Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[FacePaint]

Originally Posted by Slava

Well the latest that catches my eye is the fertilizer emissions issue. I mean we're literally talking about food production here...it's kind of important to humans. I can't say whether these kinds of things are sheer incompetence or malice, but it really doesn't matter.

What exactly do you hate about this voluntary initiative?

[Slava]

Well at this point it's basically information gathering for the purpose of formulating a strategy. I suppose that's voluntary, but we all know that legislation is what follows.

[cal_guy]

Originally Posted by Mayo

Bill C-69, replacing Bill C-38 added significant time and uncertainty to pipeline project approvals.

Example of the additional rigor required is an assessment on the climate impact of the project. At the surface, this sounds great (hence the support it will get from the general public our east).
In reality, it's an extremely subjective assessment that takes time, and being subjective, is open to repeated follow-up requests that also take months at a time. Subjective being, it depends what source the fuel is coming from, and what it's used for. If a natural gas line is being used to offset coal in Asia, it could benefit the environment. But this can't be proven.

The climate assessment is upstream only which greatly simplifies the work the proponent has to.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Slava

Well the latest that catches my eye is the fertilizer emissions issue. I mean we're literally talking about food production here...it's kind of important to humans. I can't say whether these kinds of things are sheer incompetence or malice, but it really doesn't matter.

I’ll buy arrogance - that they think they are doing the right thing and know better - and callousness - “some of you will suffer but it’s a price I’m willing to pay”

Does anyone seriously believe they make these policies maliciously? “How are we going to screw Alberta today, I know, let’s go after fertilizer!”

[Slava]

Originally Posted by edslunch

I’ll buy arrogance - that they think they are doing the right thing and know better - and callousness - “some of you will suffer but it’s a price I’m willing to pay”

Does anyone seriously believe they make these policies maliciously? “How are we going to screw Alberta today, I know, let’s go after fertilizer!”

Yeah, that's a good point and I can't say I'd believe it was malice either. Arrogance makes sense and the argument you make there is basically exactly what I'd expect them to say.

[GGG]

The fertilizer stuff is interesting as their are real opportunities to reduce cost and improve yields through the latest farming practices. There are a wide variety of adoption levels of science based farming. Some regulation created by local organizations likely has benefits. What if you made farming a self regulated profession like doctors lawyers or engineers and part of their responsibilities were continuous improvement and implementation of best practices.

I suspect the best farmers right now have minimal changes to make whereas the ones who you have to drag to handle chemical properly have a long way to go. Like any profession there is a wide variety of skill level.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by GGG

The fertilizer stuff is interesting as their are real opportunities to reduce cost and improve yields through the latest farming practices. There are a wide variety of adoption levels of science based farming. Some regulation created by local organizations likely has benefits. What if you made farming a self regulated profession like doctors lawyers or engineers and part of their responsibilities were continuous improvement and implementation of best practices.

I suspect the best farmers right now have minimal changes to make whereas the ones who you have to drag to handle chemical properly have a long way to go. Like any profession there is a wide variety of skill level.

I married into a family of farmers and I can tell you straight up that it very much is like a profession that continually seeks improvement in yields, better crops and cheaper inputs… obviously. Less fertilizer and pesticides is less operating costs and more yields is more revenue so absolutely they do this. It’s actually a very complex business if you sit down and get into the nitty gritty details with a farmer. Maybe not as wide ranging in terms of technical skill as oil and gas but I bet you’d be very surprised at how much and how often these farmers are investigating new adaptations into their craft. How much research and science and discussion and strategy goes into their job and crops and farming. It gets highly technical. Of course it does! Think about it… think about all the #### that can go wrong operating a farm, and how many products and operating expenses you’d have. How much there is to know about, literally everything.

My wife’s cousin is an agronomist. Literally a business degree concentration offered out of U of S that focuses on these sciences and is like a consultant for farmers to optimize results and yields based on the least amount of inputs possible. There’s also, like oil and gas, a very complex futures and pricing / marketing component to the business where farmers have to understand which crop to plant based on meteorological forecasting, prior year harvests / crops, ensuring proper rotation to maximize soil efficacy, where crop pricing for various products will be when harvest and sale arrives, which location to haul your #### to to sell into which market (a good friend of ours one year had to go drive semi trucks all winter over 800kms away to get better pricing), etc etc etc. this was a farmer who also flew to India to learn better practices there and to swap farming strategies and is part of a huge farming board wheee workshops and ideas and best practices are all shared. These are not people that are just your run of the mill country bumpkin morons although I’m sure there are a handful of them. But guess what? In my experience there’s more than a handful of them in oil and gas.

