KEITH GEREIN, EDMONTON JOURNAL : Thursday, November 08, 2012 7:35 AM

EDMONTON – Alberta opposition leaders say they are growing increasingly frustrated with a recent trend of Premier Alison Redford refusing to answer them in question period each day.

According to Hansard, the official record of the legislative assembly, Redford has risen to answer just over half of the questions so far directed her way during the fall session. The rest have been deflected to her ministers, while a handful have been ruled out of order by Speaker Gene Zwozdesky.

The trend has become particularly acute over the last four sitting days, when the premier responded to 18 of the 53 questions asked of her.

While that ratio might make for a decent baseball average, Redford seems more intent on playing dodge ball with their queries, the opposition leaders say.

“I think Albertans expect the premier will be brave enough to stand up and take questions from the opposition. It’s a shame she’s not,” said Wild-rose Leader Danielle Smith, who is entitled to the first three questions each day as head of the official opposition.

“She’s talked a lot about accountability, transparency and raising the bar, and we just haven’t seen that. It seems like any question we ask about accountability issues, she refuses to answer and defers to her ministers.”

This week, in particular, Redford has shown signs of being exasperated by opposition inquiries.

She replied to just one of the 14 questions put to her on Wednesday, and only after Liberal Leader Raj Sherman urged: “Premier, please get up and answer this question.”

Earlier questions from the Wildrose — on a controversial new MLA retirement benefit and an alleged shortage of prosecutors — were handled by ministers and deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk, as were questions from NDP Leader Brian Mason.

On Tuesday, Sherman was again the only one to get a response from Redford, who answered all three of his questions but none of the other nine she received from the Wildrose and NDP.

“You know, Mr. Speaker, I’m so pleased to stand and answer that question, which is actually on government policy,” Redford told the chamber in reply to Sherman’s query about big city charters.

Smith said Redford’s behaviour amounts to a lack of respect for Albertans, since the Wildrose is asking the questions coming from constituents. Smith said her party has received more than 1,000 emails and calls in the last day about the new MLA retirement benefit approved by a PC-dominated committee.

Large donations to the Tories made by Oilers owner Daryl Katz, his family and associates has also been a favourite subject of attack.

“Part of what I would observe is that she only seems to stand up and speak when she can wax eloquent about nothing at all,” Smith said. “She doesn’t really want to talk about anything substantive and we are asking substantive questions.”

However, some Tories have suggested opposition MLAs might get more of the premier’s attention if they did a better job of playing by the house rules. They note Zwozdesky has frequently scolded members — particularly the largely rookie Wildrose caucus — for delving into prohibited areas such as PC party finances or referring to individuals who are not in the house to defend themselves. Question period is supposed to focus on government policy, he said.

Redford was not available for an interview Wednesday, but press secretary Kim Misik said the premier was throwing more questions to her ministers because she has confidence in their expertise.

“The ministers are the men and women who are in the best position to answer specifics. They have the expertise, they deal with these issues day in and day out and it is their mandate to be able to answer those kind of questions.”

Asked under what circumstances the premier will answer a question, Misik said it can differ from day to day.

“You will notice she does rise at specific times when there is a voice that can be lent on policy issues that concern her or that she can add a little something.”

However, both Sherman and Mason said Redford should be taking a more active position since it is her policies that the government is now implementing.

“The cabinet ministers are to a large degree carrying out her decisions, so to force them to answer the questions is not the most courageous,” Mason said.

Mason said that of the three PC premiers he has served with, Redford’s behaviour in question period stands out. He said both Ralph Klein and Ed Stelmach answered virtually all the questions put to them in the early part of question period, and Klein even stuck around to answer additional queries.

As for Redford, “she is out of there like a shot,” after the first five rounds of questions, Mason said.

“It’s almost like she doesn’t want to be in the legislature,” Sherman said. “When a party leader asks a question, when it’s leader to leader, you gotta stand up and answer that question.

“Question period is when Albertans get to see their leaders and see what’s happening with their democratic institutions.”

