Lethbridge Herald
12 Aug 2017
Ian Bickis
THE CANADIAN PRESS — CALGARY

In an industry that lives and dies by the weather, farmers like Dwight Foster are looking for all the help they can get to know what’s coming. “We use every tool in the toolbox we can get our hands on to try and figure out what’s going on,” said Foster, co-owner of North Gower Grains south of Ottawa.

With about 25 farms to manage, he has signed up with a service that plants weather stations throughout his properties that tell him whether the wind is calm enough to spray his fields or if it’s dry enough to till the earth.

“It’s more high-tech than ever. We have weather stations on our farms, they’re telling us wind speed, wind direction, temperatures high and low, rainfall amounts on almost every one of our farms.”

Farmers like Foster are on a never-ending quest for more detailed weather forecasts as they try to increase yields on larger plots while contending with more extreme weather, such as the record rains that have drenched parts of southern Ontario this year, or the droughts that have left vast fields bone dry in Saskatchewan.

Foster said he installed the weather station system upon the encouragement of seed companies, since knowing exactly how much rain has fallen allows him to buy specific seeds, depending on the conditions.

That kind of data could prove especially useful this year, with some of Foster’s farms soaked with triple the rainfall compared with last year. Environment Canada says the Ottawa area is on track for its wettest year.

In Saskatchewan, Todd Lewis is dealing with the opposite problem. The area south of Regina where he farms has been struggling with some of the driest months on record.

Lewis uses a service that sets up personalized weather stations to better manage the grains and pulses on his family farm. At roughly 4,500 hectares, the operation is part of an overall trend that saw the average farm size increase almost 13 per cent between 2006 and 2016.

He said field-level information helps him make decisions around harvest time, like whether to keep working a few extra hours before an oncoming rainfall or assessing if weaker crops were caused by parched soil.

He said he has noticed improvements in both the short- and long-term forecasts — even if he doesn’t like what they predict.

“The long-range forecasting, unfortunately this year they’ve been kind of correct,” he said.

“They predicted dry and it’s been dry. So sometimes you wish they were wrong.”

Despite the better data, Lewis said there is still a degree of uncertainty when it comes to knowing what Mother Nature will bring.

“Anything outside of a week, you’re going to be pretty skeptical about it.”

Precision agriculture companies are, however, hoping to reduce that gap with the reams of information they’re collecting.

“I think every farmer, at the top of their wish list, would be better seasonal forecasts so they can know what to expect,” said Andy Nadler, product manager at Farmers Edge.

The company, along with Canadian competitors like Weather Innovations Consulting and a growing field of international rivals, are trying to use new ways to crunch data to help guide farmers.

Nadler said Farmers Edge is learning from the more than 3,000 weather stations it has installed since starting to offer them about three years ago. It charges about $2 an acre (0.4 hectares) for its data management service.

Farmers shouldn’t expect any breakthrough, however, on longterm weather forecasting, said Drew Lerner, president of Kansas-based World Weather Inc. and a practising meteorologist for 38 years.

“Long-range forecasting is an art, and it is a very risky thing to do,” said Lerner. “It really does come down to a great deal of prayer.

“There’s too much going on, too much chaos in the atmosphere — it is not a solvable equation. All we can do is get better at estimating.”

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Lethbridge Herald
12 Aug 2017
Faron Ellis and George Rigaux

Much was said about vote splitting during the run-up to Wildrose and PC members’ endorsement of the United Conservative Party. Since then, more speculation about how many former PC and Wildrose voters the UCP will attract has ensued. Unfortunately, the simple math most often used — adding up the votes two parties received in a previous election or in recent public opinion polls to total what a new party will receive — does not do justice to the complexities of voting behaviour and the impact of the electoral system when translating votes into seats.

Initially, we must remember that Canadians are known as vote switchers. This results in all parties losing some of their supporters between elections, typically at least one-fifth and sometimes half or more. As such, all parties engage in an ongoing process of electoral coalition rebuilding, constantly seeking to maintain as many supporters as possible while reaching out to new recruits to replace those they will lose between elections and increase their overall support.

Federal data illustrates this phenomenon. During the last three elections in which the Progressive Conservatives competed, the PCs retained only 22 per cent (1993), 51 per cent (1997) and 44 per cent (2000) of the voters who supported them in the previous election. In other words, in increasing their total share of votes between 1993 and 1997 they had to make up for losing half of their past supporters before getting around to increasing their total.

