the hook for expensive projects, like the high capacity power lines, which amount to little more than corporate welfare.
There was a time when the Alberta Advantage meant something to a very large portion of the population. Today, even though the motto has been scrapped, it still rings true for a very select few.
Comment on this editorial online at http://www.lethbridgeherald.com/opinions/.
Prentice says time becoming critical factor in Alberta’s worker shortage
October 6, 2014 By
EDMONTON – Alberta Premier Jim Prentice says time is becoming a critical factor in solving the temporary foreign worker shortage, but he dismissed criticism that an exploitative province is to blame.
“I’ve never agreed with the suggestion that really this is about Alberta business people trying to underpay. That is not my experience. That’s not what I’ve heard. That’s not what I’ve seen,” Prentice said in an interview.
“To be sure, there are always going to be people taking advantage of any government program.
“But by and large the employers I’ve met across Alberta just want hands and feet. They just want people to fulfil these jobs.
“They’re quite prepared in most of the cases I’ve seen to pay a premium to get people here. They just can’t find people given the red hot economy.”
Prentice plans soon to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss, among other issues, the temporary foreign worker changes that he says have hit Alberta’s roaring economy hard.
In June, Harper’s government brought in rules to limit the number of foreign workers that large and medium-sized companies can hire, to ensure Canadians are first in line for jobs.
Alberta and its oilsands engine have led the nation in growth during the past 20 years. Despite 100,000 newcomers a year, Alberta has grown heavily reliant on temporary foreign workers.
As of December 2012, there were more than 68,000 temporary foreign workers in Alberta — 20 per cent of the Canadian total.
Prentice said rule changes are starting to hit home, particularly in rural areas and in agriculture.
“People are becoming more concerned about (the worker shortage) because (a crisis) is more imminent,” said Prentice.
“In the areas like the packing plants, (the shortage) is going to back up from the slaughterhouses to the farm gates.”
Prentice is not the only western leader expressing concerns.
This week, B.C. Premier Christy Clark told the province’s business community that training young people and wooing skilled workers from other provinces simply won’t be enough to meet the labour needs of her envisioned liquefied natural gas industry.
However federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney reaffirmed to a conference in Ottawa Thursday that there will not be any changes to the June rules.
Kenney said that in Alberta the program has been “overused.” He noted that wages in the fast-food sector have not kept up with the rate of inflation.
Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, says the temporary foreign worker program — far from bolstering the labour situation — has been a catalyst for placing downward pressure on wages.
Last week, the AFL presented examples of various Alberta companies getting the green light to bring in temporary foreign workers despite paying wages substantially below the prevailing rate.
McGowan, in an interview, said it becomes self-fulfilling economic principle: underpaid foreign workers drive down wages down across the board, serving as a disincentive for Canadians to take those jobs, in turn creating a demand for even more temporary foreign workers.
“The federal government through its temporary foreign worker program has been helping low-wage employers keep wages low even when economic conditions suggest the wages should be going up,” said McGowan.
“We don’t think that’s the kind of business that any government should be in.”
Kenney has suggested the impact on the changes in Alberta have been overstated.
He said when the new limits are fully implemented in 2016, it will be the equivalent of Alberta losing just 8,000 low paid jobs relative to 2013, less than one per cent of the province’s workforce.
Vancouver mayor makes pipeline fight a key plank of re-election campaign
October 6, 2014 By
The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER – The mayor of British Columbia’s most populous city is making his fight against Kinder Morgan’s oil pipeline expansion a key plank of his re-election campaign.
British Columbia municipalities go to the polls on Nov. 15 and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision Vancouver party released an environmental platform Sunday that makes the Trans Mountain expansion proposal its top priority.
“Mayor Robertson and Vision will continue to say a loud, firm `No’ to the federal government and Kinder Morgan, and speak up for Vancouver in the National Energy Board hearings,” Robertson and his party colleagues said in a statement.
The $5.4-billion project would almost triple the capacity of the current pipeline linking the Alberta oilsands to Port Metro Vancouver, increasing flow from 300,000 barrels of oil a day to almost 900,000.
