Alberta Electricity-Indirect Taxation at its best.

Stelmach tells us there will be no sales tax on his watch. He is proud to say Alberta has the lowest taxes in Canada. He fails to say they ramp up utility charges so the cities can get revenue from that source, rather than the Government. When this is considered, I would think Alberta's tax rate is higher than most states.

The headlines today read to the effect companies are leaving Alberta because of high energy prices. Companies have been leaving Alberta ever since they privatized the electricity! Goaded with "Oil or nothing policy" because of their constant failures in creating business they actually opted for energy and nothing else.

Now, we have nothing. The Conservative Government is broke; a complete and abysmal failure! In hindsight I would call it criminal. Time and again I have said it is difficult to distinguish this Government from Organized Crime.

In 2007 I wrote a couple of electrical articles. They seem to have been right on the money!
Search the blog for "Electrical" you will find a small volume of warnings.

The indirect taxation by municipalities by ramping up electrical and water bills is not a new thing. Devon recently raised water prices 25%, because they could. Cities across Canada and the US got into this about 8 years ago. However, no one has taken it to the extreme that Alberta has!

Every dollar the cities take out of utilities as profit is a dollar the province does not have to put back into the city programs. That in turn is 1 dollar more they can reduce the royalty rates.

Add to this shell game the real price of new power lines for export of electricity and you have some big bills coming your way but, that is not all of the story.

The Conservatives have denied the export marker forever. We are all blind and stupid in their minds.

The whole thrust of the power thing has been for power export to the US and this Government has ever admitted this. They continue to flounder under mismanagement.
The US as of 3 years ago stated they needed 70,000 MW of new power generation by 2020. By comparison Alberta is 12,000 MW. Any power built in the US is that much less power to be imported from Canada. It is a sweet export market!

In today's news the US power generation build has slowed down because of the recession. That said, there is still 43,000 MW of generation under construction now.
Ontario and Quebec are ramping up generation to meet this market. There are about 2 dozen power export companies in Canada working this market.
Looking at how quickly the new production is coming on line I would guess that Alberta has missed this market; still another loss for Albertans

Down the hall, Saskatchewan is opting to build one or two nuclear plants of which the Province ( Saskatoon’s Cameco Corp.) will own 30% or more. This is one of the best investments made of any of the provinces.

For those of you who voted Conservative or did not vote at all; you deserve this. The rest of us do not deserve the beating.