Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Torture

https://twitter.com/user/status/1656772561806426112

https://twitter.com/user/status/1656767976941469698

So… is it me or is it kind of weird that he is tweeting about his data while the poll is still in the field?

I’m not even sure it’s “bad” to do that, but it sure isn’t common. I don’t recall ever seeing this before. And… my guess is there’s a reason pollsters usually don’t do this.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by accord1999

I think they missed a decimal place, cumulative Alberta GDP from 2020-2040 (assuming $320B starting value and 3% annual growth) will be around $9.1T total. $35B would represent around 0.35-0.4% annual drag on the economy.

I believe the -0.03% refers to percentage points. So if you model that growth with 2.97% growth vs. 3%, you'll end up with a $30B cumulative difference by 2040. And I think they're using a higher growth assumption (3% is a bit low for nominal GDP growth) which brings the difference up to $35B.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

So… is it me or is it kind of weird that he is tweeting about his data while the poll is still in the field?

I’m not even sure it’s “bad” to do that, but it sure isn’t common. I don’t recall ever seeing this before. And… my guess is there’s a reason pollsters usually don’t do this.

Yeah it's definitely odd

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Slava

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s not something that can be “just fixed”?

That’s not an endorsement for private medicine, because I’m completely against that. But I do think it’s difficult problem for politicians. The frontlines people could tell you what needs to happen, I’d guess.

I agree it's not as easy as 'just fix it', there are a million things to improve, but surely they can be improved. Fast-tracking the certification of foreign nurses was a good move. I hate to say it, but contracting out selected treatments might be part of the solution, concerns about cherry-picking and poaching staff notwithstanding, but again if there are people and spaces available to do these surgeries why wasn't the public sector able to gear up to do them?

On the topic of nurse certification, I wonder what the economics of that are. My understanding is that overtime is a significant drain on the system, particularly when severely short of staff on an on-going basis. I've often thought the government could save money or at least break even by hiring more nurses, which it now appears they can. I'm curious if there's a break-even point where there can be more nurses for the same overall cost.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://twitter.com/user/status/1656692796273872896


Sure, why not pay for the ER, too. You know why people go there with non-emergency issues? Because they have no choice, becuase you imbeciles have ####ed it up so badly. But ya, charging people for it will fix everything, you ####ing clown.


This guy is in Lethbridge East, it's listed as an NDP tossup right now on 338. Get in there Lethbridgians(ites?), and kick this potato out of office.

It seems from the short length of the clip that it could be missing some context, but it's not a good position. I hate these 'common sense' approaches...charge a nominal amount to ensure people aren't abusing the system, $375 is sufficient to see your doctor, physio, etc...your choice, implement a co-pay for people who can afford it, etc. In what world do we want to give people any disincentive to seek medical treatment or advice?

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

"stealing your pension" is far more valid a take than "97 tax increases" that include things as minor as adjusting pricing for drivers licenses. If we're talking about party issued misrepresentation of facts.

Youth Museum Admission increase
Adult Museum Admission increase
Senior Museum Admission increase

That's at least 3 of those 97 diabolical tax fee increases by the NDP. Too lazy to check, but I'm gonna guess most of these fee changes were simply in line with inflation.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...heck-1.6838515

Using the same criteria, UCP is guilty of 144 increases.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by edslunch

I agree it's not as easy as 'just fix it', there are a million things to improve, but surely they can be improved. Fast-tracking the certification of foreign nurses was a good move. I hate to say it, but contracting out selected treatments might be part of the solution, concerns about cherry-picking and poaching staff notwithstanding, but again if there are people and spaces available to do these surgeries why wasn't the public sector able to gear up to do them?

On the topic of nurse certification, I wonder what the economics of that are. My understanding is that overtime is a significant drain on the system, particularly when severely short of staff on an on-going basis. I've often thought the government could save money or at least break even by hiring more nurses, which it now appears they can. I'm curious if there's a break-even point where there can be more nurses for the same overall cost.

A fully burdened employee costs somewhere In the 1.4 range. You don’t need office space with nurses so perhaps it’s lower but you are looking at 10% retirement, 8% vacation, 4% health plan plus training, management,computers ect. So if a person just earns 1.5 times there salary for overtime but not any of the other benefits. You could work over 1.5 times regular hours and the government would come out ahead. Essentially having 2 100k people costs the government 280k plus 150k OT for 420k total cost or they could hire 3 employees for 420k.

Now these numbers more apply to office based personal and if you hit double time OT at a certain point that would change it to but in general you can work a fairly substantial amount of 1.5x OT before it costs more. Someone with a healthcare union background could do this calc mich better then I.

[Slava]

In our riding, Calgary-Glenmore, it's either a UCP, NDP or the Green Party. Should be interesting as there's not a lot of splitting to expect here. I think that this is official as of yesterday.