During that same period, Reform/Alliance was much more efficient at maintaining its base, consistently retaining 80 per cent of its previous voters. Yet their task was similar. In increasing its total vote share by six per cent in 2000 the Alliance had to replace one-fifth of its former votes prior to securing those overall gains.

The situation is even more complicated for merged parties like Alberta’s united Conservatives. Federal data indicates that in its first election in 2004 the merged Conservative party retained 88 per cent of former Alliance voters and 68 per cent of former PC voters resulting in slightly less than 30 per cent of the vote, approximately three-quarters of that received by the legacy parties. In fact, it took the CPC three elections to equal the totals previously achieved by the PCs and Alliance.

Alberta polling data indicates a similar pattern emerging in united Conservative support. Prior to the merger Mainstreet Research registered combined Wildrose and PC support at 57 per cent. Post-merger numbers indicate the UCP has 43 per cent. A substantial base from which to build, but again only about three-quarters of previous legacy party support. Further, the number of undecided voters has surged from 15 per cent to 27 per cent. Given the relative stability in their competitors’ numbers, most of that increase appears to be former legacy party supporters who have yet to be convinced of the virtue of the new party and are still shopping.

As misleading as it may be, the simple two-plus-two-equals-four logic is persuasive and will therefore likely continue to be used to oversell the benefits of ending vote splitting. Albeit unnecessarily because a merged party does not need to win over as many voters as its legacy parties to be more successful than were the legacy parties.

Federal conservative numbers are again instructive. Despite winning eight per cent fewer votes than the Alliance-PCs total in the 2000 election, in 2004 the CPC won 21 more seats than its two legacy parties. In 2006 the CPC still won a smaller percentage of the total than its legacy parties, but won 124 seats compared to the 2000 Alliance-PC total of 78. A substantial improvement despite not yet reaching the combined total of the legacy parties.

So it is fair to say that ending vote splitting helps merged parties like the UCP, for a variety of reasons not least of which is the simple elimination of one choice for voters. But knowing the UCP will both gain and lose some of the legacy parties’ former supporters need not compel proponents to oversell the benefits of ending vote splitting any more than it should embolden detractors who are doing little more than pointing out the obvious in suggesting the new party will not garner all former supporters of its legacy parties.

The ultimate fate of the UCP will be determined by how well its leadership maintains and perpetually renews its support base.

Much of that will be importantly influenced by factors beyond its control such as the state of the economy and its competitors two years down the road. Much, however, is under its own control. Only the UCP will be responsible for its leadership, policy positioning and strategic decisions. These will ultimately determine how successful any overall UCP voter mobilization strategy will be. We will turn our attention to some of those matters next week.

Faron Ellis is Research Chair, Citizen Society Research Lab, Lethbridge College. George Rigaux is a Lethbridge banker, Reform-CPC organizer and campaign manager.

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GUEST COLUMN

Lethbridge Herald
5 Aug 2017
Faron Ellis and George Rigaux

First of four parts

Following the decisive votes by both Wildrose and Progressive Conservative members in support of merging their parties into the new United Conservative Party (UCP), many headlines have posed the quite reasonable question: what comes next?

Beginning today, and over the next few weeks, we will attempt to provide some answers. Initially, we will review what led to the merger by placing the UCP in its contemporary and historical contexts. Past examples of political entrepreneurship can provide useful lessons, at least where circumstances are similar enough to make meaningful comparisons. Fortunately, Canada has a rich tradition of political entrepreneurship from which we can draw.

Political entrepreneurs from the Canadian prairies, Alberta in particular, have spawned a variety of new parties, mergers of legacy parties and major political realignments. The United Farmers provincial parties and their progressive federal counterparts in the early 20th century were followed by the Great Depression-era Social Credit and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. The latter eventually entering into a formal alliance with the Canadian Labour Congress to create the NDP. Indeed, Peter Lougheed’s building of the Alberta PC’s from the ground up into a 44-year dynasty that replaced the 36-year Socred dynasty, itself the result of an outstanding act of political entrepreneurship, serve as provincial examples. More recently, and likely more useful for comparative purposes, are Preston Manning’s Reform Party/United Alternative and Stephen Harper’s successful merging of the Reform/Alliance and Progressive Conservatives into the Conservative Party of Canada.