His main rival for the city’s top job — former journalist Kirk LaPointe, running under the Non-Partisan Association banner — has not taken a position on the project but has criticized Robertson for declaring opposition before a National Energy Board review is complete.
“With 40 days to the election, the NPA are still silent on Kinder Morgan, a project that threatens to wipe out the environmental progress we’ve made,” Robertson said.
“The risk from an oil spill, even a minor one, would have a significant impact on Vancouver’s economy and our environment. Our economic advantage is Vancouver’s pristine natural environment.”
The pipeline expansion proposed by the Texas-based pipeline giant puts that at risk with no benefit to Vancouver, he said.
LaPointe said Sunday that the regulatory review for the project is barely underway.
“Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver’s rigid ideology have hamstrung our economy. He is ashamed of our economy, and that has contributed to Vancouver having the lowest family income growth of major Canadian cities,” he said in a statement.
LaPointe borrowed a phrase from the federal Conservative stance, promising “responsible economic development” for the city.
“Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver’s rigid ideology have hamstrung our economy,” said LaPointe.
With Robertson at the helm, the city has asked the Federal Court of Appeal for a judicial review of the federal energy regulator’s process, saying the National Energy Board is refusing to consider Trans Mountain’s impact on global climate change.
The existing 1,200-kilometre Trans Mountain pipeline has linked Alberta’s oil sands to the West Coast since 1953.
The company’s Westridge marine terminal currently handles about five tankers a month. The expanded pipeline would result in about 34 tankers a month, and it would be capable of carrying diluted bitumen, the heavy, molasses-like oil that pipeline opponents say will sink if spilled in the ocean.
In neighbouring Burnaby, where Kinder Morgan was fined for a 2007 construction accident along the pipeline that rained 230,000 litres of oil down on a neighbourhood, the city is also vehemently opposed to the project and has refused the company access to city lands for survey work.
The dispute with Burnaby has set the regulatory review back seven months. A final report from the National Energy Board to cabinet is now due Jan. 25, 2016.
ROASTED & TOASTED
October 6, 2014 By
Lethbridge Herald
October 6, 2014
ROAST: To GregWeadick for your column showing your glowing support for Premier Prentice as he dismantles many of the policies and programs queen Redford initiated… even though you were right there in lockstep with Redford when she was flying around the province, or the world, introducing those policies.
Remember where you heard it first: privatizing the Alberta government air fleet in haste was a lousy business decision
October 6, 2014 By
Alberta’s mainstream media seems to have discovered at last that selling off the government’s air fleet to expunge the embarrassment of Alison Redford’s premiership is not necessarily an astute business move, and is most definitely unfair to the 27 good people who flew and serviced the four planes.
“Government fleet staff sacrificed on alter of political expedience,” revealed the headline over a story yesterday by the Edmonton Journal’s political columnist.
They most certainly were. This realization by the media is a positive development and illustrates that if you give them long enough, mainstream journalists can sometimes connect the dots after the warm glow from reading the official press release wears off.
Back on Sept. 16, when the government of Alberta announced it would ground and privatize the fleet of four small propeller-driven aircraft, it was argued here in the blogosphere that this decision would end up costing Albertans more and change nothing as the big shots of whatever provincial government is in power take to the skies aboard chartered planes and party like it’s 2012.
“This is always the pattern with the privatization of public services,” I wrote then. “Now, in addition to having to pay for airplane services for the top dogs of the provincial government, we taxpayers will have to build in a margin to cover corporate profits, plus higher private-sector insurance and borrowing costs.”
The reaction from the right-wing rage machine was typical: denial that the public sector can do anything better than private companies, accusations the arguments presented here were just about protecting “greedy” trade unionists’ jobs, and gleeful crowing at someone else’s misfortune.
Ah well, as columnist Graham Thomson pointed out in his better-late-than-never commentary yesterday, most of the affected employees aren’t union members, and they have never even been informed of why they’re being let go by their chicken-hearted bosses. I guess they were supposed to have read about it in the newspaper like the rest of us.
Seriously, people, if the air fleet employees had been members of the government employees’ union, at least the employer would have been required by contractual agreement to inform them of the reasons for their mass dismissal – which would have been interesting since their employer could hardly claim it’s laying them off because it doesn’t require their services any more.
