Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
The thing is though, this can be okay. The politicians in power themselves are just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg, what about the people in the background?
There should be experienced people behind the scenes advising these people. Joe Ceci shouldnt be unilaterally making Alberta Fiscal Policy, does he not have someone there advising him?
Joe: "We're going to give every Albertan their own Polar Bear!"
- Well you see sir, thats an ill-advised move for the following reasons: the cost and logistics of acquiring a sufficient number of Polar Bears and then transporting them here and then distributing them in conjunction with the whole 'godless killing machine' aspect that Polar Bears tend to convey leads me to suggest that this plan is batcrap crazy you idiot.
"I see. Scrap plan 'Polar Express' then!"
Are there no experienced and trusted advisors helping these people out? The PPA clause and unilateral decommissioning of coal plants is a perfect example. I get the environmental aspect of it but did no one stand and be counted and lay out the very obvious consequences of this plan?
And if there is no one doing this then why not? You cant have everyone in the room thinking the same way, there should always be a voice of dissent:
"This is a bad plan because...I disagree with you and here are the reasons why....In my experience this isnt going to work because..."
And if there are people within the party doing this and they're just being summarily ignored then thats a serious indictment of the party as well. Of any party, NDP or PC or whatever. There has to be balance.
It just feels like they're just doing what they want and either remaining blissfully ignorant of the consequences or they just dont care.
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I don't even believe that this boost to the Carbon Levy to these companies is even about decommissioning coal plants, its about taxation.
It would be different if the infrastructure was there or the alternatives, so you could basically go to these utilities and say if you stay on coal it will cost you $150 million bucks a year, but if you go to these unicorn fart powered generators that we have built it will cost you the same as it used to cost you.
Instead its taxation without alternatives. We don't have alternative sources of power in place, and probably won't for several years, so the NDP is basically saying you have to pay this stupidly massively increased levy until we get our poop together, put out bid requests, study them, approve them, then start building.
So the logical question from these companies would be how long do we have to take it up the a$$ using these coal plants or whatever until you have a cheaper alternative in place?
Its ultimately a gouge by the NDP and there's no penalties for them delaying or not doing something, they would continue to milk the cow until it died.
So today, its a thank goodness for them that the less profitable clause was put in place, because I doubt that they would have bought these things without it.
And if they weren't there, would the energy companies sued to get out of the agreements.
Nope, and again the NDP would have been able to play them as the villains as they jacked up their rates and passed the costs onto the consumer. Look at those monster corporations, we need to protect you from their gouging so we're going to regulate utility bills, and they can just take the loss.
It was a pretty bold plan by the NDP, and they would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for the less profitable clause, and really the press and opposition parties pointing out that they knew about the clause and proceeded anyways, and its pretty much this governments fault that our utility bills will do an Ontario and spike because of their blunders.
I would expect that the utilities for lack of better word, aren't worried about this court challenge at all, because they frankly know that they can probably tie this up in court for years, and appeal the crap out of it if they do lose.
But the NDP will also lose the public relations battle for this, and if they lose the election, the delays will mean everything to the utilities and the opposition parties.