Alberta Wild Rose Party cripples into the media.

In this press release Danielle Smith to do what, I am not sure.  It does however point out her positions on a lot of things which you should be very concerned about.  Her figures are good and items such as the Oilsands Development benefits all Canadians (and Americans) is true.

She is saying however that Albertans should expect no more than a job and the income tax revenues that come from this development.   At no point does she suggest we should get away from the lowest royalty prices in the world which causes every Albertan to contribute to the oil companies, not the other way around.

She is quick to recognize the cap and trade program is not in Canada or Alberta's favor and would bring about a major economic shock to Canada and Alberta.  I go a step further by saying if it is implemented in a big way it will result in the next "bubble" to burst in economies as most the carbon dioxide is returned to the surface with the the scarfed oil.   How many times are you going to pay to put it down a hole??

The WRP corner stone of doing away with the Balance of payments is unchanged but the english has softened.  She likens Quebec to Greece which is legitimate and the outright inequities of the balance of payments plan is properly challenged.

She is saying our schools, universities and health care are all suffering because of the balance of payments which is really out on a right wing limb.

As the Alberta Liberals pointed out our spending has not changed since 1986.  The doom and gloom scenarios by the Conservatives are nothing less than spin doctoring. Smith is picking up on this and doing some spinning on her own pointing us to hate the Feds again.

I can almost hear Jim Dinning and the Oil Companies whispering in her ear "Danielle, if you can rip off the balance of payments and put them into still further reduced royalty, we will buy you elections for your lifetime"

Alberta shell game pumps more money into private clinics.

Was this not the hospital that received a 6 million dollar upgrade in the weeks preceding the sale to a private concern??

Was this not the hospital that was sold for pennies on the dollar of assessed value to a private concern??

Why was the giveaway not sufficient to guarantee a business or is this just a ploy to further ramp up the charges for private health care!

Why the shortfall?  Was it because the title of the hospital was flipped several times ensuring profit for insiders as was the case with our power lines?

There is absolutely no accountability from this Government on the money they spend to push their prioritization agenda!

Being stuck on a Conservative vote is being stuck on dumb!

Alberta cuts in services still another farce - spending hasn't changed since 1989!

The Conservatives in Alberta continue to layer lie upon lie in order to promote and maintain their doom and gloom scenarios in support of their program cuts and privatization plans.

The results are shorted services and cash props for private sector operations.

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
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

Quotes from Auditor General Fred Dunn

edmontonjournal.comOctober 2, 2009


Alberta Auditor General Fred Dunn releases his semi-annual report on Oct, 2, 2009, in Edmonton. Highlights include a second look at how the province hands out compensation packages.

This is Dunn's last report before he retires.

Photograph by: Greg Southam, Edmonton Journal

Here is a roundup of Alberta Auditor-General Fred Dunn’s comments as he delivered his final report:

On food safety and the lack of inspections and enforcement:

“I have a high regard for our colleagues and fellow citizens in Calgary. They are entrepreneurial and they are adventuresome. They’re very forward thinking, but dining out should not be a risk-taking venture.”

“To have your inspectors to go in and continuously find the same problems over and over again and nothing gets escalated in a report -- that’s a waste of time. It’s a threat to health … if you want to make it effective, enforce it.”
“If you have irresponsible and risk-taking entrepreneurs out there, let the public know.”

On cost overruns for health projects such as Calgary’s new southeast hospital and Edmonton’s Mazankowski Heart Institute:

“Our conclusion was (Alberta Health Services) does not have effective and efficient financial management systems to approve, monitor and report on capital projects.... Obviously without timely and accurate information, AHS may not be appropriately monitoring and controlling capital projects, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines.”

On supplemental retirement plans:

“The supplemental retirement plans were like holding a rattlesnake in your hand. If you don’t control this, it will come back to hurt you. And those things have become very expensive.”

By the end of the 2008-09 fiscal year, AHS’s total supplementary retirement plan obligation was $28 million; four of 11 plans are not funded, so there is no money set aside to cover a roughly $20 million obligation.


On “gold plated” severance packages for top health executives:

“I believe in many cases the compensation committees were either ill-prepared, ill-advised or had not possibly spent the sufficient due diligence to realize the consequence of what they were signing onto....

“There were some payments that were made, we’ll call them friendly parting gifts.”