[Torture]

When the link is up I'll post it, but WOW, Jeromy Farkas was spittin' fire and dropping truth bombs this morning on CBC Eyeopener. Anybody else catch that?
Hits different knowing how Conservative Farkas is.

Here it is: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio...local-politics

Worth a listen, but a couple excerpts:

We thought we were getting Wildrose financial responsibility & transparency with PC competence & progressive social values but what we got is big spending and corruption of the PCs with really, really extreme views of Wildrose.

Ask anyone on the street and they'll likely to say they are fiscally conservative and socially progressive.
The UCP is the opposite: fiscally wanton and socially regressive.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by edslunch

A few things….

APP may or may not earn as much on its investments as CPP. Historically it has not.

APP will have a much smaller asset base so could be more suitable susceptible to market issues.

There have been suggestions that the government could influence APP investments in a negative way. There was discussion here that this was not possible, but I don’t remember the outcome.

Pension payouts are based on a formula that considers the person’s age and earnings history, not the performance of the fund.

The government needs to ensure that fund remains viable out to some future horizon. If it’s not making enough then they would need to raise contribution rates (like the Feds have) reduce payouts (and never be elected again), or monkey with indexing (see AISH).

My understanding is that with Alberta’s current demographics and high average earnings the current CPP pension formula could be met by an APP with lower payments than the CPP, or APP could payout more for the same payment. We’re contributing more per capita than other provinces and will take it out later than others.

If those factors change drastically over time (e.g. the bottom drops out of oil and young people and families move away) then the APP would have a problem.

There will be extra costs to manage this as a separate program so it seems kind of wasteful, and dealing with multiple pensions as people move in and out of Alberta is an unnecessary PITA, but overall I’m lead to believe it would be pretty neutral or potentially beneficial. I’m no economist or accountant, just going by what I’ve read.

The big issue for me is this is one of the planks in the firewall and a necessary pre-condition to separation. While there isn’t a serious push for separation today there are people working on it. Moving to an APP is first and foremost a political act, not one driven by economics, even if there is an economic argument. It’s also a big FU to the rest of Canada since the CPP would take a big hit if Albertan allocations and payments are removed.

I say screw this, keep your hands off my CPP.

Good post. The big advantage is demographics. Basically Alberta is younger so we have less of an issue from when current elderly people voted to pay themselves more benefits in retirement than they were willing to pay for. Every year of CPP someone earned before the early 90s they didn't fully pay for, those of us paying in now are paying for it. Alberta had a younger population so we'd be paying for less of that.

That's a huge benefit, but ultimately I don't trust Aimco or the current government not to screw it up.

Aimco has had lower returns than the CPP, which isn't a reason to not switch because as Slava notes they have different benchmarks. Also, the CPP has big allocations to private equity and alternatives, which is effectively borrowing huge amounts of money to buy stuff. Interest rates declining for 30 years in a row was a huge tailwind, those asset classes will have structurally lower returns with higher interest rates. Alternatives/PE also juice their intermediate numbers by smoothing their marks. Basically since the assets aren't public the manager estimates a value. That's mostly harmless since generally you can't buy or sell at that price and they don't charge fees until the profits are realized. But they do it to smooth returns which improves their sharpe ratio (a measurement of how much volatility you accept per unit of returns). But if we pull out we'd get our share of the cpp fund using those values, so we'd be selling above true market price.

All that said I still think we'd be worse under Aimco.

The reason not to trust Aimco is that their low returns are only symptomatic of their poor risk management and lack of accountability. In 2020 they had a huge loss from volatility strategies. In layman's terms, they were selling insurance that the stock market wouldn't be too volatile. Then Covid hit, and it was really volatile, both up and down when more news came out, so they got killed. Their leadership didn't take accountability, and said there was nothing they could do and all asset classes went down. Which is 100% not true - you can also own volatility (the opposite of what they did) and then you'd have had billions in gains vs billions in losses. There was no way that strategy was appropriate for their mandate which makes them poor risk managers, and based on their public statements they appear to have learned nothing.

Finally, I don't trust the UCP not to put their hands in the kitty. People complain about the Caisse wasting Quebec pension funds doing handouts for Quebec companies, but I think mostly those are just misguided attempts to keep uncompetitive jobs in Quebec. It'd stupid, but I think their intentions are mostly good. Guaranteed the UCP would push stupid investments to benefit their supporters, no way I want my pension money anywhere near their grubby paws.

Basically I think an APP is a great idea that would significantly benefit the province. It just happens that Aimco and the current UCP are 100% untrustworthy to run it. If someone like Prentice had made the same pitch and planned to stand up a new organization to manage it with structural guarantees of investment independence I'd have been a huge backer of the plan.