Edmonton Journal

By Darcy Henton, Calgary Herald November 6, 2012

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

By Darcy Henton, Calgary Herald November 6, 2012

EDMONTON — The Redford government’s proposed one-stop energy regulator bill pits landowners against oil and gas developers and needs significant changes before it will win support from Alberta’s Official Opposition, Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith said Monday.

Smith said Monday her party will propose 12 amendments to the Responsible Energy Development Act to ensure it protects landowners, communities and the environment and removes tensions between industry and landowners.

The Wildrose will push the governing Tories to send the Bill 2 to a standing all-party committee on resource development to fix the flaws in the legislation she called a “Franken-bill” in the Assembly last week.

“We welcome the underlying intentions of this legislation,” she said. “We believe a one-stop shop for approving resource development is a good idea, but the foundation of that idea needs some work.”

She said that as it is written, Bill 2 is taking Albertans down the same path as controversial land bills — Bill 19, Bill 36 and Bill 50 — that had to be sent back to the House for amendments.

“We will have landowners who will be going to town hall meetings and they will be raising these concerns publicly as well as in the media about their rights not being respected,” she said. “And why would we go through that? What I am worried about is if you create an attitude of combat or hostility between these two key players, it is actually going to make it harder for the energy industry to be able to get their land agent out there negotiating access.”

Smith said the government hasn’t learned its lessons from the earlier land bills that critics say eroded landowners rights while setting aside land for development of public projects and power transmission lines.

“We sincerely hope that the premier and the energy minister will be open-minded about slowing this whole process down,” Smith said. “We simply cannot keep making laws haphazardly and ending up back here years down the road trying to fix the messes that they create. This government’s sloppy approach to legislating has become one of its defining characteristics.”

Smith said the bill is clearly needed to streamline Alberta’s regulatory process because Alberta has plummeted dramatically in its standing in energy investment surveys because of its red tape. She gave examples where Saskatchewan made regulatory changes for companies in hours or days while it took Alberta months and years to make the same changes for the same companies.

The Wildrose leader said her party will seek references in the bill to restore the need for projects to be in the public interest “having regard to the social and economic effects of the project and the effects of the project on the environment.”

It wants to restore external appeals to the Environmental Appeal Board that have been killed in Bill 2, restore notification of landowners and notification of hearings and ensure there is transparency and accountability in decisions, she said. The Wildrose seeks to have an all-party committee, rather than cabinet, choose the chief commissioner of the new regulatory body and it wants an amendment to establish 180-day timeline for decisions. It also wants an all-party committee to choose the regulator’s board of directors to represent landowners, the environment and industry.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

By Dean Bennett, CP November 5, 2012

EDMONTON — Proposed new energy rules will leave landowners with no meaningful say or right of appeal when pipelines, oil wells or other projects are put on their land, Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith said Monday.

Smith said her party is in favour of fast-tracking regulatory processes under Bill 2, but not at the expense of landowner rights.

“We simply cannot keep making laws haphazardly and ending up back here years down the road trying to fix the messes that (the Tories) create,” Smith told a legislature news conference.

“These concerns are fixable.”

Smith said her caucus will put forward 12 amendments to address the concerns.

Similar problems, she said, have led officials under Premier Alison Redford and predecessor Ed Stelmach to pull back pieces of legislation for redrafting.

“I don’t think they learned the lesson of the three previous bills,” said Smith.

“This is the problem that happens when the government gets a super-large majority. They think they can do anything they want.”

Bill 2, the Responsible Energy Development Act, is currently being debated in the legislature.

It is designed to have all coal, oil, gas and oilsands projects approved through one arm’s-length regulatory body.

The bill is to simplify and speed up approvals for projects such as oil wells that are built on private land, while also respecting the rights and concerns of the landowner and the environment.

But Smith said Bill 2 fails to make sure that those rights and the public interest be part of any regulator decision.

She also notes that under the bill, appeals will no longer go to an independent body — the Environmental Appeal Board — but rather will be handled in-house by the regulator.

“You can’t have an appeal process where the regulator is judging whether or not it made the right decision in the first place.”