On creating Alberta Health Services:

“The regional health authorities, they really believed they were autonomous.”
Dunn said it took too long to restructure the boards, which he called “regional fiefdoms.”

“If there was a fallacy within the restructuring, they didn’t do it fast enough,” he said. “The interim management team was there too long before the permanent one.”

On efforts to get contract information from the University of Calgary:

“When we did the CEO selection evaluation and compensation, they were the last ones to give us the contract, they did it very reluctantly, and I’ll be blunt, they sent me the wrong contract. ... If you’re going to deceive an officer of the legislature, I believe that’s tantamount to deceiving the legislature, and I believe that’s obviously inappropriate. ...They offended me.”

On why he is retiring:
“I wish I could have longer sleeps at night. I wake up far too often at 2.30 a.m. ...
“I’ll be blunt. At times I felt very frustrated and somewhat disappointed. And at times I felt rather angry. And I thought it times, when you get to that point, it’s time to leave.”

— Compiled by Trish Audette and Darcy Henton

Alberta's royalty scheme is a sham!

At the fear of repetition:
The Conservatives came up with still another not so elaborate lie to get elected in the last election. Fairness for everyone was the mantra.

The published a glossy PDF which outlined very high, impossible royalty figures that were supposed to be Alberta's future.

During the last election when the document was published I put up on the blog that the regime held nothing for Alberta Taxpayers. The blog isn't a main stream news paper so, it went unheeded.

When asked for his view of royalty by the media, Kevin Taft threw his apron over his face and ran for the wings. A great opportunity lost.

When the Conservatives recently announced changes to the farce they call a regime I bounced them on this blog and across the world as being the liars they are.

Now, Ron Liepert is running around the country giving dog and pony shows about reducing royalty rates. He is saying there will be still more changes.

Here is the trick:
As the price of oil ropes in these impossible figures they put up in that election document, Liepert goes out for positive press saying he is reducing royalties.

The point of all this is as it was before. There was never any intention of doing anything but reduce royalty. They hammered this home when they changed Alberta's take from US dollars to Canadian dollars in that same document.

Who's fault is all this??

It is my mind the fault lies directly with those people who did not bother to vote. They were in sufficient numbers they could have beat the Conservatives as in no contest.

A critique of Alberta's screwed up health care system.

Dear Gene, Premier Stelmach, and Members of the Legislative Assembly,
As a tax payer and a voter I wish to address Health Care Issues, have some questions I would like answered, some information and some opinions on the following concerns:

In the Edmonton Journal, there was an article Public Versus Private. I am in complete support of the public system NOT private delivery of public services. The votes of my friends and family will hinge on this.

1) Why was the special funding for bone and joint surgery at the Grande Prairie hospital not renewed?

2) Why did Edmonton residents have to drive to Westlock and St. Paul to get knee surgery done and drive home very sick for three hours one way in one situation after anaesthetic because the main earner in the family had to work the next day and couldn’t take the day off?

3) Why does it take three to four weeks to get fasting blood work done at Dynalife, a private for profit publicly funded laboratory, thus delaying surgical procedures and doctor’s visits while siphoning huge money out of our province each year?
One woman has to go from central Edmonton to St Albert. Her wait is 4 weeks. She doesn’t drive.
The system we had before was superior to this and the money stayed here.

4) Many of us paid into the public system for over 40 years with health care premiums and taxes without ever using any of it, knowing that others before us were using that system we were paying for and did not once resent it. It wouldn’t have mattered that my end of life expense to the public was only one day, I was happy with that. It was pride in my Canadian Values as a health care professional. But I also had the security of knowing that in the very last year of my life if I needed “in and out of hospital care”, it would be there for me not a sense of entitlement but rightfully earned.

Why aren’t the younger generation paying premiums and taxes that reflect ones income like we did? Will they be exempt from aging and illness in their later years? Believe me, it isn’t our generation that has a feeling of entitlement. We cared for our citizens when we didn’t need it.

5) Why are we adopting an Australian model when it is fraught with problems costing an extra $3billion of tax payer’s money? The research was done by two CEO’s from three Canadian hospitals complete with references.

6) As a tax payers and voters, do we get to see the “hidden cost” that AHS states are there in a public system?

7) What kind of protection will patients have in the event of a Cardiac arrest in a private facility? Are we going to plug up our hospitals with the easy cases leaving the difficult ones to wait for a surgeon, or a space as has been happening?

