Thomas Mulcair’s visit to U.S. sparks concern from Alberta Premier Alison Redford

March 13, 2013 By

By JACKIE L. LARSON ,Edmonton Sun

First posted: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 01:32 PM MDT | Updated: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 01:39 PM MDT

Canadian Natutal Resources Minister Joe Oliver isn’t the only leader afraid NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair left facts behind in his travels to Washington D.C. this week.

Premier Alison Redford said Tuesday that Mulcair is dealing in politics, not facts, on the Keystone XL pipeline.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that he would advance this political agenda at a time when getting this project through matters so much to Canadians and I’m not at all surprised that he’s doing it,” Redford said.

Mulcair’s visit to D.C. comes in the wake of Canada’s minister of natural resources, Oliver, who criticized Mulcair’s deputy leader, Megan Leslie, for her attacks on U.S. State Department scientists. The scientists concluded in a February report that Keystone won’t hurt the environment and will be safer than other American pipelines.

In the few months before an expected U.S. presidential decision on the pipeline that will carry oil from Alberta and the Bakken formation in America to the Texas Gulf Coast, eitorials, regulatory process or political leadership sounding off on the Keystone XL need to be fact-based, Redford said.

“Unfortunately we’ve seen that Mr. Mulcair’s not factually based with respect to (the Keystone XL),” Redford said.

“He’s been very consistent, I don’t think that it shows national leadership and I don’t think that he should be doing it.”

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@SUNJackieL

Filed Under: News

Doctors accuse Alberta Premier Alison Redford of giving false information in a video address and robocalls

March 13, 2013 By

By JACKIE L. LARSON ,Edmonton Sun

First posted: Monday, March 11, 2013 06:11 PM MDT | Updated: Monday, March 11, 2013 06:20 PM MDT

A group of 80 medical doctors say Alberta Premier Alison Redford made incorrect statements in a video address and robocalls last week.

Dr. Kerry Pawluski, president of Save Our Medevac said Redford’s assertion her government has acted on all 18 relocation recommendations from the Health Quality Council is just wrong.

“The council recommended that an overpass and dedicated ambulance lane be built on QEII. There were recommendations that traffic lights be synchronized and medical IV pumps and monitors standardized on ambulances to speed patient transfers. None of these recommendations have been implemented,” said Pawluski.

The group is seeking “safer options” to relocating emergency flights from Edmonton’s City Centre Airport to the international airport. They say the extra transport time for patients from northern communities could prove fatal.

Contrary to Redford’s opening statement that “Edmonton plans to close its City Centre Airport on March 15,” the city has set no date for the closure of the airport, Pawluski said.

“The airport will continue to be open for at least another year or longer,” Pawluski said.

The premier’s claim that only five emergency cases per month arrive by medevac is unrealistically low, said Dr. Richard Birkill, community medical director in Lac La Biche.

“Although jeopardizing the lives of 60 patients per year is still too many, I know that Lac La Biche alone sent 120 critical time sensitive patients last year by medevac,” he said.

The doctors want relocation delayed and medical professionals and communities to give input to fixing the relocation plan, a press release said.

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Twitter: @SunJackieL

Filed Under: News

Preston Manning throws Alison Redford, Tom Flanagan under the conservative bus.

March 11, 2013 By

By daveberta on March 9th, 2013

OTTAWA

Speaking about the state of Canada’s conservative movement at this weekend’s Manning Centre Networking Conference in Ottawa, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning denounced the ethical and financial state of Premier Alison Redford‘s Progressive Conservatives.

“…in Alberta an aging Progressive Conservative administration has lost its way ethically and fiscally and needs to be overhauled or replaced,” Mr. Manning told an audience of close to 800 conservative activists.

Mr. Manning heaped this criticism on the forty-one year governing PCs, giving an obvious tip of the hat towards his ideological allies in the right-wing Wildrose Official Opposition.

Mr. Manning also used his speech to denounce two controversial statements and tell conservatives that they need to draw the line about what public comments are acceptable in their movement.

Mr. Manning characterized his former advisor Tom Flanagan‘s comments about child pornography and homophobic remarks made by a Wildrose candidate in the last provincial election as “intemperate and ill-considered remarks that discredit the conservative movement as a whole.”

“For the sake of the movement and the maintenance of public trust, conservative organizations should be prepared to swiftly and publicly disassociate themselves from those individuals that cross the line,” Mr. Manning said.

Numerous supporters of Dr. Flanagan attending the conference prominently sported buttons showing the face of the discredited university professor.