Smith also said there needs to be timelines so that approval processes don’t drag on for months on end.

She said Alberta already has that reputation and industry is concerned.

“You don’t know if it’s going to take a year or two years or more to get your approvals,” she said.

“We’ve talked to industry and generally they think somewhere around six months is the right amount for most energy development.

“But it’s up to the legislature to set those targets.”

Energy Minister Ken Hughes said the bill will deliver safeguards for landowners and the environment, while speeding up the process.

“That’s why we’re bringing about the changes to the regulatory process, so that we have a more competitive process,” he said.

“But also we’re not prepared to compromise on environmental quality one iota.”

NDP critic Rachel Notley said they will be offering up eight amendments to clarify similar concerns.

“I think (the act) compromises the interests of landowners. It compromises the interests of the environment as a whole. It’s going to mean that we rush to approval and we eliminate or minimize oversight by the public at a time when we desperately need it,” said Notley.

Kent Hehr of the Alberta Liberals said while he has to examine all 12 Wildrose amendments in detail to say which he would support, he agrees with Smith in principle.

“Everyone needs an opportunity to be heard and this legislation doesn’t do that,” said Hehr.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Original source article: Wildrose urges changes to energy regulator bill to protect landowners

By Matt McClure, Calgary Herald November 6, 2012

CALGARY — The province’s electricity watchdog says tens of thousands of Albertans endured rolling outages this summer because power stations shut down unnecessarily during hot weather.

The Market Surveillance Administrator report released Monday suggests utilities be penalized by the province’s system operator if their generating units fail again due to poor maintenance.

While the investigation found there was no attempt to manipulate prices and gouge consumers during the July 9 blackouts, a senior adviser said four of the 10 generating stations that shut down that day had heat sensors that were poorly calibrated.

“They were set to trip too low,” Richard Penn said.

“There is a requirement that you carry out these routine checks, and we’re thinking that if you haven’t done that then you should be penalized.”

As temperatures soared to 30 Celsius in some parts of the province, and business began another work week, demand peaked that day at 9,885 MW — a record for Alberta.

The average pool price for power was $411.43 per MW, more than 10 times what it had been any time in the previous month.

The Wildrose opposition raised suspicions about market manipulation when so many generators went off-line in quick succession, but the report found that some utilities actually missed out that day on the chance to sell electricity at top price.

“There were a few media stories suggesting there were shenanigans going on,” Penn said.

“This wasn’t a strategic shutdown but a series of technical shutdowns.”

The rolling blackouts darkened homes and businesses in Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge for several hours that afternoon and evening as the Alberta Electric System Operator directed local utilities to shed 200 MW. It was a desperate effort to keep the entire electrical grid from overloading and collapsing.

The report found AESO correctly predicted high demand that day, but its long-term forecast failed to adjust for the fact that many of the province’s coal and gas plants would not be able to operate at peak capacity in the hot weather.

Harry Chandler, the Market Surveillance agency’s top administrator, said better modelling wouldn’t have allowed TransAlta to shutter its 330 MW Sundance 3 plant near Wabamun that week for scheduled maintenance.

“If you had sharp long-term tools, you might have been able to anticipate this, and the AESO would have said don’t take that outage right now, postpone it a week,” Chandler said.

Over the course of the day, 10 generating units accounting for more than 1,400 MW of energy were forced from service for various periods.

The report said AESO’s own investigation of the incident has already led to the submission and approval of a “number of corrective action plans by generators” to prevent a similar shutdown in future.

An AESO spokesman refused to provide details on those plans, but she said the grid operator accepted the watchdog’s findings.

“We have no concerns with the operating issues MSA has covered,” Ally Taylor said.

“We will release our own report into the incident sometime late in the year.”

Energy Minister Ken Hughes said the province is still studying the watchdog’s report.

“Every time there’s a circumstance like that, we’re looking for ways to learn,” Hughes said.