8) Who is going to insure standards of practice?
Right now, I know of 7 private for profit home care agencies, each having their own rules that the coordinator can’t have access to as it appears to be secretive. Staff brought in from other countries are low paid and are cherry picking the 15 minute jobs working for two or three agencies. I would be happy to send you the information from front line workers.

9) How could activity based funding “create a level the playing field” stated by Hughes and ensure the same discipline in both systems? when the private does 100 easy surgeries compared to those in the public hospital which are much more complex requiring more care and stay in hospital?
The numbers cannot reflect equal activity.

10) Incentives to provide “superior quality” for hospitals and physicians is undermining their professional capabilities. Perhaps we need to go back to having managers who are nursing and medical people not those who tell staff that they “have to tow the corporate line” or lose their job as some have.

11) One patient needed surgery for a problem that would have put him back to work the next day-“IF HE PAID FOR IT”. He has to wait 6 months to get it done in the public system. WHY? Don’t we want people working?

12) Who will develop policies and standards? The glossy 2020 Vision is of little help.

In closing, if Mr Hughes thinks Albertans are indifferent as to whether surgery is done in a private or public facility, I would disagree with him. Albertans don’t want to be pushed to the side by queue jumpers and have the system cost more than can be provided by the public facility.

I am tired of being told we are burdening the next generation. Please make those stats publicly available. Many of us would to be given credit for the 45 years of financial contribution to the health care system that we hadn’t used. Hopefully, I won’t use a penny but will drop dead on my porch with a margarita in my hand.
I await your genuine reply. Please feel free to forward this to your colleagues.

Sincerely.,
Darlene - Alberta Health Care Professional.

Encana acknowldges royalty scam and suggests on par with other provinces.

Alberta would have received a bigger chunk of EnCana Corp.' s 2010 budget if it harmonized royalties with British Columbia, CEO Randy Eresman said Tuesday.

And Canada would gain even more if its royalty policies were harmonized with the United States, he added, speaking at the company's investor day presentation -- the first since splitting with Cenovus Energy late last year.
Although Eresman said he's generally pleased with the Alberta government's royalty overhaul, he said the province still lags B.C. and states such as Texas in terms of its competitiveness.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/EnCana+floats+harmonized+royalties+with/2694072/story.html#ixzz0iV1cdtTj

Alberta Balanace of Payments agreement.

It has come to my attention from a concerned Alberta employee that the Alberta Conservatives have been working with the Yukon, British Columbia and Saskatchewan to plan a way to get out of balance of payments.

The Balance of Payments is what makes Canada a country!  Our trade limitations between provinces are greater in some cases than our limitations with the USA.  These limitations are being removed slowly but surely which I think is a good thing.

If we do away with the Balance of Payments it doesn't take much of an imagination to figure out the effected provinces (all) would be looking for new alliance with the US as a better advantage than other provinces in Canada.

Ted Morton, an American citizen has no problems with this nor does the Wild Rose Party who are headquartered in southern Alberta, next to the US border and have the support of the Oil companies who would like nothing better.

There is a chance in a true royalty review to shift billions of dollars out of the oil companies into Alberta's treasury a thought that is totally abhorrent to a politically Conservative mind.

Alberta to trash balance of payments-Canada Beware!

There has been broad coverage this week about Ted Morton's assessment of losses due to fine tuning the so called royalty regime.  He is saying hundreds of millions of dollars will be lost.

The royalty regime he refers to is a farce; an election document; a lie that put them into office.  The AG bounced them after two years pointing out they were far from achieving their stated targets of 19% royalty.

Then came the crisis.  The minister said the new regime would not be applied any time soon.

The change in the phantom  scale hits to top end; where we won't see the price of oil for many years to come!  It would have nothing to do with our profit and loss picture if it were real.  With our royalty take being half of either BC or Saskatchewan,  we are surly going broke but it has nothing to do with the BS regime.

What Morton has done is positioned himself to press for the abolition of the balance of payments formula which has been long standing and agreed to by all the provinces. This in my view is the fabric of Canada.

Ted Morton, a US citizen was co author of the Alberta Firewall with the members of the Wild Rose Party of which doing away with the balance of payments was a keystone. 

Any savings that came from such a plan would go directly to reducing oil royalty further.  It would do nothing for the quality of life in Alberta.

