Alberta rejected a national plan on pension reform

Ted Morton, our American finance Minister has done a flip flop on pension improvements opting instead for an Alberta Pension; rejecting all other formats.

An Alberta Pension would go the way of the Heritage Trust fund, itself being a pension in kind.

The Conservatives decided that a 5% profit on investments in the fund was all that was needed to show the fund improve.  During our last race to prosperity, this crew took all profits from investments above 5% and dropped them into the infamous "General Revenues" along with money from bottles that weren't returned and all other revenues.

When challenged on bastardizing this investment they explained the money being put in General Revenues helped pay for goods and services in Alberta so, we we are winning where in fact, the money from the Heritage Trust was included in the surpluses of the day and the end result was a further reduction of the royalty on resources.

If Alberta is allowed to make go their own way and create an Alberta pension fund to augment everyone's income in old age you can bet it too will be pegged at a maximum profit well below the performance capability and, any real profits siphoned off to operate the day to day expenses of the province.

This province being stuck on voting Conservative is the best example of being stuck on Dumb there is!

Alberta; Conservative or Fascist?

The behind the scenes corruption in the province of Alberta is fascist in its nature. Since Ralph Klein became premier, Albertans have lost complete control of entire sectors, including water rights.

KEEP IN MIND, as mayor of Calgary, Klein sold (for pennies) the water rights to huge underground aquifers that run beneath the city and must be used at some point in time to furnish the city with their water.. The buyer? A favorite soft drink company!

Alberta's water is privitzed; insiders clean up!

Welcome to the Conservatives privatized water schemes! Cardinal, when he was minister re drew the water allotments along the St. Mary's aquifer and other tracks.

He sold grazing lands on the east side of the Rocky Mountains where all our water aquifers start.   Repeated inquiries to the Government asking if water rights went with the land sales brought no response.

In their schemes. A person had to be on the water border before you could vote about what to do. No more stake holders set one lot back!

Now we are paying the highest prices in the world for water (National Geographic) and the coin is going into private pockets.

This is just bad!

Conservatives moving for further isolation of the Province- Then?

The Conservative Association of Canada and the Fraser Institute have long treasured the idea of doing away with the Canada Pension Plan!   Morton is staking out that position.

He would start by further isolating Alberta and the West from Eastern Canada by doing away with the Balance of payments and putting in a Western Canada Co-Operative insurance plan probably headed up by Mazankowski's friends at the "Power Group"

After such a fund would be put in place and people obliged to put their coin in, you would find that the Province of Alberta would be the biggest investment at the lowest rates. It would go the way of the Heritage Trust where they said "that is enough profit, pull it out and put it into General Revenues"

Their Bond sales are a bust; They won't go along with Federal Financial oversight and rules. Why would anyone but a crazy person invest their coin with this crew???

Alberta oil comes at a price to Albertans.

Our royalty take is the lowest in the world and, falling.
Since this post Alberta Royalty on Resources had dropped to zero!

Our Hospitals, Universities; Education in General is short funded pushing still more unemployment figures up.

Our Infrastructure is short funded after being pushed behind for years. Highway 19 is still killing people!

Normally provincial services have been down loaded onto cities and municipalities for the purpose of further reducing royalties. With these downloads came more unemployment.

Cities and municipalities were given the ownership and control of all the utilities. Power, Water Heat all owned by the cities or the municipalities who are also given license to charge what ever they want for those services.

We end up with the highest prices in the world for our water (New National Geographic who brought you the ducks) and the highest power prices in north America.

For those of you who voted Conservative and for those of you who decided it was not worth your time to vote; Give your head a shake!

Under this Government we have priced ourselves out of every industry other than natural resource and you are paying for that industry in your every day expenses!   They are not paying you!

Your high school curriculum has been watered down to suit trade schools leaving your kids short should they want a University Education. That is, if you are prepared to second mortgage your home to pay for the latter.

How I wish Albertans' would realize that the different flavors of extreme conservatives are doing nothing for them at all while robbing this province blind of its natural resource.

Alberta working towards being a thrid world country!

Our royalty take is the lowest in the world and, falling.

Our Hospitals, Universities; Education in General is short funded pushing still more unemployment figures up.

Our Infrastructure is short funded after being pushed behind for years. Highway 19 is still killing people!

Normally provincial services have been down loaded onto cities and municipalities for the purpose of further reducing royalties. With these downloads came more unemployment.

Cities and municipalities were given the ownership and control of all the utilities. Power, Water Heat all owned by the cities or the municipalities who are also given license to charge what ever they want for those services.