Although somewhat unique in their circumstances, approaches and results, each of these share common threads of political entrepreneurship: the identification of substantial unrepresented or inadequately represented demand within the electorate; and the attempted establishment of a new political vehicle to meet that demand, either by way of building anew from the ground up, or through amalgamation of existing parties.

Recent Alberta conservative politics is well known and need only be briefly outline here to understand what caused the unrepresented demand. When successive PC governments could not find their purpose after the policy drift that accompanied the final years of the Klein governments, each successive administration alienated swaths of former supporters, and eventually the Alberta electorate more generally. The Stelmach government so thoroughly annoyed the Calgary oil patch that it began financing the upstart Wildrose. When Wildrose elected Danielle Smith as leader and the Redford government began alienating rural Alberta, it appeared Wildrose would continue the provincial tradition of replacing a long-serving dynasty with a new party, elevating it from relative obscurity to majority government in a single election. But the 2012 election exposed Wildrose’s inability to corral its more radical social conservative elements whose outbursts repeatedly damaged the entire brand.

When Jim Prentice ascended to the PC leadership and engineered the floor-crossing of Smith and most of her caucus, both parties were tarnished beyond repair. Alberta voters flocked to the NDP and conservatives in both parties were left with some soul searching to do. Despite their defeat, the 2015 election produced ambiguous results for Alberta conservatives. Wildrose won more seats and formed the official opposition, but on fewer votes than the PCs. The PCs were reduced to third party status but had history, more votes and enduring organizational capacity. With posthoneymoon polls showing Notley and the NDP faltering, often trailing the PCs and Wildrose, both conservative parties dug in for another four years of internecine warfare. Enter Jason Kenney. Kenney was first to identify the strong demand for a unified option among both Wildrose and PC voters. He launched what was at the time considered an audacious campaign to unite the two warring conservative factions, built momentum, won the PC leadership by campaigning on a unity platform, convinced reluctant Wildrose leader Brian Jean to come onboard, achieved a workable unity agreement and delivered an overwhelming majority of PC members’ support.

Of all the variables that had to be considered, all the people that had to be convinced, recruited and organized, and all the hurdles that had to be overcome, Kenney’s intervention into the self-induced quagmire of Alberta conservative politics stands as the single most important factor in getting Alberta conservatives to the UCP. Although coming a bit late to the party, Jean deserves credit for delivering Wildrose. But make no mistake, full credit for ending the now decade-long split that eventually led to the neither Wildrose nor PCs governing rests squarely on the shoulders of Jason Kenney.

Kenney is only three acts into his five-act entrepreneurial play. And substantial hurdles remain. But his quest to create and lead the UCP to government already ranks as one of the most successful acts of political entrepreneurship in Alberta history. Should he ultimately succeed, it will rank among the most successful in Canadian history.

Faron Ellis is Research Chair, Citizen Society Research Lab, Lethbridge College. George Rigaux is a Lethbridge banker, Reform-CPC organizer and campaign manager.

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Lethbridge Herald
5 Aug 2017
Bill Graveland
THE CANADIAN PRESS — CALGARY

The merger of Alberta’s two conservative parties is prompting some disaffected members to form splinter parties of their own despite warnings from experts that the move is unlikely to affect the next provincial election.

Members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta and the Wildrose Party voted 95 per cent in favour of creating the United Conservative Party last month.

A race for the leadership is underway and includes former PC leader Jason Kenney, former Wildrose leader Brian Jean and conservative strategist Doug Schweitzer.

But there are rumblings from those who don’t favour the move. A number of disgruntled PCs have been talking about creating a new centrist party while those on the other side of the spectrum have already received approval from Elections Alberta on the name Alberta Advantage Party.

Edmonton lawyer Marilyn Burns was one of the founders of the Wildrose and is hoping to take the same role in the Alberta Advantage Party.

“We’ve picked up the ball that Brian Jean dropped and this is turning into a huge snowball really fast,” she said. “People are really kicking my butt to move fast on this.”

To reach official party status, Burns said it has to have one of three things — 44 registered candidates for the next election, three MLAs who cross the floor to join the party, or 7,868 signatures from Albertans reflecting a percentage of eligible voters.

She said there are a lot of people angry about the merger.

“There is such an overwhelming anger towards Brian right now because of this betrayal that you can touch it. It’s palpable,” she said. “These people who have this intense emotion are sticking with the UCP for the sole purpose of voting against Brian in October in the leadership vote.”

