By Rick Bell,QMI Agency

First posted: Thursday, February 19, 2015 07:34 PM MST | Updated: Friday, February 20, 2015 11:01 AM MST

They couldn’t expect us not to notice the very noticeable elephant in the room.

The provincial government of Premier Jim Prentice tells us this year they need $7 billion they don’t have. They blame the tanking oil price for the missing money.

They say they must take more dollars from you.

They hope you won’t look around and see the big, fat elephant — their elephant, a bloated creature fathered and fed by Progressive Conservative politicians.

Yes, we’re talking about the out-of-control spending over the past decade on the day-to-day running of the government.

We are NOT talking about spending to build stuff. We’re not jawing over how much went to constructing new schools or roads or health facilities.

We are just talking about spending on the day-to-day bills.

A warning.

The following information from Fumbling the Alberta Advantage, a Fraser Institute study released Thursday, contains scenes of gross irresponsibility and stupidity.

Reader discretion is advised.

Back in 1993, the Government of Alberta’s day-to-day spending in 2013 dollars was about $9,000 a person.

Three years later, the Ralph Klein government cut the spending to about $6,800 a person.

In 2004, with Ralph still at the helm, operating spending was back up to $9,000 a person.

A lot more cash was coming in from oil. Dollars were freed up from not having to fork out for interest costs because the debt was being paid off. Spending went up.

But that wasn’t good enough for Toryland.

In the years to follow, the provincial PC government torqued up the doling out of daily dollars beyond accounting for increases to the cost of living and the growth in the population.

Talk about torquing. By 2013-14, day-to-day provincial government spending jumped by $2,000 a person.

According to the report, much of the spending “can be traced to the public sector and how it has swallowed extra revenues available to the province.”

Had the PC rocket scientists in Toryland stuck to hiking spending by the increase in inflation and population, the provincial government would have saved $49 billion over the last decade.

In the last budget year alone, the province would have saved $8 billion.

Now remember, we’re now told the province’s budget is in the hole by $7 billion.

If the PCs had shown a smidgen of self-discipline, they could have filled today’s $7-billion hole without raising your taxes.

Mark Milke, one of the report’s authors, says Albertans would be “throwing rose petals” because the PCs “had been so prudent instead of spending every year as if they were going to get a gigantic Christmas bonus.”

Alas, the PCs of the past decade decided to jack up spending like there was no tomorrow, thinking big oil money would flow in forever.

It didn’t.

Like an eatery owner after someone dines and dashes, we are left holding the tab.

Then again, Albertans did keep the PCs in power despite many scribblers of all political stripes banging the drum time and time again about the spending and mismanagement in Toryland.

How often did we speak? Too often and to little effect.

That’s not all.

If the PCs hadn’t decided to go hog-wild on day-to-day spending, more bucks could have found their way into building schools, roads and the like.

“If the family hadn’t spent so much money on going out five times a week they could have saved more money for sports equipment, a new car and renovations to the house,” says report writer Milke.

And since the PCs spent so much money keeping everyone happy within government they also couldn’t sock away multi-billions in the rainy-day Heritage Fund.

Yes, the worst suspicions are confirmed.

Milke says the province has to deal with the salaries, benefits and pensions of those on the provincial public payroll.

He says Albertans should ask themselves a question.

“Why on God’s green Earth should I be forced to pay more tax into a broken system the premier himself isn’t fixing?”

Others will argue a different case.

They will point out in this time of “burden sharing” tax hikes and fee increases for individuals are in the budget mix but hiking the low tax on corporations is somehow off the table.

Whatever the fight, everyone agrees where the finger of blame should be pointed.

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By John Stoesser, QMI Agency
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 3:27:11 MST PM