Filed Under: Blog

Alberta going deeper in debt, unveils budget

March 11, 2013 By
By ,Edmonton SunFirst posted: | Updated:

The Tory government has dug Albertans deeper in debt with the 2013-2014 budget it unveiled Thursday.

It plans to run a deficit of close to $2 billion and then borrow $4.3 billion for infrastructure — roads, schools, and hospitals.

That’s to make up what Finance Minister Doug Horner calls a $6.2 billion “cash requirement.”

“We’re in a deficit — I’m not hiding the fact that we’re in a deficit,” said Horner.

“We are having a tough time here. We could have cut another billion dollars out, but that’s not the responsible thing to do”

An operational deficit of $451 million is expected for 2013-14, followed by surpluses of $1.5 billion and $3.3 billion for 2014-15 and 2015-16.

The Tories are also promising to take out another $2 billion from the sustainability fund to cover the deficit.

There are no increases to taxes, while health care spending is expected to jump by 3% to $17.1 billion.

No extra cash, however, will be available for public-sector pay hikes as asked for by teachers, nurses, and doctors.

There’s also $500 million available towards 50 new schools and 70 school modernizations, as promised earlier by Premier Alison Redford.

But within three years, borrowing for P3s and bonds will put the province $17 billion in the hole before the next election — while a saving scheme tied to the price of bitumen would sock money away at a far more modest clip.

The “old way” of balancing the budget — red ink or black — has been replaced with a “new” way of looking at it, divvied into operational, savings and capital plans, said Horner.

That’s worse than creative accounting, said Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith. “It is deceitful… They’re trying to shuffle things around in the three budgets to hide the true nature of the shortfall … It will take a generation to pay off the Redford debt,” she said.

In the 2013-14 budget, the Tories are again banking on rosier bitumen prices in years to come to help touch up the shrinking Sustainability Fund — renamed the Contingency Fund, projecting the bubble to shrink and leave the province with a surplus in the next three years — not an optimistic projection, Horner said.

But he promised there will be operating surplus and $44 billion net financial assets within three years.

The province is calling Albertans privileged among Canadians for their “net assets per capita” — including in that all the province’s savings accounts like the Heritage Trust Fund and the Contingency Account. And Horner throws into the “net per capita assets” column infrastructure like roads, bridges, schools, hospitals because they can be sold, he said.

 

2013-14 budget

Operating expense: $36.4 billion, same as 2012-13 forecast

-$15 billion over three years for infrastructure projects

-Operating deficit $451 million

—2011-2012 deficit $4 billion

—2012-2013 deficit minus infrastructure debt $1.97 billion

-Personal Income Tax Revenue: $10 billion, up from $9.6 billion last year

-Corporate income tax revenue: $4.8 billion, slightly down

-Tax Revenue: $19 billion, up from $18.6 billion

-Contingency Account (former Sustainability Fund) goal: $5.6 billion or 15% of operational revenue

-“Net financial assets” projected in 3 years: $44B

-More than $24 billion set aside in savings over next three years

-Bitumen revenue forecast based on WTI (Western Texas Intermediate) oil forecast of $92.50, WCS (Western Canadian Select) forecast of $68.21

-Economic growth forecast of 2.9% in 2013

Spending includes:

-$60 million for three years for Family Care Clinics

-$500 million for 50 new schools and 70 modernized school projects

Changes:

-Seniors will have to have lived in Canada 10 years before getting provincial benefits

-Zero raises for public sector for three years includes teachers, doctors

-New: 44-cent “fee” for mobile phone users that will go toward 911 call centres

-Cut: $300 million for twinning, improvements on Hwy. 881 to Fort McMurray

Filed Under: News

Braid: Alison Redford should recall promise to balance budget – Alberta premier is waffling on debt, deficits

March 11, 2013 By

By Don Braid, Calgary Herald March 7, 2013

EDMONTON ­— Premiers usually keep their mouths shut the day before a budget is released. Not Alison Redford.

On Wednesday, the premier not only gave a preview, but tried to radically alter an entire province’s understanding of debt and deficits.

They are not bad things, she suggested. In fact, they can be actively good. To fixate on them in a negative way is downright backward.

“We have seen for the last 15 years in this province what I think is a parochial debate about words like debt and deficit,” she said after a speech to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce.

Former premier Ralph Klein, who certainly did fixate on debt, “was a great premier but he was premier more than 20 years ago,” Redford said.

Actually, he remained premier until only six years ago, when the province had no debt and was awash in surplus cash. That was the state of Alberta when he walked out of office in December 2006.

But hey, forget about that.

In the modern era we embrace debt because, well, everybody else does. It’s the worldly thing to do.