Au contraire! The government will continue to fly people to remote locations with abandon, just as they always have. Say goodbye to the accountability that public services provide, however. As was noted here on Sept. 16, “we only know what we know about the abuses of the Redford Government because it was a public service they were abusing.”
That fact was no doubt a consideration in the government’s hasty “business” decision.
In his column, Mr. Thomson usefully referenced the Auditor General’s report last August, “which says that even though operating the fleet costs about $3.9 million a year more than using commercial or charter aircraft, that extra money furnishes the government with ‘intangible’ benefits including safety, security and convenience, not to mention the ability to easily fly into more than 120 airfields around the province, most of which are not serviced by commercial airlines.”
Actually, if we take into account typical corporate behaviour, not just an optimistic calculation based on today’s air and charter fares, even the vaunted $3.9-million a year saving is not going to last very long. Quite soon, you can expect the chosen charter company’s fees to rise, as they plead higher fuel prices, rising aircraft leasing costs, more expensive insurance, and, no doubt, increasing labour costs.
Ask yourself how well this privatization scheme has worked out with long-term care for seniors or highway maintenance and you’ll have your answer about the ultimate destination of Mr. Prentice’s back-of-the-napkin flight plan.
Mr. Thomson also noted there are real costs not included in the Auditor-General’s calculations when the government makes business decisions on the spur of the moment to solve the political crise du jour, for example, paying off the lease on a hangar for which you’ve just signed a 10-year contract.
This decision was made “carefully and thoughtfully,” Mr. Prentice assured us. Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose it was.
The thing is, the Progressive Conservative Party hired Jim Prentice as leader for his political skills – which, we should all agree after the past couple of weeks, are real enough.
The PC Party will now try to persuade the rest of us to keep Mr. Prentice on as premier, a job that in Alberta still automatically goes with being leader of the PC pack, in large part because of his supposed business acumen.
The case for that is not nearly as persuasive.
Despite former premier Redford’s unconscionable misuse of the planes, Albertans are unlikely to be better off once the aircraft are sold and the work contracted out to the high-cost private sector.
Remember where you heard it first.
Property rights are backbone of democracy
September 18, 2014 By
LETHBRIDGE HERALD – TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2014
The ongoing battle of property rights is Fabian Society ploy or conspiracy. The Fabian Society is an organization founded in England in 1884 to spread socialist principles gradually by peaceful means. Democracy is entrenched in the ownership of property. It is the very backbone of its existence. The 1960 Bill of Rights, a federal document, provides a legally acceptable summary of the law of property in all provinces. Some 100 sections of the Criminal Code deal with “offences against rights of property.” MP Jim Hillyer, in a recent mailout, stated four laws — Bills 19, 24, 36 and 50 — allow Cabinet almost unlimited authority. I would suggest the Alberta government abide by the Trespass Act in the Criminal Code, a federal statute which is a legal statute. “Any law enacted by either federal or provincial governments that comes into direct conflict with any existing law, that new law must be set aside,” by law. The last paragraph of the Constitution or the B.N.A. Act states “forever and always, and can only be changed by the will of the people.” Pierre Trudeau’s Charter of Rights, an agreement by nine men, without the authority and without debate in the provincial legislatures or our Parliament, none of them had been authorized by even an election to do what they did. We never authorized them, nor did we ratify it and it has no legal basis according to British law. In reality, socialism, theory and philosophy only exist in the parameters and confines of our universities and don’t work in the real world. Apparently there are three principles that can’t be taught — wisdom, intelligence and common sense. Any individual with at least one of these mindsets knows that socialism doesn’t work or won’t work as there is no incentive to produce. Socialism is not driven by politics, but is about power and control. It is driven by emotions, the three that control the human mind — greed, hate and jealousy. And, of course, “share everything I ain’t got.” Any country that is under socialism or communism is trying to get out, yet we have an incessant battle mainly in our universities, who peddle this crap. You drink our milk and honey, enjoy the rights and freedoms of a democracy, are paid five times more than in a socialist country and you want to take away our bread and gravy. Get a job in the real world and get a life.
Dean Oseen
Lethbridge