Jean was unavailable for comment.

Lori Williams, a political scientist from Mount Royal University, said the creation of such splinter parties was inevitable. The Alberta Advantage Party will likely resemble the early days of the Wildrose Party before “they moved into real contention for government,” she said.

A centrist party might be a “contender for power” but it’s not going to happen in time for the next election, Williams said.

“History suggests that new parties have to sort of show their abilities in opposition and then after one election cycle people are ready to entrust them with power.”

On Monday, Kenney told reporters in Calgary the number isn’t significant.

“We’ve seen a few dozen PCs leave to join one of the two Liberal parties and we’ve seen perhaps a few dozen Wildrose leave to perhaps start their own alternative party,” Kenney said.

“Those are folks who are not comfortable in a big tent. They’re not comfortable with a diversity of opinions. They want an echo chamber. They want to live in a partisan pup tent.”

Schweitzer said he has found most people he’s met while campaigning are excited about what the United Conservative Party can become. He said leadership candidates should reassure voters about the future.

“People wonder if there’s going to be a place in the new party,” he said. “We need to do a really good job of defining what it means and what it stands for.”

The leader of the UCP will be elected Oct. 28.

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By Lethbridge Herald Opinion on July 29, 2017.

Lorne Fitch and Kevin Van Tighem

The best of planning anticipates and prepares for future excellence. The worst simply perpetuates past failures. Recreation planning currently underway for the spectacular public lands of Alberta’s Oldman drainage and Porcupine Hills appears aimed at the muddy middle. We can do better.

Past government failures have filled our headwaters with uncontrolled off-highway vehicle (OHV) use, summer-long squatters’ camps, gunfire, motorcycle racing, weeds, muddy streams and too many fish and wildlife species now classified as threatened.

Those failures drove many Albertans to turn their backs on the Forest Reserves as a recreational destination because of the reality and perception of danger and disenfranchisement. In effect, Albertans were displaced from their own best places.

When Alberta Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips directed her staff to work with the full range of stakeholders to develop science-based land-use plans, she offered us the chance to get them back. A first principle of such planning should be that our public lands should no longer be compromised by efforts to cram every imaginable economic, social, cultural and recreational pursuit into them. These are finite landscapes with intrinsic and important values, not the least of which is that they supply clean water to two out of every three Albertans.

Good plans start with science. In that regard, the government got off to a good start with a Linear Footprint Management Plan for the Porcupine Hills and Oldman headwaters. The footprint plan sets science-based thresholds for road and trail density at which water quality and many fish and wildlife species start to suffer. Unfortunately, road and trail densities are already up to 10 times higher than those thresholds.

Only by getting motorized use under control can Alberta protect our water supplies and recover already-threatened species.

That’s what the Recreation Management Plan for the area was meant to do: to bring OHV trails, camping and other recreational activities into alignment with the science-based limits in the footprint. This, unfortunately, is where planning seems to be going off the rails.

There is still a culture of helpless surrender among some of the bureaucrats and planners tasked with getting recreational use right. Their mindset appears to be that, regardless of a new government’s promises to Albertans, the Porcupine Hills and Oldman headwaters must accommodate all past activities, no matter how harmful. Their vision of the future is what they see in the rearview mirror. Rather than objectively ask, “Is this activity appropriate?” they still ask: “How can we accommodate everything, no matter how inappropriate?”

If that old-guard thinking shapes new recreation plans for Alberta’s public lands, it will entrench past management failures and ongoing land degradation in our future. Alberta deserves better.

A plan that truly respects the needs of all Albertans and the limitations of our public forest lands would:

– keep land, water and wildlife populations healthy by using science to define appropriate uses and then to set thresholds and limits.

– acknowledge the simple truth that some recreational activities (e.g. dirt bike racing) are too noisy and destructive to be permitted on public land.

– assure Alberta families that recreational anarchy, vandalism, random gunfire and other antisocial behaviours are history; make people feel safe about returning to our best green places.

– dedicate most of the planning area for quiet, non-motorized recreation which surveys show the great majority of Albertans prefer.

– bring an end to the noise, trespass and vandalism problems now plaguing ranchers and others who live adjacent to the forest reserves.