“Times have changed,” says Redford. “Our province has changed, international markets have changed … the way that the world thinks about investing in infrastructure is different now.”

I’m not sure the world has changed all that much, but something sure has.

Redford and her PCs have changed their tune. They have learned to love the very thing they hated only a few short months ago.

On budget day in 2012, they sounded a great deal like Klein, boasting that they were about to eliminate deficits and keep Alberta debt-free.

“We are forecasting a return to a balanced budget in the 2013-14 fiscal year, as our Premier (Redford) committed, with a projected surplus of nearly $1 billion,” then-treasurer Ron Liepert said proudly on Feb. 9, 2012.

He added an astonishing prediction: “By 2014-15, we are forecasting a surplus of $5.2 billion.”

None of that will happen now.

The 2013-14 deficit, to be unveiled Thursday, will likely be more than $3 billion.

The fiscal year ending March 31 is also set to clock in with a deficit above $3 billion. Any surplus in the projected bonanza year, 2014-15, seems unlikely.

What is certain, though, is that a growing billow of debt will flow from Redford’s decision to borrow heavily for infrastructure.

So what we’ve got here, folks, is a classic broken promise. There are two ways to deal with that — try again to keep the promise, or pretend it was never such a big deal in the first place.

If the second option is chosen, it can be helped along by ridiculing the people who believed in the promise, making them look old-fashioned and out of touch, suggesting they have to catch up with the sophisticated world out there.

Asked about this, NDP Leader Brian Mason didn’t bother with deep analysis. He just said: “She sounds like a snob to me.”

The problem with Redford’s line is that people do have memories. They’ll remember that she promised to balance the books both as a leadership candidate and a campaigning premier.

Many voters — including some who abandoned Wildrose at the end of last year’s election campaign— took comfort in that pledge. They knew Redford was big on maintaining services, but also counted on her to get rid of deficits.

Now, circumstances have changed.

The government is poor while the economy thrives. And the premier reacts not only by changing policy — her own policy — but by saying the whole debt and deficit thing was a “parochial debate” all along.

Whatever they have in the budget, this is one strange way to introduce it.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

[email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Filed Under: News

How the NEB causes Pipeline Spills

March 7, 2013 By
Why do Pipeline Spills Happen and Cleanups Drag On? Because under the current system, they can.
 
By Dave Core

We can’t say we’re shocked. Or even surprised.

Two and a half years after the worst pipeline spill in US history, Enbridge, the company responsible, is still dragging its feet on the clean up.

The story linked to is by a publication not especially crazy about the oil sands, or even the use of oil at all.

But it is nonetheless a thorough report detailing damage done to the local ecosystem and even business community as a result of Enbridge’s calamitous Kalamazoo oil spill a few summers ago.

Two inescapable conclusions can be drawn, but weren’t, by the reporter and those she quoted: regulatory regimes not only can’t prevent pipeline spills, they can’t enforce cleanup after, either. Click here to read more.

Stop Protecting Pipelines from Liability: Protect Landowner Property Rights Instead.

By CAEPLA Staff

Hate to say we told you so.

But CAEPLA has been arguing for years that regulators don’t really act in the public interest but rather serve to protect particular industries.

Such as the National Energy Board (NEB) protecting pipelines.

Confirmation of this point of view came this week from the government itself. That’s right — the same government that sponsors the NEB.

Canada’s Environment Commissioner says Federal regulations fail to protect the environment and economy from industrial development.

Turns out liability limits set for environmental catastrophes – such as, for instance, a serious pipeline spill – have been capped to reduce the exposure of polluting corporations to the real costs of cleanups. Click here to read the whole article.

Does Anybody Trust Pipeline Companies? Public Wants Assurance, Landowners Need Insurance.

By Dave Core

Well, I have pipelines in my backyard and I cannot trust the pipeline companies — or the government and its regulator, the National Energy Board. None will sign an iron clad contract that includes the oversight and discipline of insurance for these pipelines.
Worse, the NEB can make changes to agreements – “deals” we are forced to sign — at any time simply by changing the regulations, which they have done many times. Click here to read more.

Filed Under: News

Thomson: Prepare for Alberta’s ‘fudge it’ budget

March 4, 2013 By
 By Graham Thomson, Edmonton Journal March 2, 2013

EDMONTON – Premier Alison Redford will have reason to celebrate next Thursday when the government unveils the provincial budget.

March 7, after all, is her birthday. She’ll be 48.

Whether Albertans will be in a mood to celebrate is a whole different matter. To listen to the doom and gloom emanating from the legislature the past few weeks, this will be the toughest budget in years. There’ll be cuts to some government services and many who rely on government paycheques are facing a wage freeze or worse.