We end up with the highest prices in the world for our water (New National Geographic who brought you the ducks) and the highest power prices in north America.

For those of you who voted Conservative and for those of you who decided it was not worth your time to vote; Give your head a shake!

Under this Government we have priced ourselves out of every industry other than natural resource and you are paying for that industry in your every day expenses!   They are not paying you!

Your high school curriculum has been watered down to suit trade schools leaving your kids short should they want a University Education. That is, if you are prepared to second mortgage your home to pay for the latter.

How I wish Albertans' would realize that the different flavors of extreme conservatives are doing nothing for them at all while robbing this province blind of its natural resource.

Alberta royalty scheme is a sham ; Excellent article breaking it all out!

In an expected about-face, the Alberta government effectively reversed the widely supported royalty increases that came into effect last year. According to Energy Minister Ron Liepert, it had "nothing to do with industry running the province" but "everything to do with what constituents have been telling MLAs across this province."
Royalty has dropped to zero since this post.
Except that, according to an Environics poll, a majority of Albertans -- including two-thirds of Tory supporters -- opposed this latest gift to the oilpatch.

Defending his government's undemocratic policy choice, Premier Ed Stelmach said it was "all about doing what's right."

One would hope there was compelling evidence pushing the government in that direction.

Unfortunately, that evidence has not been shown.

Ever since Stelmach's Tory government adopted a watered-down version of the Royalty Review Panel's modest proposals in 2007, Albertans have been told our province is too expensive and that billions of dollars in energy investment are fleeing to our neighbors.

Answering these tortured cries, the Tories established a committee of bureaucrats and representatives from the energy and investment industries to examine the situation.

This "competitiveness committee" recently submitted its final report and the Stelmach government accepted its recommendations, announcing royalty cuts on March 11.

However, a careful reading of the government's report, the competitiveness study and supporting documents reveals no real evidence supporting recommendations predetermined by energy and investment executives.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of the whole process is that the review took place before industry statistics for 2009 had been compiled.

One would assume it would be fairly difficult to examine the impact of royalties introduced in 2009 before those numbers are available.

They tried to argue Alberta is too expensive on other grounds, but those attempts leave a great deal to be desired.

Take, for example, the cost of an oil or gas well.

In the Stelmach government's Energizing Investment report, claims were made that Alberta had higher costs than the United States; however, the technical study on which their report was based concluded the opposite.

Buried nearly a hundred pages deep in the technical report appendices is the conclusion: the lower technical complexity of Alberta's wells make them 26 per cent cheaper than those in the U.S.

And though government skirts the issue, the competitiveness study further concedes that Alberta enjoys cost advantages when compared with British Columbia and Saskatchewan because of the size of our industry and our more established and extensive infrastructure.

So, it turns out, Alberta is cheaper. What about the fleeing investment we've heard so much about?

Though the competitiveness committee report claims that "oil and gas investment was reported to be flowing out of Alberta" after 2007's new royalty framework, this claim too was contradicted by the committee's own technical analysis.

The oil industry and their friends have been attributing the decline in Alberta drilling and rig activity to royalty changes, but according to the technical report, that decline began before the royalty reforms.

The report states: "this explanation is complicated as such change (royalty reform) did not come about until 2007, after activity had already begun to decline."

Instead, it suggests a more convincing explanation: " ... the recent change in activity patterns has to do with shale gas activity, including the associated impact on prices."

As for the royalty rates, everything the competitiveness committee and the government's Energizing Investment have to say is tainted by the fact that their comparisons ignore billions of dollars' worth of incentive programs put in place since royalties increased -- also a major flaw in Jack Mintz's recent University of Calgary report on royalties.

So if the Tories' royalty cuts can't be explained by public opinion and can't be justified by their own economic analysis, why did they do it?

According to Canada West Foundation president Roger Gibbons, "It will shore up support with the oilpatch," which had been shifting its support to the Wild Rose Alliance Party since the Tories implemented higher royalties.

"That is not insignificant in terms of financial and organizational support.

"That doesn't necessarily carry a lot of votes, but it's important."

As Energy Minister Liepert put it, "If we can turn around that very influential negative view by the leadership in the oil and gas industry to one of acceptance and co-operation and moving forward, it's going to make a big difference for me politically."

Trading Albertans' natural wealth for an extended stay in office might seem worthwhile to a few politicians, but Albertans should ask themselves whether it is in our best interests to continue to allow them to do so.

Regan Boychuk is a research associate with the Parkland Institute
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