– formally establish long-promised wildland parks and buffer them from motorized use to protect their wilderness qualities

– set recreational carrying capacities rather than allow endless growth to degrade both recreation quality and the natural environment.

– plan not just for recreational development but for repairing and restoring the damage done by past misuse.

– replace random, unmanaged camping and its attendant sprawl and litter with properly sited and maintained camping areas.

– commit to ongoing monitoring to evaluate recreation, land health, fish and wildlife and other public benefits.

It’s time for old-guard government bureaucrats to stop whispering cynical advice into the ears of the planners. Bureaucrats, planners and citizens alike need to put healthy land, water and wildlife first, suppress our selfish tendencies and work towards delivering the best of our priceless legacy of public lands to future generations.

Lorne Fitch is a professional biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife biologist and an adjunct professor with the University of Calgary. Kevin Van Tighem is a landscape ecologist and author of “Our Place: Changing the Nature of Alberta” and “Heart Waters: Sources of the Bow River.”

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Lethbridge Herald
25 Jul 2017
Dave Mabell

With his “unite the right” campaign successful, Jason Kenney is now expected to run for the leadership of the new United Conservative Party.

But his victory is not inevitable, says political scientist Faron Ellis.

Wildrose leader Brian Jean will be running against Kenney. And Ellis, political science instructor at Lethbridge College, says it won’t be a two-man race.

“Kenney took the bull by the horns,” and he’s got the momentum.

But Calgary lawyer Doug Schweitzer is campaigning as well, and libertarian Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt is also ready to announce.

“Brian Jean gets credit for delivering his party,” Ellis says, allowing the merger to proceed. And he has the loyalty of many Wildrose supporters.

More candidates will likely join the race, he adds. The name of former Conservative MP Rona Ambrose, who served as the federal party’s interim leader, has been mentioned as one.

“There’s a lot of hope for that from some people,” Ellis says. They want to see a more centreright leader selected — not Kenney, widely seen as a “social conservative” out of touch with most Albertans’ views. While both Kenney and Jean are Catholic, “Jason seems more conservative than the Pope.”

For others, with less name recognition, Ellis suggests it could be difficult to win support.

“It’s a pretty short timeline,” with the leadership vote scheduled for Oct. 28.

First of all, he points out, the merged party must set rules for the leadership campaign. Meanwhile, contenders will be anxious to sell memberships to Albertans who are ready to get involved in the process. So Albertans may see or hear a little less about the party over the last few weeks of summer.

“Labour Day is when the horserace will begin,” Ellis says.

Then Albertans will see if the party is truly “united.”

“There will be some blood on the floor,” he predicts.

But open battles won’t help win support the new party, warns political scientist Geoffrey Hale.

“It’s not in anybody’s best interests to get into the gutter.”

In Alberta, he says, those tactics “don’t sit well” with a majority of voters.

Hale, a professor of political science at the University of Lethbridge, expects the candidates may be too busy with organizational work and membership sales to get into public squabbles.

“Brian Jean is prepared to work very, very hard on this,” Hale notes. “And he has the party’s institutional organization behind him.”

If Fildebrandt launches an effective campaign however, Jean could lose some of that.

“Fildebrandt could syphon some some of Jean’s support away.”

The outspoken Wildrose MLA is no team player, he says. “He’s an ideological libertarian.” Ambrose could have proven a more attractive candidate, Hale adds.

“But she’s been collecting directorships” at major companies, apparently moving away from party politics.

How far right the new leader wants to take the United Conservatives is yet to be seen. But Hale and Ellis say the party’s success depends on its appeal to Albertans in the political centre, not just its own base.

“Albertans are not social conservatives,” Ellis says.

“The leaders have to understand that they’re elected to serve the needs of Albertans and need to run and govern in the main stream.”

And a United Conservative victory in 2019 is no sure bet, Hale cautions.

“Nobody should see that as inevitable.”

Alberta’s political scene has proven highly unpredictable over the last five years. With much of the heavy lifting already accomplished, Premier Rachel Notley and her New Democrats have plenty of time to announce new family-oriented programs and community projects.

A start on the Kinder Morgan pipeline wouldn’t hurt, either. The company is ready.

“It’s up to (Prime Minister) Trudeau to make it happen,” he says.

“That would allow him to do Notley a favour, and maintain a centre-left option for Trudeau in Western Canada.

Getting it started could also secure his image as a truly national leader, with the best interests of all Canadians at heart, Hale says.