Given that Redford had made an election commitment to balance the books in 2013-14, you can call this the “broken-promise budget.”

Things are so dire that the government delayed the opening of the spring sitting, scrapped the speech from the throne and had the premier deliver a televised fireside chat on Jan. 24 to warn us of bad news to come.

“The Alberta government will collect about six billion dollars less in revenue this year alone,” said Redford in her state-of-the-province address, which was akin to the U.S. president telling the world we’re about to be hit by an asteroid — only instead of wiping out all life on earth, our fiscal Armageddon would obliterate every school building and teacher in Alberta, theoretically. “To put that in context, that’s equivalent to all of our government’s spending on education each year,” is how Redford put it.

Of course, Redford wasn’t talking about shutting down our education system. She wanted Albertans to understand what it means to lose $6 billion worth of budget revenues. She even helpfully gave a name to the fiscal fireball on a collision course with her budget: the “bitumen bubble.”

The government is receiving much less money from energy royalties because oil companies are receiving much less money for the bitumen produced from the oilsands. The government initially thought it would collect a total of $13.4 billion in revenues from non-renewable resources in the 2013-14 fiscal year. Now, it’s looking at getting maybe $7.4 billion.

So, how will the government deal with that $6-billion hole?

It has three options: paper over the hole by borrowing money; fill in the hole by raising taxes; or shrink the hole through cuts to spending.

Redford has already been talking about borrowing money for capital projects but she cannot borrow her way out of a $6-billion hole without plunging a proudly debt-free province back into debt.

She has rejected tax hikes out of hand, which severely restricts her ability to increase government revenues.

That leaves cuts. But Redford has said they won’t be massive. More of a scalpel approach than a chainsaw. Redford will keep spending on the priority areas of health and basic education, although an anticipated 4.5 per cent hike for health, for example, will be scaled back to around two or three per cent.

But keep in mind that even if health and K-12 education received no funding increase this year, those departments will still account for $23-billion worth of government spending (in 2012-13, education and health accounted for 55 per cent of the $41-billion budget).

Redford is expected to give more money to municipalities — and she’s been telling reporters she is focused on supporting non-oil sector industries such as agriculture, health research and green technologies.

Rather than deep, across-the-board cuts, Redford will try to hold the line on spending. As she said vaguely on Jan. 24, “some programs and services will change, especially those that are not sustainable over the long term.” It’s widely expected, for example, the government will chop the $7-million Summer Temporary Employment Program that provides summer jobs for about 3,000 students every year.

There’ll be wage freezes for teachers and less money for doctors — and labour unrest for months to come as nurses and civil servants get into contract talks — and the government has already announced a three-year wage freeze for civil service managers that’ll save about $50 million.

The cuts and freezes, though, are largely symbolic.

Without massive borrowing, or tax hikes or significant cuts to government spending, the numbers don’t add up to $6 billion.

That’s why opposition politicians are convinced the government will take option four: fudge the budget figures.

First of all, the government will use up all the money in the province’s savings plan. Just four years ago the Sustainability Fund contained $17 billion. Today, the province’s economic cushion has maybe $3 billion left. At this rate, that cushion will be of the whoopee variety in a matter of months.

But even using up the $3 billion in the fund will still leave the budget billions of dollars short.

So, let the fudging begin.

One scenario has the government dividing the budget into two parts: operating and capital. It borrows billions of dollars for capital projects which frees up money to pay for the day-to-day operating of the province, thus allowing the government to say it has “balanced” the operating budget. At the same time, the government amortizes the payments for capital projects over decades, which means it can downplay the cost of the projects in any one year. Sort of like saying the $100,000 mortgage on your house is really only $10,000 because that’s how much you’ll pay toward the mortgage this year.

To make things even more complicated, the government will introduce a third facet into the budget: savings.

“As we make the tough, but thoughtful decisions to live within our means,” Redford said in her Armageddon speech Jan. 24, “we have a plan to once again begin investing a portion of our resource revenue in the Heritage Fund — the first time that will have happened in over 25 years.”

It’s an oxymoron — to be talking about saving money when you don’t have any money to save. However, announcing a new savings plan is the government’s way to help fend off criticisms that it has just wiped out our old savings plan.

And then there’s a final ace up Redford’s sleeve: the economy.

Despite the fiscal problems facing a government overly dependent on volatile oil revenue, the province’s economy is growing at twice the national average. Employment is up, so are housing starts. As a news release from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business announced on Thursday, Alberta’s entrepreneurs “remain the most confident in Canada about their economy and their future success.”