An AltaLink employee speaks with a community member during the transmission system developers round of open house sessions to unveil a ‘‘stakeholder suggested“ route. The forums for the Castle Rock Ridge to Chapel Rock proposal were held in Cowley on Feb. 10 and Lundbreck on Feb. 11. John Stoesser photos/QMI Agency.
Transmission system developer AltaLink held another round of information sessions displaying a new proposed route for their $500-million Castle Rock Ridge to Chapel Rock project in Cowley on February 10 and Lundbreck on February 11.
The additional “stakeholder suggested” route would run 240-kilovolt wires south of Highway 3, paralleling a smaller, existing line and then head north after passing through a substation near Lee Lake, if it is approved. From there a 500-kv line would either pass Bellevue along Highway 3 or head up the North Burmis Road to connect to line running along the Livingstone Range.
“We’re not making decisions here tonight, just as we didn’t make decisions back in October,” Peter Brodsky said, a communications manager with AltaLink. “This is a preliminary process that allows us to get input from individuals directly impacted by the proposed line.”
Over 120 people attended the four-hour session in Cowley, Alta. informed by about 20 blue-vested AltaLink employees and a handful of AESO spokespeople.
A number of individuals and groups affected by the proposed routes have expressed scathing criticism of the project. Some of the mains concerns are that the project is overly expensive, tracks through pristine lands valued for tourism and is not justified by the needs document.
“We are pawns in our own community,” said David McIntyre, a resident and scientist who says his view would be compromised by one of the proposed routes. “We are victims that AltaLink has chosen, the relative few to represent society as a whole. So instead of addressing Albertans and telling Albertans they want to screw up and run lattice towers through an internationally revered and marketed landscape, they come down and tell a handful of people and try to pit neighbour against neighbour to get what they want so they can go home with hundreds of millions of dollars that we pay for.”
The Alberta Electric System Operator, the entity that plans and runs the province’s power grid, developed the needs document that was submitted to and approved by the Alberta Utilities Commission to justify the CRRCR project.
“We don’t even know if this is needed,” McIntyre said of his biggest criticism of the CRRCR. “AltaLink is here to tell us it is but we as a society have no idea. We have electrical engineers that tell us it’s not needed and yet AltaLink points to a needs assessment that was done I believe more than a decade ago.”
During the meeting AESO spokesperson Mike Deising said the newest iteration of the needs document is an amendment to the original and that the system’s operator reviews needs and plans every two years.
One reason behind the overarching Southern Alberta Transmission Reinforcement plan is connecting wind generation in the area to the grid and move that power to load centres, specifically Calgary. The AESO’s milestone for approving the CRRCR project was 600-megawatts of installed wind power in the area.
“We’ve far exceeded that, there are 457-megawatts that have been already constructed and almost another 600 in our connection queue,” Deising said, adding those extra 600-MW were in various stages of completion.
Deising also explained that the CRRCR line is not necessarily meant to export wind power to BC or Montana.
“That’s a very common misconception, Alberta is a net importer of electricity,” he said, adding that usually Alberta imports electricity five percent of the time and exports power one or two per cent of the time.
“We’re not setting ourselves to move power out. We need all the power we can get in the four corners of this province,” Deising said.
At the moment 1,450-MW of wind power is installed in Alberta and the AESO claims that could double over the next two decades.
The Livingstone Landowners Group, a collective of people living north of Highway 3 along the proposed CRRCR routes who oppose new power lines in the area has requested that the AUC and Premier Prentice reconsider the project. The group said in a news release that AltaLink is, “willing to deviate into environmentally sensitive lands” that could create “lasting harm” and is proposing at least one route that violates the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan.
LLG also advocates for underground power lines but AltaLink says that option is not even on the table due to their significantly increased cost.
“When you’re talking about high voltage lines of this capacity the underground excavation required, the concrete vaulting you would require around the power lines makes it an exorbitant cost related to complete a line of this size,” Brodsky said. “It just isn’t economically feasible to look at undergrounding this line.”
Simon Wood, a resident in the MD has written MLA Pat Stier and copied the premier regarding how the line would affect him personally. The new proposed route could run closely past his residence, with lattice towers that would be taller than the trees.
“When we built our house, I installed a solar electricity system. That’s right, I’m off grid. I don’t even get my power from AltaLink!” wrote Wood who is angry about the project and asked Stier to oppose it.
Stier attended the open house sessions in Cowley and Lundbreck.
“I think everybody here is very concerned about the amount of wind energy and the industrialization of this corridor is starting to become a more heard issue in my office,” the MLA said. “As AltaLink and the AESO decide how they’re going to continue to power up this area one has to wonder I think – and most of the people are saying this – just when is enough enough?”
Monica Field, McIntyre’s wife, spoke to the emotion of the people affected by the project.
“This process is destroying us,” she said. “It’s causing us so much anxiety and when you see a picture of where you live with the towers put on it and you think, ‘Can I still live here? Can I stand it?’ And you feel like running away screaming… It’s really awful to be in there and feel everybody’s emotion. They’re just so upset.”
Brodsky recognized that emotions and concern occur during these information sessions. Part of the sessions include a wall of handwritten notes with people’s thoughts on the project. The posted ideas ranged from “build it already” to “the AESO needs to be investigated by the RCMP”.
“What we hope to do is in the spring have a preferred and alternate route identified and at that time we could be back in the community to share those with the community members and get some final consultation prior to submitting a facilities application to the Alberta Utilities Commission,” said the AltaLink spokesperson about the next steps in the project.
[email protected]
@echo_stoesser