“He can’t afford to alienate a large section of the country.”

Follow @DMabellHerald on Twitter

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Lethbridge Herald
24 Jul 2017
Dean Bennett

The former president of Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives says some members feel adrift after a majority voted to embrace a new party, effectively consigning one of Canada’s great political brands to the ash heap of history.

Katherine O’Neill, in an interview Sunday, said she’s been hearing from many PC volunteers and members who now feel “politically homeless” in a party they feel is tacking too far right on social issues.

“There’s a lot of grieving going on today,” said O’Neill.

“(These) people have literally put their blood, sweat and tears into the Progressive Conservative party and I know a lot of these people and they’re heartbroken.

“There are a lot of memories, a lot of hard work. And now they’re not really sure where they could go and best use their efforts.”

O’Neill headed up the PCs during the recent leadership race that saw former federal Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney elected on a platform to merge with the Wildrose, Alberta’s official Opposition.

That plan came to fruition Saturday night when members of both parties, in separate votes, chose overwhelmingly to join forces as the new United Conservative Party.

The Wildrose and the PC names will live on legally, but are effectively husks with no candidates.

O’Neill and other members left soon after Kenney’s leadership victory in the spring.

O’Neill said she is fiscally conservative but socially progressive. She’s now heading up a political action committee called Alberta Together that is looking to back a party with similar values.

Many at the Alberta Together meetings have been embracing the centrist Alberta Party.

Dave Quest, a former PC legislature member, said he was cutting up his PC party membership card after three decades.

“I don’t believe the UCP will be the party that I joined as a Progressive Conservative,” said Quest in an interview.

Quest said that under former PC premier Ed Stelmach the government had to fast track infrastructure construction that had been allowed to lag when the PCs, under Ralph Klein in the 1990s, focused exclusively on debt reduction and budget cuts.

“Should (the UCP) form government, it will be a 1990s fiscally driven agenda and it won’t be what’s best for the province,” said Quest.

The Progressive Conservatives won power in 1971 and governed Alberta for almost 44 years before being defeated by Premier Rachel Notley and her NDP in 2015. The Wildrose lasted a decade.

Kenney has stressed vote splitting by the Wildrose and the PCs led to the NDP win and that only a coalition can prevent a repeat in the 2019 election.

Other PCs, including most of the eight-person caucus, have embraced the Wildrose merger, and the race for a leader for the new UCP has begun. That vote goes on Oct. 28.

Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, Kenney, and longtime conservative and PC strategist Doug Schweitzer have already said they will run.

Schweitzer has been campaigning for weeks, anticipating a positive vote on the referendum. His campaign focuses on fiscal conservatism but social progressivism.

He said the die has not been cast on what the UCP will look like.

“Those (Progressive Conservative) values can still be in this new United Conservative Party and I think that they are,” said Schweitzer.

Jean said names and labels are important but can’t impede progress.

“I think we’ve got a great legacy (on both parties) and together we’re going to have more even than we’ve had as two separates,” said Jean.

“Unity is going to be extremely good for the province, extremely good for the conservative movement in Canada, and extremely good for Albertans — and that’s what it’s ultimately about.”

Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark said his party has offered alternatives on a range of issues from climate change to debt reduction, but said Albertans still don’t know what the UCP stands for.

“It’s a group that seems united in opposition to the NDP but have offered not a single positive policy that tells Albertans how they’re going to handle the challenges facing our province,” said Clark.

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Lethbridge Herald
23 Jul 2017

It is good to see that The Herald has undertaken a review of Alberta’s electricity supply system (“Power demand not taxing system,” by Dave Mabell, on July 14.)

Mr. Mabell provides some useful generating capacity statistics from the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) and concludes our existing electrical system is able to maintain an adequate supply cushion. Indeed, generating capacity from coal and gas totalling 13,631 MW provides a nice margin of security well beyond our maximum demand of 11.4 MW. Thankfully, Alberta’s coal and natural gas plants can jointly provide for the reliable electricity we now depend on. Renewable sources such as wind and solar are often not available when needed.

However, Alberta’s government has decreed the phase-out of all generation by coal over the next 13 years, removing 6,283MW from the present 13,631MW. A major expansion of natural gas capability, either through the building of new gas plants or the conversion of coal plants, will be essential to maintain Alberta’s electricity needs.

