Redford: Buyers Remorse?

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by GP_Matt

The high gas prices were likely an anomaly and waiting for them to bring our province back to glory is like the high school sports star who won't stop talking about the good old days.

Agreed, but thats why the Northern Gateway pipeline is so ######EDLY IMPORTANT I AM GOING TO SAY IT IN CAPS AND BOLD.


Gigantic glut of cheap gas in North America = $2/GJ Alberta Spot prices (currently)

Gigantic shortage of cheap gas in Asia = $13/GJ on Japan/Korean exchanges. (was at $18 a couple months ago).

Don't get me wrong, the huge terminal at Kitimat isn't the end of N.A's gas price woes, but will provide a small dent in the current over-supply and get some extra foreign dollars flowing into the economy and some gas off our hands.

[taffeyb]

Originally Posted by Ducay

Agreed, but thats why the Northern Gateway pipeline is so ######EDLY IMPORTANT I AM GOING TO SAY IT IN CAPS AND BOLD.


Gigantic glut of cheap gas in North America = $2/GJ Alberta Spot prices (currently)

Gigantic shortage of cheap gas in Asia = $13/GJ on Japan/Korean exchanges. (was at $18 a couple months ago).

Don't get me wrong, the huge terminal at Kitimat isn't the end of N.A's gas price woes, but will provide a small dent in the current over-supply and get some extra foreign dollars flowing into the economy and some gas off our hands.

Northern Gateway is important, but it's an oil pipeline that will address the discount between Canadian Crude and Brent prices...

Kitimat will help gas prices, but I don't recall the pipeline that is affected...

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by longsuffering

I dont get this. What is wrong with trying to reach a national consensus? I think the strategy was sound.

It hasn't worked because Clark is being greedy but Redford succeeded in getting a majority of Premiers onside. What exactly has been lost? There's nothing preventing Alberta from playing hardball now or in the future, plus Redford now has several other Premiers who can bring pressure to bear against BC.

As it is Premier Clark is being ridiculed in the national media for her ridiculous position.

To criticise Redford for NOT being confrontational is foolish and is nothing more than a partisan attack.

Agreed. I'll criticize Redford for being a wannabe mommy to the entire province and raiding our piggybank like its her personal spending account. But trying to get the rest of the country on board with our best interests is what a premier should be doing. It isn't her fault that Clark is bat-crap insane.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by taffeyb

Northern Gateway is important, but it's an oil pipeline that will address the discount between Canadian Crude and Brent prices...

Kitimat will help gas prices, but I don't recall the pipeline that is affected...

The patch has once again proved their ineptitude at decent PR because so many people don't understand this.

Northern gateway= oil line (and not happening)

Pacific trails pipeline (ptp)= natural gas line, and not only has it been approved by all stakeholders but I think they've started surveying / tearing out the path. It won't be fully constructed until kitimat is underway, however. but Apa/Eca/Eog are stalling on the kitimat facility. They need a contract in place on price before committing to the multi-billion $ facility.

[Fire]

Originally Posted by Slava

Sure, but the painful realization is that we don't have a terrible spending problem. We have a revenue problem and it will take a significant amount of political courage to deal with it. I looked through the Wildrose documents and they couldn't balance the budget either with their planned cuts - there is simoly not enough money coming in the door.

Alberta doesn't have a spending problem? Wow.

You just have to look at Ontario and Quebec to see your tax and spend fantasies do not work.

The only way I would support a PST is if they remove the Alberta Income Tax completely.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by Fire

Alberta doesn't have a spending problem? Wow.

You just have to look at Ontario and Quebec to see your tax and spend fantasies do not work.

You just have to look to Norway to see that high productivity, high quality of life, and high taxes are not at all inconsistent with each other (or, as you might eloquently put it, "your tax and spend fantasies do work").