[calf]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Good post. The big advantage is demographics. Basically Alberta is younger so we have less of an issue from when current elderly people voted to pay themselves more benefits in retirement than they were willing to pay for. Every year of CPP someone earned before the early 90s they didn't fully pay for, those of us paying in now are paying for it. Alberta had a younger population so we'd be paying for less of that.

That's a huge benefit, but ultimately I don't trust Aimco or the current government not to screw it up.

Aimco has had lower returns than the CPP, which isn't a reason to not switch because as Slava notes they have different benchmarks. Also, the CPP has big allocations to private equity and alternatives, which is effectively borrowing huge amounts of money to buy stuff. Interest rates declining for 30 years in a row was a huge tailwind, those asset classes will have structurally lower returns with higher interest rates. Alternatives/PE also juice their intermediate numbers by smoothing their marks. Basically since the assets aren't public the manager estimates a value. That's mostly harmless since generally you can't buy or sell at that price and they don't charge fees until the profits are realized. But they do it to smooth returns which improves their sharpe ratio (a measurement of how much volatility you accept per unit of returns). But if we pull out we'd get our share of the cpp fund using those values, so we'd be selling above true market price.

All that said I still think we'd be worse under Aimco.

The reason not to trust Aimco is that their low returns are only symptomatic of their poor risk management and lack of accountability. In 2020 they had a huge loss from volatility strategies. In layman's terms, they were selling insurance that the stock market wouldn't be too volatile. Then Covid hit, and it was really volatile, both up and down when more news came out, so they got killed. Their leadership didn't take accountability, and said there was nothing they could do and all asset classes went down. Which is 100% not true - you can also own volatility (the opposite of what they did) and then you'd have had billions in gains vs billions in losses. There was no way that strategy was appropriate for their mandate which makes them poor risk managers, and based on their public statements they appear to have learned nothing.

Finally, I don't trust the UCP not to put their hands in the kitty. People complain about the Caisse wasting Quebec pension funds doing handouts for Quebec companies, but I think mostly those are just misguided attempts to keep uncompetitive jobs in Quebec. It'd stupid, but I think their intentions are mostly good. Guaranteed the UCP would push stupid investments to benefit their supporters, no way I want my pension money anywhere near their grubby paws.

Basically I think an APP is a great idea that would significantly benefit the province. It just happens that Aimco and the current UCP are 100% untrustworthy to run it. If someone like Prentice had made the same pitch and planned to stand up a new organization to manage it with structural guarantees of investment independence I'd have been a huge backer of the plan.

While Alberta has a younger population, the workforce is still also very much dependent on a boom and bust (and some may say dying) industry. If we see a prolonged downturn, the contributions then dry up. Cynically, if AIMco puts more investments into O&G companies, you have a double-whammy affecting the pension's funds.

So while we might be over-contributing our share, from a risk-management perspective, it's much better for us, in my opinion, to have the other 90% of Canada's population contributing so there's a bigger pool and bigger cushion to help weather any storms we have here.

[D as in David]

Originally Posted by Slava

In our riding, Calgary-Glenmore, it's either a UCP, NDP or the Green Party. Should be interesting as there's not a lot of splitting to expect here. I think that this is official as of yesterday.

I haven't seen an official announcement but our campaign office sent out a message that Artur Pawloski's wife Marzena is a candidate in Calgary - Glenmore.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by calf

While Alberta has a younger population, the workforce is still also very much dependent on a boom and bust (and some may say dying) industry. If we see a prolonged downturn, the contributions then dry up. Cynically, if AIMco puts more investments into O&G companies, you have a double-whammy affecting the pension's funds.

So while we might be over-contributing our share, from a risk-management perspective, it's much better for us, in my opinion, to have the other 90% of Canada's population contributing so there's a bigger pool and bigger cushion to help weather any storms we have here.

Yup. In hindsight, maybe it would have made sense to set up an APP 50 years ago and we could have benefited more from O&G and age demographics, but I wouldn't make that bet today. As I'm sure Slava would agree, it doesn't make sense to invest based on past returns as past returns do not guarantee future returns, and that's basically what this would be doing.

It's a lot less risky for us to be in the well managed CPP fund that has better diversified contributions from across the country and to benefit from economies of scale.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by D as in David

I haven't seen an official announcement but our campaign office sent out a message that Artur Pawloski's wife Marzena is a candidate in Calgary - Glenmore.

She's not going to be on the ballot though. You can check the ridings here: https://www.elections.ab.ca/current-...on/candidates/

and in Glenmore there are just those three.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Torture

When the link is up I'll post it, but WOW, Jeromy Farkas was spittin' fire and dropping truth bombs this morning on CBC Eyeopener. Anybody else catch that?
Hits different knowing how Conservative Farkas is.