Our government has also announced that 5,000 MW of wind capacity will be added to the system by 2030. They will contribute little to nothing on lowwind and windless days. Significant storage of windgenerated energy, possibly through interaction with our modest hydropower capability, is barely on the agenda.

The AESO is charged with establishing and maintaining the generating capacity needed to provide a reliable system and has just embarked on a study involving participants from the electric power industry. The essential goal is to revise the electricity marketing system to encourage the building of sufficient capacity to ensure reliability. Five working groups totalling some 70 members have been chosen to establish the design of a so-called capacity market over the next three years.

Implementation of the muchmodified system will have a profound effect on the provision and cost of the electrical energy Albertans depend on. I’m hoping The Herald will continue to take the initiative to keep us informed on the status of our developing electricity system.

Duane Pendergast

Energy Collegium Lethbridge

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Lethbridge Herald
23 Jul 2017
Dean Bennett

Alberta’s political landscape profoundly shifted Saturday as its two main conservative parties — enemies for a decade — overwhelmingly agreed to end their feud and work as one to defeat Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP. In separate votes, members of the Wildrose party and the Progressive Conservatives voted in a landslide to merge into the new United Conservative Party.

Wildrose supporters voted 95.4 per cent in results announced at a hotel in Red Deer late Saturday afternoon.

About two hours later, Progressive Conservative Leader Jason Kenney announced at Calgary’s Stampede Grounds that 95 per cent of his members ratified the proposed deal, which had been brokered by both parties in May.

“What a day for Albertans! What a day for conservatives and what a day for Wildrose members!” Wildrose Leader Brian Jean told more than 300 supporters.

“(It’s) a new beginning, where we’re one step closer to putting power back in the hands of the ordinary working people of Alberta.”

Kenney told his supporters that hope was on the horizon.

“We are renewing the Alberta advantage with this democratic decision made today. Tens of thousands of Albertans have decided to put the future ahead of the past (and) to focus on what unites us rather than what divides us,” he said.

The votes fire the starting pistol on what is expected to be a bruising leadership race, culminating in a decision on Oct. 28.

Kenney and Jean have already announced they will run, as has longtime PC strategist Doug Schweitzer.

Wildrose finance critic Derek Fildebrandt is also considering a run but said he’ll wait until the rules of the race are set before announcing his plans.

He also foreshadowed the rancour to come, saying no matter what happens, he won’t support his former boss, Jean.

“I’m not going to get into it right now,” Fildebrandt told reporters. “Today is a day about unification. “We’ll have plenty of time to beat the crap out of each other in the coming weeks and months.”

A founding convention will be held and the plan is to have constituency associations and candidates ready for the next election in spring 2019. The two caucuses — eight in the PCs and 22 in the Wildrose — will meet Monday in Edmonton to pick an interim leader.

The votes fulfil a plan launched a year ago by Kenney in his ultimately successful bid to become leader of

the PCs on a platform of merging with the Wildrose.

It was an historic coda for the Progressive Conservatives, a party that swept to power in 1971 under Peter Lougheed and governed Alberta for more than four decades before being swept aside by Notley’s NDP in 2015.

The Wildrose movement took root over a decade ago, composed in part by disaffected Tories who felt the PCs had abandoned their commitment to fiscal conservatism and grassroots consultation.

It was a bitter feud, with members even threatening to come to blows in the legislature chamber. PC legislature members at times bolted to the Wildrose benches and the Wildrose party almost closed up shop in late 2014 when then-leader Danielle Smith and most of her caucus crossed to the PCs.

Kenney says vote splitting leveraged Notley’s NDP to majority government in the 2015 election and only a united conservative party can prevent a repeat.

Kenney and Jean both say NDP policies — including a carbon tax and heavy debt spending for operations and infrastructure — are exacerbating a troubled economy buffeted by low oil and are

threatening to swamp future Albertans in unsustainable red ink.

As far as the NDP is concerned, the new UCP is a black wedding.

“This weekend was really about the parties being ready to embrace the worst in each other,” Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman said in an interview from Edmonton.

Hoffman said the Wildrose are signing on to a PC party famous for its self-serving entitlements and the PCs are linking up with a Wildrose team determined to make life worse for Albertans by promising budget cuts estimated to run into the billions of dollars.

The Wildrose had a high hurdle to clear for the merger: 75 per cent had to say yes.