With files from Darcy Henton, Calgary Herald

[email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Original source article: Report blames blackouts on poor maintenance, not market manipulation

By Sarah O’Donnell, Edmonton Journal October 31, 2012

EDMONTON – Alberta MLAs have rejected attempts to rejig the Progressive Conservatives proposed Education Act to include a ban on mandatory school fees, enshrine a teacher’s right to assign a grade of “zero” or to reference to the province’s human rights laws.

Opposition parties introduced several amendments to Bill 3, the Education Act, during a debate that started Tuesday morning and lasted until about 1 a.m. Wednesday.

The act, which will replace the School Act that has governed Alberta’s K-12 education system for more than two decades, is the third version of the proposed changes to be introduced in the legislature in the last two year.

Wildrose MLA Bruce McAllister proposed the amendment banning mandatory school fees, a move supported by the NDP and Liberals in the legislature.

“I’ve said that September is cheque-tember,” said McAllister, the party’s education critic. “If you have a few kids it does add up. For families, it does make a difference.”

Tory MLAs defeated the proposal, saying that the Education Act was not the right place to address concerns about annual classroom charges.

“I don’t disagree that we need to understand the costs,” Education Minister Jeff Johnson said. “We need to put some fences around these costs. But I don’t agree that we need to take away the local autonomy of the boards and that we can fix it with one fell swoop in legislation. This is something that needs to be dealt with in regulation.”

A Wildrose proposal related to a controversial “no-zero” policy used in some school districts, including some Edmonton public schools, also was rejected by other MLAs Tuesday night. McAllister said it was clear from the outrage over the dismissal of an Edmonton high school physics teacher that parents want teachers to have the right to assign zeros for work that is not submitted.

Johnson said that while he personally doesn’t support the “no-zero” concept, he said it is an issue best considered at the local school and school board level.

“Assessment is not a cut and dried thing, and it’s certainly not something that can be codified in a provincial Education Act and shouldn’t be codified in a provincial Education Act,” Human Services Minister Dave Hancock agreed, speaking against the no-zero amendment.

NDP and Liberal efforts to include a reference to Alberta’s Human Rights Act in the Education Act also failed Tuesday night.

The PCs removed a reference to the human rights legislation in Bill 3, which in previous versions of the Education Act had infuriated some home-school families, who worried that they could be hauled before a human rights commission for views they taught to their children.

Liberal education critic Kent Hehr said he was disappointed, but not surprised, that the Tories refused to return references to human rights legislation.

“I know full well that you’re not going to change what happens in the home, but when you change legislation that gives a wink-wink, nod to certain groups, home-schoolers, other educational boards and the like that the rules don’t apply to you, this bothers me,” Hehr said. “This is what has happened in this case.”

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

By Keith Gerein, Edmonton Journal October 31, 2012

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

Written by Stan Ashbee

Wednesday, 24 October 2012 18:45

Potatoes of the cooked kind are delicious whether they are roasted and covered in herbs and garlic, deep fried and powdered with salt or in mashed form,  slathered in butter. Any way you slice them, potatoes are plentiful and a big part of agricultural business in Alberta and the Potato Growers of Alberta (PGA) represents all the potato growers in the province. The PGA, Taber office, recently hired Helmut Leili, as the association’s new executive director. Leili has been in the new position since Sept. 4 and was previously a consultant in business analysis and market development for fruits and vegetables in Mexico and Vancouver.
“Consulting is a business that you might work for three months and then you might be looking for work for four months, so its not steady, and when you’re involved with customers you really don’t see the end result. So this job came up and it was an opportunity to finally work with a group where I could also see the end results, and what we’re trying to achieve, and it brought me back to Canada,” said Leili.
According to Leili, there are three groups within the potato growers of Alberta that the PGA represents.
The first group are the potato growers that grow for the processing industry which is chips and french fries. Leili said that a lot of the fries a fast food customer would purchase at McDonald’s or Burger King are grown locally. The second group grow seed potatoes which has markets in the U.S., Mexico and other parts of Canada and there is a third and smaller group, the fresh table market, which is one of the groups Leili is working with to try to expand it. Leili noted that the potatoes a consumer would buy in the store and have for their own table would be grown by members of the PGA and would be a part of the fresh table market group.
“What we do is help the groups with market development. The association connects the groups to government in terms of legislation whether its labour or environmental issues. We get the information from the government and then we bring that to the growers,” said Leili.
“The PGA has been very successful here and what they’re trying to do is continue that success and they’re trying to take advantage of my marketing expertise. What we’re hoping we can do in the future is, to get Alberta potatoes and Alberta products as a whole, more exposed in to places outside of Alberta,” added Leili.
Leili said that the PGA is also responsible for getting information on what’s going on in the potato business in the rest of Canada and the U.S. while always being aware of where the PGA’s competitive position is. As for initiatives that Leili and the PGA are looking at, one is the organizing of packaging to make Alberta products a brand. Another is working on programs to alleviate the gap that exists in the area of agricultural research between theoretical research and practical on-the-farm research.
Currently, Leili lives in Lethbridge but the German-born former Ontario resident said the western hospitality he has received has been great and that the growers in the area and throughout the province have been friendly and hospitable and starting a new job in Alberta has been a very easy transition. Leili has a son that still resides in Ontario and he has two grandchildren. Leili’s wife continues to live and work in Mexico but upon retiring plans to move to Canada and the Leili’s will call Mexico and Canada home.