Redford might be about to unveil a broken-promise budget but Albertans are a forgiving lot if they have jobs to go to and new trucks to get them there — and if they don’t see any major disruption in government services they’ve come to expect, such as decent health care and new schools.

By holding the line on spending in some areas, spending selectively more in other areas, using up the last of our savings, and fudging the figures, Redford’s budget on Thursday might not look as bad as she’s led us to expect. It’s the old political bait and switch — warn people they’re about to be hit by a 10-per-cent tax hike and they’ll be happily relieved when it’s “only” five per cent.

Not that there’s any talk of tax hikes in this budget.

That might come next year, though. If the “bitumen bubble” continues to play havoc with government revenues and if the government is not prepared to drastically cut spending, it will have few options but to raise taxes.

If that happens and the government is forced to introduce a tax-reform budget in 2014, I’m willing to make one fearless prediction: they won’t introduce it on the premier’s birthday.

[email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
Filed Under: News

Regulation in Action Hydraulic Fracturing

March 1, 2013 By

Regulation in Action Hydraulic Fracturing

Filed Under: Video

We are planning for the future of energy regulation

February 25, 2013 By

ABGovernment1ABGovernment2ABGovernment

Filed Under: Bulletin

Power-line projects thrown open to competitive bidding process

February 25, 2013 By

Calgary Herald

Regulation change necessary to expand process

By Darcy Henton, Calgary Herald February 16, 2013

The Alberta Utilities Commission has ruled the construction and operation of two new major power lines must be contracted out through a competitive bidding process, but critics who
support the change say it’s too little and too late.

The decision announced late Thursday by the government-appointed commission applies only to two critical transmission infrastructure projects planned for the Fort McMurray area and intertie
lines – not the two controversial high-voltage north-south lines already approved at a cost of $3 billion or the Edmonton-area Heartland project.

“This is a case of the PC government closing the barn door once the horses have gone,” said NDP Leader Brian Mason.

The application was brought forward by another arms-length government agency, the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), in 2011. AESO spokeswoman Ally Taylor said the agency is
reviewing the decision to see if it satisfies the original intent of introducing competition to Alberta’s transmission sector.

“It was intended to be a generic process that can be used for other future projects,” she said.

“Certainly the intent was not just to design it for one project, or even two, but beyond that.”

The commission found the scope of the application of the competitive process cannot be expanded to include all major infrastructure projects that are not critical transmission
infrastructure projects without changes to the Electric Utilities Act and transmission regulations.

But Colette Cherkerda, executive director of Alberta Direct Connect Consumer Association, urged the government to make amendments to enable the competitive process to be used on other
large transmission projects to help control costs.

“Directionally, I think it is good in that it provides an opportunity to bring some competitive pressures to bear on transmission costs,” she said.

Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) spokesman Jim Law said that if desired, with a change in legislation, AESO could come forward with the plan as a basis for a more generic model for
other major power line projects.

But Alberta Energy spokesman Mike Deising said the government has no plan to change the law or bring forward new legislation to do that.

“At this point it is just the two Fort McMurray lines,” he said.

“We will wait to see how this process unfolds.”

Vittoria Bellissimo, executive director of the Industrial Power Consumers Association of Alberta, said the industry group is concerned such a long and expensive development process will be used only on the two lines.  But she said allowing more proponents to bid on the two projects is a positive feature.  “Alberta would do well to have new Transmission Facility Owners competing against the incumbents,” she said. “We want everyone to sharpen their pencils and work toward reducing the delivered cost of electricity for ratepayers.

AltaLink, which is building one of the north-south lines, said it was looking forward to participating in the competitive process. “We’ve been keeping the lights on in Alberta – between us and our predecessor – for the last 100
years so we’re well qualified to continue to do it in a competitive world,” said spokesman Scott Schreiner.

“The goal is to deliver safe, reliable and affordable electricity to everybody in Alberta and I think that’s going to continue.”

Officials at ATCO, which is building the second north-south line, were not available for comment.

Land rights lawyer Keith Wilson said the AUC ruling follows the theme of other recent electricity file decisions by the provincial government. Like the repeal of Bill 50, which gave cabinet arbitrary power to approve the critical transmission infrastructure without a public hearing to determine if they were necessary, it comes after most of the decisions have been made and the money has already been spent, he said. He, too, urged the government to amend the law to enable competitive bidding on all major future transmission projects.

“They are the government,” he noted. “They have the key to the lawmaking machine in the legislature. Save us these billions of dollars.”
______________________________________________________________________________
For more Articles go to website: AlbertaLandownersCouncil.com

Filed Under: News
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