More than 42,617 Wildrosers took out memberships to vote. Of that figure 24,598 cast ballots, for a turnout of 57.7 per cent. Of the voters, 23,466 voted yes and 1,132 voted no to deliver the 95.4 percentage.

With the Tories, 49,200 registered to vote and 27,060 cast ballots, for a 55 per cent turnout.

Of the 27,060 ballots, 25,692 voted yes and 1,344 said no. There were 24 spoiled ballots.

The PCs needed just 50 per cent plus one for ratification.

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CTV News Channel: Protecting U.S. dairy priority

Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press
Published Monday, July 17, 2017 4:11AM EDT

WASHINGTON – After campaigning and complaining about NAFTA for two years, Donald Trump is about to start doing some explaining: the U.S. president is poised to release a list as early as today revealing how he wants to change the deal.

American law requires that the administration publish a list of its objectives entering trade negotiations. The reason this could happen any day is because the administration hopes to start negotiations around Aug. 16 and the law requires this list be posted online 30 days in advance.

Expect the Canadian government to say little in response to the list.
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U.S. President Donald Trump waves upon arrival at the White House in Washington on Sunday, July 16, 2017. (AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta)

“I can’t imagine that we would start negotiating before the negotiations actually start,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday. “We’re going to be responsible about this, to be thoughtful and responsible in how we engage the administration.”

That tight-lipped approach stems from the Canadian government’s overall strategy: Make the Americans lay out their cards first, given that they asked for these negotiations and in the parlance of trade talks are the “demandeur.”

The U.S. has signalled wildly conflicting approaches.

Trump keeps threatening to rip up the trade agreement in the absence of a major renegotiation. His vice-president just delivered a speech exuding collegiality and promising a new NAFTA that would be a “win-win-win.”

The signals to Congress have been equally contradictory.

In a leaked draft of a letter to lawmakers, the administration showed at a desire to play hardball and seek changes that would be deemed non-starters by the other countries. It later released a bare-bones, modest version of that letter.

It was with this letter that the Trump administration formally declared its intention to enter trade negotiations with Canada and Mexico. Those mixed messages are due in part to philosophical differences within Trump’s team about how aggressive to get on trade.

A veteran of U.S. trade negotiations suggests this upcoming notice will fall somewhere between the two versions of those letters to lawmakers: more detailed than the final version, less expansive than the draft.

“It will be more specific but I think still broad-brush bullet points on what they want to accomplish,” said Welles Orr, a senior U.S. trade official under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

“So no surprises. I don’t expect we’re going to see anything that pops out as ‘Oh, wow, we didn’t see this coming.’ So I think it’ll be kind of perfunctory.”

Here’s what he expects in the new NAFTA: modern chapters on digital commerce, modelled on those in the now-dormant Trans-Pacific Partnership; changes to auto-parts import rules that all three countries can live with; and a bruising fight over dairy.

He predicts the dairy issue will come down to the final wire: “That’s the hotbed issue that’s hanging out there that will be the last issue to get resolved. But if that’s resolved, I don’t see a whole lot of contention on the Canadian side.”

The reason the administration has to publish this list, and release letters to Congress, is because of a deal between the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government, enshrined in what’s known as a fast-track law.

Under the terms of that deal, U.S. lawmakers relinquish their power to amend an international agreement, as is their right under the U.S. Constitution; in exchange, lawmakers are consulted throughout the negotiating process.

That process includes public hearings – on Tuesday, for instance, the House of Representatives committee in charge of trade will hold a hearing on NAFTA, how it’s worked, and how it could be modernized.

It was Orr’s job to act as a liaison to Congress as the deputy assistant U.S. trade czar.

He believes the administration will deliver more specific marching orders to the negotiating team in the upcoming public notice, including a desire to work quickly. That desire for a fast negotiation could be hindered by the fact that the U.S. trade czar’s office still has numerous positions unfilled.

But he believes it can be done this year: “I think what is going to play out is a relatively short negotiation. Meaning a deal can be probably hatched by December… I think there’s a more expedient need (for Trump) to get a win, that would put a lot of what might be seen as controversial issues to the side for the sake of getting this win.

“This is one of his hallmark campaign issues. He has to have a win. He has got to show that he’s done something. I think he can make some modest improvements – necessary improvements, that brings (NAFTA), frankly, into a more 21st century agreement,” said Orr, now a trade adviser at the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier.

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