Taxation in Norway is levied by the central government, the county municipality (fylkeskommune) and the municipality (kommune). The tax level in Norway is among the highest in the world. In 2009 the total tax revenue was 41.0 % of the gross domestic product (GDP). Many direct and indirect taxes exist. The most important taxes—in terms of revenue—are income tax and VAT.

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Norway

Originally Posted by Fire

The only way I would support a PST is if they remove the Alberta Income Tax completely.

So the only way you would support a raise in taxes is if it was accompanied by an even larger reduction in taxes. How reasonable and open-minded of you.

[GP_Matt]

That PTP line runs from Prince George to Kitimat. Trans Canada/shell has another NG pipeline planned from Dawson to Kitimat.

Neither of these lines have gotten much attention because they start and finish in BC. There is no NEB approval required for the application so the scrutiny is lower.

I am not sure how much these two lines will help Alberta though because they are both setup to ship BC gas from horn river out of BC. It will help in that it will get some gas off of the continent which should help prices, but they may just increase horn river drilling to compensate.

I haven't heard a ton about the Trans Canada pipeline though, it may be big enough to carry gas from Alberta with a line reversal on an existing line that currently flows not Alberta.

[GP_Matt]

Have you ever tried to buy beer in Norway though? According to pintprice it has the second most expensive beer in the world and more than twice the cost of Canada.
From what I hear non essentials are quite heavily taxed in the country.

One problem that I have with Alberta amassing too much in their savings is the reaction of the other provinces. What will happen when the disparity becomes too great and transfer payments are dramatically increased to all provinces with a corresponding federal tax increase to pay for it. Or an unfriendly federal government decides to pass the Alberta surplus expropriation act?

[Dion]

Big bucks spent on Alberta cabinet ministers' travel

By 2010, the price tag on Alberta's ministerial travel was back up at 2007's all-time record levels and on the increase, said Scott Hennig of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

"What we saw was that total ministerial travel dropped in 2008, it was back up in 2009 and has grown ever since," he said.

The idea of a provincial premier going to the Olympics on the taxpayers' dime is overkill, Hennig said. And it's not enough to "show me the money" and what was spent; government must give an accounting of what bang taxpayers got for their buck, he said.

"The problem is, the government never reports anything even remotely close to that," Hennig said. "You should be able to show what you got for $100,000 for a trip to China -- what was the actual tangible benefits of spending that money...

"The government does a terrible job of reporting back on that."

Official Opposition Leader Danielle Smith of the Wildrose Party said just trying to figure out how the Ye Olde London trip could fairly cost $83,800 is mind-boggling.

"We were trying to figure out how they'd get to that... We wanted to put together a Bev Oda-style trip with all the bells and whistles. That's a pretty extravagant number," Smith said. "It wouldn't take too much to cut the cost in half."

Smith applauded the premier for adding receptions to the itinerary, but says accounting is necessary

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews...26-080752.html

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by GP_Matt

What would the province do with more money though?
Their biggest expense at the moment is wages and they will have a harder time negotiating if they are swimming in more cash.
Right now income taxes in the province are something like 8 percent, a 5 percent PST would be a 62 percent increase in personal taxes collected. I definitely don't think that is necessary.

Two things - First transfer some taxation/revenue power over to municipalities. Cities (particularly Calgary and Edmonton) are responsible for services like Transit, but just do not have the ability to build the capital required to operate an effective system. I give Redford a lot of credit for being willing to open up this conversation.

Our next two LRT lines alone will cost $5 billion. How on earth can we as municipalities even dream of paying for this? - besides hoping and begging the provincial and federal governments will throw money our way when it's politically convenient for them. Time for cities to be able to control their own destiny and hopefully that will be the outcome of the City Charter we've pushed to get.

Second, is clearly savings. We need to build up a big nest egg in this province and grow some significant endowments for things like Post-secondary education, medical and scientific research and the arts/culture/recreation.

[c.t.ner]

Originally Posted by Dion

Big bucks spent on Alberta cabinet ministers' travel

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews...26-080752.html

From the same article...