It’s actually quite an insult to say farmers should try to be like other professionals and try to be better, and it’s beyond the point of a joke / usual Trudeau insanity to be pushing this height-of-idiocy fertilizer ban especially at this time with massive global food shortages. You know I actually was just reviewing for my work global food shortages and worldwide pricing on key global staple foods. You should take a gander at the FAO worldwide food index and observe that pricing is climbing quite a bit. With Pakistan flooding and Russia / Ukraine set to keep ongoing, plus gas prices in Europe about to skyrocket (and therefore, fertilizer in Europe will skyrocket…), I don’t anticipate food prices dropping anytime soon.

Sounds like the perfect time to install a fertilizer ban in Canada. Climate change or bust, except for Justin Trudeau, who flies from Kelowna to Vernon.

[Dion]

Interesting

https://twitter.com/user/status/1564432756465336320

https://twitter.com/user/status/1564435264139063296

[Mr.Coffee]

Alberta really needs the NDP back in.

[Dion]

UCP leadership hopeful Danielle Smith's 'climate cops' claim called misinformation, dangerous

United Conservative Party leadership candidate Danielle Smith is pushing hard on the idea that Justin Trudeau is hiring “climate cops,” but those claims are being called incorrect and dangerous.

“It’s another conspiracy theory that’s being spread,” said Duane Bratt, a political scientist with Mount Royal University.

On Saturday, Smith put out a tweet based on a job posting from Environment and Climate Change Canada.

As for Smith’s interpretation of the posting, Bratt said it is a “different version of reality.”

“It’s a mixture of a whole bunch of lies, but if you’re absolutely convinced that there’s nefarious motives behind the federal government, it doesn’t matter what’s in the job ad,” he said.

In Smith’s tweet and in a release she sent out on Monday, she brought up the need for an Alberta sovereignty act.

“We need the Alberta Sovereignty Act to stand up to Trudeau for whatever wild idea he has next,” Smith said in the release.

The act would give Alberta powers to ignore federal laws and court rulings deemed not in the province’s interest.

“That’s separatism. Call it what it is,” Bratt said.

He says stopping the spread of misinformation like this won’t be easy.

“It’s got to come from the top, it’s got to come from responsible leaders. Unfortunately, we’re not dealing with responsible leaders. So it’s up to other Albertans to call this out,” Bratt said.

https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/ucp-leade...rous-1.6047766

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

I married into a family of farmers and I can tell you straight up that it very much is like a profession that continually seeks improvement in yields, better crops and cheaper inputs… obviously. Less fertilizer and pesticides is less operating costs and more yields is more revenue so absolutely they do this. It’s actually a very complex business if you sit down and get into the nitty gritty details with a farmer. Maybe not as wide ranging in terms of technical skill as oil and gas but I bet you’d be very surprised at how much and how often these farmers are investigating new adaptations into their craft. How much research and science and discussion and strategy goes into their job and crops and farming. It gets highly technical. Of course it does! Think about it… think about all the #### that can go wrong operating a farm, and how many products and operating expenses you’d have. How much there is to know about, literally everything.

My wife’s cousin is an agronomist. Literally a business degree concentration offered out of U of S that focuses on these sciences and is like a consultant for farmers to optimize results and yields based on the least amount of inputs possible. There’s also, like oil and gas, a very complex futures and pricing / marketing component to the business where farmers have to understand which crop to plant based on meteorological forecasting, prior year harvests / crops, ensuring proper rotation to maximize soil efficacy, where crop pricing for various products will be when harvest and sale arrives, which location to haul your #### to to sell into which market (a good friend of ours one year had to go drive semi trucks all winter over 800kms away to get better pricing), etc etc etc. this was a farmer who also flew to India to learn better practices there and to swap farming strategies and is part of a huge farming board wheee workshops and ideas and best practices are all shared. These are not people that are just your run of the mill country bumpkin morons although I’m sure there are a handful of them. But guess what? In my experience there’s more than a handful of them in oil and gas.