By Rick Bell, QMI Agency
First posted: Tuesday, February 03, 2015 10:14 PM MST | Updated: Wednesday, February 04, 2015 06:56 AM MST
We wait. The unions wait.
Premier Jim Prentice says wage rollbacks for provincial public sector workers are on the table.
But they aren’t on the table yet.
On Wednesday, members of the Alberta legislature will agree on a 5% cut to their sweet paycheques. Prentice and his cabinet ministers thumbs-upped a 5% cut for themselves as well. They will feel little pain.
With those 5% cuts to the politicians now going down, Prentice is asked when his government will finally talk to the unions about wage rollbacks.
The premier stickhandles.
“We inherited a situation where there are existing collective agreements which we obviously have to honour. We’ll deal with the realities of those,” says the premier.
“We also inherited a situation where there are public sector wage increases, negotiated by previous premiers and governments, that we inherited and that we’re going to have to wrestle with.”
So the premier is going to wrestle with the pay in the agreements he’s honouring.
If your head is hurting you are not alone.
Prentice says it all has to start with “a frank discussion” about “Alberta’s fiscal position and defining solutions that are going to protect front-line services and mitigate the risk of job losses.”
Is this a case of taking a pay cut so more people keep their jobs?
A supplementary question from the peanut gallery.
Mr. Premier, are you talking about wage rollbacks?
“We have not specifically put a fiscal plan on the table,” says Prentice.
“We’ve made it clear Alberta is going to have to live within its means. We are going to have to reduce government expenditures.”
Prentice says Alberta has to cut spending down towards the average in this country. He adds this province’s cheque writing is “significantly higher” than the national middle-of-the-road.
Besides hearing the province will not increase taxes on corporations as part of the master plan to unscrew what was screwed up by the lamebrained Progressive Conservatives, we are left with what the premier has said in the past.
Wage rollbacks have to be discussed with provincial public sector unions though no one in his government has mentioned rollbacks when they’ve gone to the unions.
Albertans expect government workers to share in the burden of what is to come.
The talk is for your benefit. Will you suck up getting your taxes hiked if you see someone on the provincial public payroll take a 5% hit?
The unions do not know with certainty where Prentice is headed.
Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, where the average salary for one their members working in direct government services is $56,000 a year, confirms there’s no sniff of wage rollbacks from the PC braintrust.
Smith hasn’t been called to attend any meetings on the subject. Not yet anyway.
The union leader says direct Alberta government employees in AUPE have taken three zeros in the last five years.
Their contract doesn’t expire until 2017. He feels they’ve done their bit.
For those of his union members working in health care who are going into contract talks or in them already, it’ll all be in the negotiating.
Meanwhile in Calgary, Colin Craig of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation stands on the cold steps of the premier’s southern Alberta HQ.
It is where Ralph announced Alberta’s debt being paid off in full.
Inside the building, Ralph’s government announced a 5% rollback to provincial government wages a generation ago.
The CTF recommends Prentice be like Ralph by cutting and not taxing more.
Two years back, the CTF told Alberta’s PC government the following.
“Repeatedly ignoring calls for modest spending controls in the past has created a fiscal disaster for the province that will require significantly more muscular action than would have been required had measures been taken earlier.
“In short, the party is over.”
The PC party who mismanaged the public purse and dismissed the warnings of the many who could add up the ugly arithmetic now want to be in charge of fixing what they did — again.
To no surprise, the CTF main man says it’s time to play hardball with the unions after playing softball for too long.
It’s not hardball season just yet. All we’re seeing played is hockey, what with all the stickhandling.

ROSEBUD, Alta. – Alberta will not appeal a court ruling that says a woman can sue the province over hydraulic fracturing that she alleges has so badly contaminated her well that the water can be set on fire.

Jessica Ernst began legal action against Alberta’s energy regulator and Calgary-based energy company Encana (TSX:ECA) in 2007, and amended her statement of claim in 2011 to include Alberta Environment.

Last month, Chief Justice Neil Wittmann of Court of Queen’s Bench dismissed the government’s application to strike it from the lawsuit.

An Alberta Justice spokeswoman gave no reason for the government’s decision not to appeal.

Ernst alleges fracking on her land northeast of Calgary released hazardous amounts of chemicals such as methane into her well and that her concerns were not properly investigated.

She says she is delighted and surprised by the province’s decision not to appeal and is looking forward to reading the government’s statement of defence.

“After seven arduous years a stunning victory stands,” Ernst said Tuesday from her home in the hamlet of Rosebud. “The truth will have its day in court.”