Tourism, Parks and Rec Minister Christine Cusanelli and Minister of Culture Heather Klimchuk will join her. Their agendas will be dominated by individual meetings and business receptions promoting Alberta's commitment to clean energy, the potential for investment in our tourism industry and opportunities in the arts and culture, a release from Redford's communications office said.

Alberta will host three receptions. Redford will be a keynote speaker at two others -- a Canadian Energy day hosted by the federal department of foreign affairs and international trade and a Canada-U.K. chamber of commerce event at which she will speak about Alberta's strong economy and its growing international focus.

Cusanelli will host a reception for top-level tourism execs.

83K (or possibly 100K) for a delegation to London to promote Alberta's image and encourage more tourism to Alberta, in the grand scheme of things isn't that big of an issue. Especially considering that Britain is consistently the strongest source of visitors from Europe to visit Alberta.... and British tourists plunked down a 164 million into Alberta's tourist economy last year (which is a low since 1999).

http://tpr.alberta.ca/tourism/statis...ocs/Europe.pdf

So really, while 100K to meet with British tourism execs in one of the world's most expensive cities during one of the busiest events in the world might seam like a lot, the potential ROI far out weighs the minor cost.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Fire

Alberta doesn't have a spending problem? Wow.

You just have to look at Ontario and Quebec to see your tax and spend fantasies do not work.

The only way I would support a PST is if they remove the Alberta Income Tax completely.

Well lets hear where spending should be cut? Give it to me straight though; none of this "finding efficiencies" or "cutting waste" political speak. The reality is that we're either talking serious program reduction, downloading costs to the public or not cutting deep enough to make a significant difference. If that last case is what we're down to it means we have a revenue problem, not a spending problem.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by GP_Matt

That PTP line runs from Prince George to Kitimat. Trans Canada/shell has another NG pipeline planned from Dawson to Kitimat.

Neither of these lines have gotten much attention because they start and finish in BC. There is no NEB approval required for the application so the scrutiny is lower.

I am not sure how much these two lines will help Alberta though because they are both setup to ship BC gas from horn river out of BC. It will help in that it will get some gas off of the continent which should help prices, but they may just increase horn river drilling to compensate.

I haven't heard a ton about the Trans Canada pipeline though, it may be big enough to carry gas from Alberta with a line reversal on an existing line that currently flows not Alberta.

Neither of the gas lines get much scrutiny because of the nature of a potential disaster. Gas vs. oil in potential spill, not tough to convince people the variance in environmental damage in a potential disaster. While yes pipelines crossing provincial boundaries fall under federal jurisdiction, I can't see that mattering when it comes to oil and gas as the Harper conservatives seem to be fully supportive of the oil and gas industry. Even if PTP was a federal review I'm sure it'd roll along fairly well. After all the NEB has already granted an export licence for Kitimat.

Kitimat will be Horn river gas, yes. But regardless any gas off the AB grid is good for AB gas prices, even if it's small(ish). Secondly it's all part of a so-called "National energy strategy" and thirdly in theory AB nat gas from the foothills could tie in westward (long ways out but there are those who hope).

It will help AB, as it will then largely be AB feeding western US / storage for Nat gas.

What Redford should do in my mind, is go balls out charging forward with trying to shift the demand curve for nat gas as a cleaner transition fuel and leveraging this fuel as environmentally friendly. After all, outside of the oilsands, the majority of AB is a nat gas basin.

[GP_Matt]

I would love to see Alberta become a leader in natural gas use for transportation. I don't know what the cost would be, but starting with buses and then providing incentives for trucking would be a great step towards the creation of a fueling station network.
I would have preferred that over the billions spent on carbon capture.

[killer_carlson]

Originally Posted by c.t.ner

From the same article...