We can nothing short of treading them as traitors but we can do something about the Federal end of things and shut down Stephen Harper bringing to an end Norton's and the Wild Rose ambitions.

Oil Investment funds - pay attention!

Alberta has resisted the overtures of the Fed to have a Federal Security Commission in Alberta.  The fiasco of oil royalty is just one reason why they want a closed club.

People investing in the oil industry will take much of their leads from Government releases. 

What happens to your investment when the Government lies publicly about those same investments?

Examples:
To get elected they put out a nonsense sheet about oil royalty that would have you believe the oil companies were going to loose their shirts.  That was the public information.  In private, they never applied any of the royalty figures; it was business as usual.  If you sold your stock based on the public information; you got hooped.

It goes on and on.  Their public positions have nothing to do with the reality of what they are doing in relation to the oil companies.  Likewise their adventures into stock.   For what purpose?  Where does the money go?  How is it accounted for?  What are your returns based on.

My guess would be the money taken on bonds is dumped into General Revenues to be used along with everything else.  You would get the guaranteed interest but, would you invest if you knew you were investing in a slush fund?

Alberta cuts oil and gas royalities

This announcement is a farce!  Alberta never, ever initiated the "new royalty regime".  That was an
empty document;a lie to get them elected last time.   This is really no different than them working with the oil companies to propel the NEP farce!

2 years after the election the AG in Alberta bounced the Government because they had failed to reach their targeted 19% royalty.   After that time the minster stated publicly there would be no new rates put in, in the foreseeable future and the AG had no right to look into royalties.

The oil companies are picking up the brass and the drums now to lend credibility to an election bungle saying
they may stay, things will improve and other spin doctoring.  This is a grand theater, nothing more.

The mentioned reductions take place in the scale where Alberta has never ever received any cash!  In writing of the reduced number of rigs they fail to mention most rigs are into directional drilling now.   1/10th of the rigs are required to do the same job! 

Run after a taxi and you save more money than when you chase a bus!

We still collect less than 1/2 of what BC or Saskatchewan does!  What is there to cut?  We are presently paying them to take the stuff out of the province and the Wild Rose Party, financed by the same oil companies promise more of the same.

The Conservatives do not think this  province is entitled to anything more than a lease on the land and income taxes, on par with the US Republicans.

This rip off  isn't going to change any time soon unless Albertans step away from the Conservative vote or, those people who though their vote would not mean anything will step up to the plate and vote.

The royalty announcement isn't even chewing gum for the mind!  It is not just cheap theater; It is perpetrating blatant lies.

Alberta new royalty regime is a farce!

Alberta has produced a document about their new oil regime and competitiveness that is a Public Relations show with very little relative fact in it.

For instance; number of drilling rigs in Alberta is down.  They do not take any time explaining that omnidirectional drilling techniques is what is in now and one rig can drill as many holes as a dozen rigs of just a few years ago. 

Also Alberta does not have the oil shale play that BC and Saskatchewan does.

A year after the last oil regime was announced with all the big numbers in it, the Auditor general pointed out to the Government they had not come any where close to their targets of 19%.

That same document changed our take from US dollars to Canadian dollars.
Take into consideration the 48 cents per barrel we get for crude in payment in lieu of cash and  you will quickly determine we collect less that 1/2 of what either BC or Saskatchewan take in.

The maximum royalty rate will be reduced from • the current levels of 50 percent to 40 percent for conventional oil and to 36 percent for natural gas, effective January 1, 2011.

They have not collected so much as 1 cent at these royalty rates!

  The point of this exercise is to try to put some level of credibility to the BS they peddled to get elected last time!. 

They say that 1 person is 7 is directly or indirectly employed in the oil and gas industry.  That is saying that 14 percent can expect good or marginal returns for incomes and the other 86 percent of the population is either unemployed or marginally employed! 

This crew has been lying through their teeth since day one and they are not about to change.

Alberta's health care to be totally privitized!

We heard of the Federal budget today; transfers for health care are going to be reduced.

This will give the provinces a one liner to tell every one the devil feds did it where in truth they are working in concert.  

Brain dead Albertans continue to vote Conservative regardless of how much or how often they are lied to tricked or beaten.

The door is now open for not just Alberta, but all provinces to claim privatization is the only way to go sighting reduced funding as being the culprit.

I can only hope that some of you reading these articles by this time will have realized that your vote will make a difference!