In its statement of defence, Encana has denied all of Ernst’s allegations.

In September, the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld another ruling that said Ernst could not include the province’s energy regulator in her lawsuit.

Ernst said she is seeking leave to appeal the September ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Hydraulic fracturing involves pumping water, nitrogen, sand and chemicals at high pressure underground to fracture rock and allow natural gas or oil to flow through wells to the surface.

— By John Cotter in Edmonton

Alberta’s NDP

February 05, 2015

EDMONTON – NDP Energy critic Brian Mason said today that Jim Prentice is wasting his time in the United States trying to promote an environmental policy that he himself referred to as a science experiment.

Yesterday, Prentice referred to carbon capture and storage as a “game changing technology,” just months after he referred to carbon capture as a “science experiment.”

“While his Finance Minister is at home trying to sell the PCs’ fiscal policy that has failed ordinary Alberta families, the Premier has taken a week away from Alberta to sell an environmental policy that he doesn’t believe in.” Mason said.

“But not only is Prentice attempting to sell Americans a line about carbon capture—he’s also in Washington and New York, lobbying for a pipeline that would sell out opportunities for long-term jobs upgrading product here in Alberta.”

Mason posed two questions that Prentice needs to answer:

1.      If Prentice believes, as he stated, that carbon capture is “game changing technology”, and is no longer the “science experiment” that he criticized in July and again in October, will he provide further public resources to these projects?

2.      If Prentice believes, as his Finance Minister has said “that we must get off the oil train”, why does he support expanding the export of raw bitumen to create US jobs and US business opportunities, rather than more upgrading and processing of our resources here, in line with the philosophy of Peter Lougheed and the Alberta NDP?  Why are there no actions to support diversification which would create Alberta jobs?

“Albertans deserve straight answers to these questions,” Mason said. “Again and again, Alberta families are left wondering why the PC government can’t be trusted to plan for our future—for future prosperity, to protect our natural environment and to improve our international reputation.”

CBC

Posted: 11/10/2014 8:00 am EST Updated: 01/10/2015 5:59 am EST

Carmen Langer had just left his bed to grab a drink of water when he felt his house northeast of Peace River, Alta., begin to shake.

“At first I thought I wasn’t feeling very good that day… and it was just my blood sugar, but no, it shook pretty good,” Langer said about the Nov. 2 incident.

Moments after the shaking stopped, his neighbours were calling, asking if he had felt what they just felt.

“After a few minutes, I realized it was an earthquake,” Langer said.

Natural Resources Canada (NRC) registered a small, 3.0-magnitude earthquake that was “lightly felt” from Three Creeks to St. Isidor in northern Alberta at 11:14 p.m. MT. NRC said on its website there were no reports of damage, and that “none would be expected.”

Jeff Gu, a seismologist at the University of Alberta, said the earthquake could have been caused by shifting rock formations in the region — but added there could be another possible explanation.

“Certainly that region is not immune to earthquake faulting, but I would say having actual earthquakes in that area is relatively recent, relatively new,” he said.

Gu is one of three authors of a recently published study in the Journal of Geophysical Research, a peer-reviewed publication that looked at four years of earthquake data around Rocky Mountain House. The study concludes that waste-water injection into the ground is highly correlated with spikes in earthquake activity in the area.

It is the first study of its kind conducted in Canada that links industrial activity to induced earthquakes.

“The conclusion was that the industrial activities could, in some cases, potentially trigger or facilitate earthquake occurrences,” Gu said.

Alberta earthquakes increasing

Since 1985, fewer than 15 earthquakes above a 3.0 magnitude have been recorded anywhere in Alberta, according to the Alberta Geological Survey’s website. There has been an increase in earthquake activity since the 1960s, the organization says.

The Peace River earthquake is not the only one that has shaken the province in the past few months:

– In October, a 2.7-magnitude quake was recorded about four kilometres southwest of Banff.

– In August, a 4.3-magnitude earthquake was registered near Rocky Mountain House, causing about 500 customers in the area to lose power for several hours.

Gu said the research into whether waste-water induction and fracking are related to earthquakes is still “really a work in progress.”

“There has been more and more evidence, increasing evidence, in the last few years in particular — in Arkansas, in Texas and actually more recently here,” Gu said.

But he said there is nothing to fear right now.

“I’m not worried until we get a conclusive answer on whether these are caused by industry or not, whether they are naturally occurring,” Gu said.

Langer, however, is worried.

“With all the stuff that’s going on in my community, I’m feeling quite concerned about it,” he said. “We’re having all kinds of environmental problems in the community… Something has to give here.”