It’s actually quite an insult to say farmers should try to be like other professionals and try to be better, and it’s beyond the point of a joke / usual Trudeau insanity to be pushing this height-of-idiocy fertilizer ban especially at this time with massive global food shortages. You know I actually was just reviewing for my work global food shortages and worldwide pricing on key global staple foods. You should take a gander at the FAO worldwide food index and observe that pricing is climbing quite a bit. With Pakistan flooding and Russia / Ukraine set to keep ongoing, plus gas prices in Europe about to skyrocket (and therefore, fertilizer in Europe will skyrocket…), I don’t anticipate food prices dropping anytime soon.

Sounds like the perfect time to install a fertilizer ban in Canada. Climate change or bust, except for Justin Trudeau, who flies from Kelowna to Vernon.

I’m not sure you understood what I was trying to state in either regards to technology used or self regulated professions. Also if you are calling it a fertilizer ban Im not sure you have read anything beyond the headline. It seems much more similar to something like the regulation of Nox emissions than a ban where the implementation is around best practices and commercially viable options. It will come down to specifics of the legislation though.

Yes there are many farmers that have agronomists working for them and marketing specialists and run farms as corporations and there are many that haven’t adopted these types of practices. Rather than waiting for the market to weed them out or for them to die and pass on farms to the next generations you regulate to move things forward faster. One thing here is that the government should treat these modern farms like any other large corporation and that includes environmental regulation. The question is who should be developing and own the practices and requirements.

You also missed the point about self regulated professions. It was not a comment about professionalism but one about regulation. If the federal government wants to add regulation the best people to develop this regulation would be a body of local farmers. If you created a similar professional act that gave power to farmers to regulate themselves under the guidance of the act then you can have the general requirements contained in legislation but the specific application of what is economic and a best practice determined by the members of the profession and not people external too it. I was discussing a method of regulation that pushes it as local as possible and take politics out of it and not making any comment about professionaism.

And if we are playing the I know farmers for credibility I spent summers working on grandparents farms for many years

[calculoso]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1564725864385744897

[DFO]

So the increase in the price of hydrocarbons was the UCP’s doing? Good to know.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by calculoso

https://twitter.com/user/status/1564725864385744897

Did we become debt free overnight or something?

[Ozy_Flame]

Didn't he de-index it in 2019? Is he patting himself on the back for this?

[Yoho]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1564779133074276353

[Yikes]

So I don't know a thing about the realities/legalities of all of this but is there any way Jason can undo the resignation and "back door" his way to staying in power? The UCP leadership candidates are weak at best, varying levels of crazy and incompetence. I'm not a fan of the current version of whatever the UCP has become but it's pretty clear that out of the current pack of morons up for leader, Jason is a better class of moron.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Yikes

So I don't know a thing about the realities/legalities of all of this but is there any way Jason can undo the resignation and "back door" his way to staying in power? The UCP leadership candidates are weak at best, varying levels of crazy and incompetence. I'm not a fan of the current version of whatever the UCP has become but it's pretty clear that out of the current pack of morons up for leader, Jason is a better class of moron.

He is Premier until he loses confidence of the house. So if he refused to leave I’d assume there would be a confidence vote which would be interesting if the NDP voted for or against Kenny or obstained. If he survived the confidence vote then he would remain premier. If he didn’t survive then he could ask the LG for an election bit the LG would like reach out to Parliament to form a new government.

Now if an election was called I suspect that Kenny would not be considered to UCP leader.

He could also call an election before the leadership race is done but that might only defer the issue until the next session of parliament

[Dion]

Smith bashing the NDP for not supporting the little guy

https://twitter.com/user/status/1564632270476288005

[Fuzz]

Danielle Smith would have overseen the greatest medical disaster in our history. "catering to small restaurants" would have meant a total collapse of our medical system. But you can't tell her that because she'll "well I don't know about that" and follow with some Libertarian bull####, or even some fake cure we didn't investigate further. She's a simpleton unable to realize the complexities of society.

We were in a #### situation with no good answers, but one clearly very bad one. Yet somehow she gets to stand up there and pretend reality was different.