Alberta Heritage Trust Funding is a farce!

The Conservatives have raped the Heritage Trust fund as with every other resource we have!


The Conservatives claim they are being more open but in doing so they have to change history and misrepresent figures and the truth.

The short truth being that the Heritage Trust Fund should have been 40 billions of dollars by this time is only sitting at a very small 1.6 billion.

The balance whisked away unaccounted for by this Government. It would still be going on if the Liberals had not busted them.

After finally admitting they were fleecing the Heritage Trust fund they come up with a one liner they hope to cover their pillage as in “The net income earned from the Fund’s investments, less the amount retained for inflation-proofing, is transferred to the Province’s main operating fund, the General Revenue Fund (the GRF), to help pay for government programs.” This was written by spin doctors!

Outright lies, and misdirection are the hallmark of this Government! They are trying very hard to spin this misappropriation of funds off with the repeated lines “Of the total realized net income during the past six months, $662 million is transferred to the GRF and $248 million is retained in the Fund for inflation-proofing.”

In this bit of chicanery they have invented a term that never existed prior to their web page “inflation-proofing the Heritage Trust” Such crap!

When the Heritage Trust Fund was set up the moneys made by the Heritage trust fund were to be reinvested in that Fund. This Government robbed the Heritage Trust fund of all its dividend earnings preventing the compounding of investment. The purpose of this was to debilitate the Heritage Trust Fund in order to privatize it. And that is a very bad move.

As to adding to community projects from the billions they have taken from the Heritage Trust Fund is simply another aspect of a large and thinly veiled misrepresentation by spin doctors!

When the money goes into the General Operating Revenues it is more than likely spent on paying for Government Aircraft, paying the Elected Members expense accounts and quick flights to the Orient or Washington and possibly the cafeteria bills. It is after all, General Revenue.

The citizens of this province have suffered through 14 years of outright lies and misdirection watching the money and resources go to a very short list of Tory friends. This line of Heritage Trust stuff is no exception.

PS:
It was a year ago now when they first announced the privatization of the Heritage
Trust Fund saying it had to be privatized because "it was preforming very poorly"

John Clark
cyberclark@shaw.ca