83K (or possibly 100K) for a delegation to London to promote Alberta's image and encourage more tourism to Alberta, in the grand scheme of things isn't that big of an issue. Especially considering that Britain is consistently the strongest source of visitors from Europe to visit Alberta.... and British tourists plunked down a 164 million into Alberta's tourist economy last year (which is a low since 1999).

http://tpr.alberta.ca/tourism/statis...ocs/Europe.pdf

So really, while 100K to meet with British tourism execs in one of the world's most expensive cities during one of the busiest events in the world might seam like a lot, the potential ROI far out weighs the minor cost.

I think you're missing the point. I think they should be there. However, I thought they would have got the message about going full "Oda" while on government trips.

Having said that, I do support them going there.

[Barnission]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

There's truly no point to negotiating with BC at the moment. Christy knows she is DOA so she's doing whatever she can to buy some votes, so why give her anything? When the NDP wins the BC election then would be the time to actually start negotiating, even if it'll be pointless because they'll try and block the pipeline regardless.

I don't understand. The BC NDP, who decide to reject literally everything logical if it means gaining a slight bit of political capital, have unequivocally rejected the pipeline, as you even said.

To claim there is no point in negotiating with British Columbia is ludicrous and asinine. Clark is acting is desperate (she stayed silent on the issue for months, and then came out a few days ago screaming), but there is obviously leeway. Again, as I said, there is too much to lose for Clark to not accept the pipeline eventually.

Seriously, Clark only came to a decision a week ago, put out some outrageous demands that have been sensationalized by the media, and you want to shut the door? That's laughable, to be honest, and I don't mean to be rude, but come on. That's a knee-jerk reaction at best.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Barnission

I don't understand. The BC NDP, who decide to reject literally everything logical if it means gaining a slight bit of political capital, have unequivocally rejected the pipeline, as you even said.

To claim there is no point in negotiating with British Columbia is ludicrous and asinine. Clark is acting is desperate (she stayed silent on the issue for months, and then came out a few days ago screaming), but there is obviously leeway. Again, as I said, there is too much to lose for Clark to not accept the pipeline eventually.

Seriously, Clark only came to a decision a week ago, put out some outrageous demands that have been sensationalized by the media, and you want to shut the door? That's laughable, to be honest, and I don't mean to be rude, but come on. That's a knee-jerk reaction at best.

The BC government is 100% irrelevant when it comes to the Northern Gateway. They can't sway the bands.

I agree, it is pointless.

[Barnission]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

The BC government is 100% irrelevant when it comes to the Northern Gateway. They can't sway the bands.

I agree, it is pointless.

What are you talking about? The pipeline doesn't go through British Columbia without the approval of the provincial government. The federal government can force it through (which they won't), but the BC government could just make it financially unfeasible, along with other things, to have the pipeline there, let alone actually construct it.

[c.t.ner]

Originally Posted by killer_carlson

I think you're missing the point. I think they should be there. However, I thought they would have got the message about going full "Oda" while on government trips.

The point though is that it's all speculation from the Wildrose camp based on one line in a press release and a few searches on Expedia.ca. Comparing this trip to to Oda's foolishness is nothing more that "chicken little" stuff. They haven't even left yet or submitted business receipts for the trip, yet it's already been painted as this extravagant trip to watch the Olympics.

If it was after the trip and it was clear that the delegation obviously missed used tax payer money for personal gain and pleasure, then sure fire away. But right now, it's just ideal speculation.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by c.t.ner

The point though is that it's all speculation from the Wildrose camp based on one line in a press release and a few searches on Expedia.ca. Comparing this trip to to Oda's foolishness is nothing more that "chicken little" stuff. They haven't even left yet or submitted business receipts for the trip, yet it's already been painted as this extravagant trip to watch the Olympics.

If it was after the trip and it was clear that the delegation obviously missed used tax payer money for personal gain and pleasure, then sure fire away. But right now, it's just ideal speculation.

Is it now?

The $83,800 cost cited by the government includes only travel and accommodation for politicians and staff. There are separate costs for Alberta’s events and its showcasing of 17 artists, including musicians Corb Lund and Alyssa Reid.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/travel/...#ixzz225CDtCe7