By Darcy Henton, Calgary Herald October 24, 2012

EDMONTON — Energy Minister Ken Hughes has introduced legislation to repeal controversial Bill 50, but he says the law that empowered cabinet to approve $8-billion worth of critical transmission projects without a public hearing was necessary at the time.

He said Tuesday it was not a mistake to pass the Electric Statutes Amendment Act to seize that power from the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) in 2009. “Different times; different needs,” he told reporters at the legislature.

“Now it’s important that we send this responsibility back to the Utilities Commission. The decision to pass that bill to move forward with that critical infrastructure was needed at the time it was done by the government.”

The law, which sparked outrage across the province, enabled cabinet to give the green light to five transmission projects, including two high voltage lines connecting Edmonton and Calgary — worth more than $3 billion — as well as a $400-million line into the industrial heartland northeast of Edmonton.

On Tuesday, critics blasted the Stelmach government’s decision to enact Bill 50 in the first place and also called for the immediate release of a review of Alberta’s electricity retail market that was commissioned to address price volatility.

Hughes said he doesn’t plan to release the report until he has decided how to respond to its 41 recommendations.

“I think it helps the discussion because then people can either focus on certain recommendations that they think there should be adjustments to or not, and we see quite clearly what we’re going to implement right off the bat.”

He said the Conservative government won’t be ready to implement any recommendations before the end of the year and that may not be in time to affect this winter’s electricity prices.

But NDP Leader Brian Mason said Hughes doesn’t want to release the report while the legislature is in session because he doesn’t want the recommendations debated.

“We need to be having that discussion. Other people need to be involved, including the citizens of Alberta, who pay electricity bills every month to keep their lights on,” he said.

“But the minister is withholding the information from the public so that he can make every single decision on every single recommendation in the report, and once that report is released, it will be too late.”

Mason said repealing Bill 50 now that construction has already begun on the transmission lines still leaves Albertans stuck with 100 per cent of the costs of lines that may not be necessary.

Wildrose energy critic Joe Anglin said Bill 50 was wrong and the province should admit it. He said there’s still time to send the projects to the AUC for expert assessment.

“We have time to correct this and save Albertans a tremendous amount of money,” he said.

Keith Wilson, a lawyer who represents landowners in the heartland, said Bill 50 was a mistake because it enabled the lines to go ahead without a public cost-benefit analysis.

He said industry experts have concluded the Bill 50 lines are a massive overbuild that will result in significant increases in monthly power bills and undermine the competitiveness of Alberta’s economy.

Wilson said landowners have opposed the lines because they don’t believe they are in the public interest.

“If their land is to be imposed upon, they want it to be for a good reason and one that is in the public interest,” he added.

Wilson has asked the Alberta Court of Appeal to order new hearings into the Heartland line so the AUC can decide whether Bill 50 lines are really in the public interest. A decision is expected in two to four weeks.