Here it is: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio...local-politics

Worth a listen, but a couple excerpts:

Farkas' verified Reddit account posted this in the comment section:

I talk with some friends and candidates in the UCP. We supported bringing the parties together because we thought we were going to get the best of both worlds. We thought we were getting Wildrose financial responsibility and transparency married with PC competence and progressive social values. Instead, we got the worst. The big spending and corruption of the PCs, combined with some extreme views of the Wildrose.

I have several friends who are candidates who will be mad at me for saying this. But not nearly as mad as they are at Smith every time she opens her mouth. I really do question though what they’re thinking. The same exact situation played out with moderate Republicans who stuck with Trump in some kind of attempt to control him. These people are foolish if they think they can control her.

Smith, Take Back Alberta, and others are actively changing the definition of what it means to be conservative in this province, and they’re clearly winning.

Take for example the arena deal and the reward-the-polluter R star oil well program. Conservatives used to be free-market, but now it’s a mainstream conservative idea that billionaires are owed taxpayer money to rocket their record profits to the moon.

Conservatives are supposed to believe in the rule of law, but Smith has made mainstream the idea of picking and choosing what laws apply, and that politicians should meddle with prosecutors and the courts to help their insider friends beat the rap. This person has evidence of a sexual abuser on our city council continuing to abuse that authority and refuses to do anything. This person says residential schools were a hoax and pushes conspiracy theories that no children died. And her backers are out there saying that if you disagree with them, you’re somehow anti-human or less than human. This isn’t spin, it’s harmful, dangerous stuff.

And for conservatives out there who think I’m picking on Danielle for being too conservative, please. Listen, these are not conservative values, they’re something else entirely. If Rachel Notley was out there calling you a nazi or disrespecting our veterans by boycotting the poppy like Danielle Smith, you would say that Notley should be disqualified from being Premier. And you would be right.

[GioforPM]

Farkas ain't wrong (wow I actually typed that). He echoes what a lot of my conservative friends think. I doubt they will vote NDP ever. But they might just not vote.

More likley they will vote UCP and hope she goes away and is overtaken by saner people in the party though. Which is stupid.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by calf

While Alberta has a younger population, the workforce is still also very much dependent on a boom and bust (and some may say dying) industry. If we see a prolonged downturn, the contributions then dry up. Cynically, if AIMco puts more investments into O&G companies, you have a double-whammy affecting the pension's funds.

So while we might be over-contributing our share, from a risk-management perspective, it's much better for us, in my opinion, to have the other 90% of Canada's population contributing so there's a bigger pool and bigger cushion to help weather any storms we have here.

Employment % doesn't really matter, because unemployed people don't accrue benefits either. So unless you think Alberta's population is going to dramatically start shrinking boom/bust doesn't change the numbers on this. And because of the previous young people growth it would take decades of emigration to get to the point this wasn't advantageous from a demographic point of view. Boom/bust isn't a factor, because the cycles are too short for that.

Anyway, like I said the UCP and Aimco aren't trustworthy enough for this, but the underlying demographic math is pretty irrefutable, and populations just don't move enough for it change. Especially the very old (who didn't pay for their own cpp) are not likely to start moving provinces.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Farkas ain't wrong (wow I actually typed that). He echoes what a lot of my conservative friends think. I doubt they will vote NDP ever. But they might just not vote.

More likley they will vote UCP and hope she goes away and is overtaken by saner people in the party though. Which is stupid.

That makes just as much sense as BT saying the answers are in the room.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

That makes just as much sense as BT saying the answers are in the room.

My normal political apparatus is coming completely undone around me with no signs of abating, so maybe if I close my eyes and ignore the problem and keep doing what I do every four years everything will magically work itself out.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Employment % doesn't really matter, because unemployed people don't accrue benefits either. So unless you think Alberta's population is going to dramatically start shrinking boom/bust doesn't change the numbers on this. And because of the previous young people growth it would take decades of emigration to get to the point this wasn't advantageous from a demographic point of view. Boom/bust isn't a factor, because the cycles are too short for that.

Anyway, like I said the UCP and Aimco aren't trustworthy enough for this, but the underlying demographic math is pretty irrefutable, and populations just don't move enough for it change. Especially the very old (who didn't pay for their own cpp) are not likely to start moving provinces.

Is this right? Unemployed people aren't accruing benefits but you still need a bunch of people funding it to cover current obligations as people live longer. If everyone just stopped worked/paying CPP tomorrow - would they have the money to pay out everything owed to people who are owed today?

I think it would be right if you the boom/bust followed a forecasted pattern, but if the oil market dried up faster than expected - would that still work?