Alberta's Deficit

I couldn't believe my ears today. Treasury Board president Lloyd Snelgrove suggested Tuesday the first deficit in 15 years was not so bad considering not long ago the province expected to be a lot farther in the red. Are these really his words or a higher power?

I am not sure how this could come about. Last summer we forecast a $8.5 billion dollar surplus. The conservative government today announced a $852 million deficit including the $3billion dollar loss to the heritage fund. Lloyd figures the govt. actually had a $2.1 billion surplus because the the heritage fund is only a paper loss and will recover, if we could only bank on it. One thing for sure is if the 08-09 tally scares you, wait until the numbers for 09-10 get revealed. Iris forecast a $4.7b deficit, but when the real commodity pricing comes into play we will surely see several billion more. I think we will be in the $7 billion dollar range, in which if we borrow against the heritage fund will wipe it almost in half this year.

The problem is not the income, but rather the double digit spending increases every year. There are many large projects which could be shelved or delayed, with the carbon capture storage being one of them. The key economic driver in our province being natural gas makes matters worse being well below the $4 mark. Coupling this is the amount of people employed by the natural gas sector that are losing jobs, leaving, and closing businesses. This will also not bode well for the treasury losing tax revenues, causing either government job cuts or higher taxes. Meanwhile we lose billions due to the new royalty framework. This hits provincial coffers in a few ways:

1. The amount of job losses equates to drop in tax revenue, and an increase to social assistance.
2. Billions of dollars in investment dollars being placed elsewhere.
3. With the commodity prices being at these lows, there are less royalties being collected now under the new royalty framework than if we were under the old regime. Not a good time to shortchange ourselves.
4. Much of our newer, efficient, environmentally equipment is moving to where the utilization's for it is greater. We are being left with the, excuse the term, junk.
5. When prices for our provinces main revenue stream recover, the framework takes too great a toll on producers taking them and their money off to bigger profits. This will make it almost impossible for our economy to fully recover.

It seems rather silly to take royalties into account, but the reality is how huge of a difference it makes on our province being have or have not since we are not a diversified province. I am afraid the only realistic option is to either raise taxes and institute a provincial sales tax, since government can't seem to control spending. With only enough savings for one more year like this hopefully someone in there is coming up with the master plan, otherwise dig out your wallets!

Alberta's non-Healthcare

Alberta spends more on health care than Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In fact we rank second for per capita health care spending among provinces. Over the last ten years our spending on this has went up by 150% yet we have some of the longest wait times ever.

Here's some of the waste and cuts that have come from our govt:

• Pending closure of the privately owned Calgary Lymphedema Rehabilitation and Consulting Services.
• $8.5-billion super board paying huge severance packages to exiting executives
• Calgary emergency room delays grew 30 per cent longer in February compared to the same month last year
• Alberta Health Services estimated earlier this year it will face an operating deficit of about $700 million, as well as a capital deficit of about $700 million.
• 15-person board unanimously finalized a raise approved by government, boosting their honoraria to $50,000 annually for the part-time job. Members also receive$750 for each board meeting.
• Emergency patients now face a median 16.6-hour wait to be transferred to a hospital room
• Defers several medical projects including nursing homes
• Cutting funding for chiropractic patients and sex change operations.
• Bill 48, Crown's Right of Recovery Act, would permit the government to retrieve costs resulting from "wrongful acts or omissions"
• Won't buy the $100,000 laser on loan to the Rockyview Hospital because there are other priorities-- even though there are two of the machines in Edmonton and others in Grande Prairie and Medicine Hat.
• Laid off nurses to replace with LPN's

The list could go on and on. The mismanagement of our health care is atrocious. The money we spend for service received is way out of line. There is many ways to fix our provincial health care and provide the best service in the world. If money followed the patient, this has been proven in other countries to increase service by 30% alone. We talk about two tiered health, when we have a four tiered system in place already. The first served is WCB because they pay to put the worker back in service, they have priority in the system. The next is the RCMP which is important to keep in service. The third surprised the hell out of me and I think it's ludicrous, this would be inmates in the correctional system. Lastly would be the taxpayer.

I am glad to see our priority in the system is looking at suing tobacco companies, wouldn't want to deal with the real issues. Thanks Mr. Liepert.

Wildrose Alliance Leadership Race

Which candidate is capturing the vote for the Wildrose Alliance leadership?

Since the AGM of the for the Wildrose Alliance on June 6th, the two main contenders in the leadership race have been setting their tones. The third I heard being Jeff Willerton who's is trying to come up with the $10,000 to enter. I have attended events for both Danielle and Mark and thought I would google and see what I could find.

We can start with Danielle Smith as ladies first rule goes ( sorry Elniski its not the same). Danielle literally has pages and pages on her, CFIB, Stephen Taylor, the Herald, and almost every other media available. Most of this shows her conservative roots and the knowledge required to have sound fiscal government. On the social side it would seem she is fairly center, so I went to the websites to see what I could find. The website was very clean, easy to navigate, and had the links for social networking. The problems I found were there was the slogan was not very catchy, no events page to personally know where to interact with her, on the record does not tell us of her stance on the issues outside of the CFIB, the site did not have friendly donating such as pay pal, no mention of who the campaign team behind her is. It in short looks like a website for the her own personal CFIB. It could use some personal care from her to make it her own. Her face book site on the other hand is up to date and give up alot more about her, and where you can listen to her speak. She seems to have a good understanding of social networking as well as twitter.

Mark Dyrholm when googled had a few items that stood out. Dr. Mark website, running against Collen Urquhart in 2005, lobbying for the PGIB, as well as his campaign website. Mark seems to be very much to the right both fiscally and socially, almost too much so. So the same we can evaluate his website. The positives would be very catchy slogan, definitely lets you know his point of view, lets you know who his campaign team is, has events he is hosting available. The problems I found were having advertisements is tacky, everything is very long winded, the quotables are all part of the PGIB and Craig Chandler as well is the campaign team, for corporate donating cheques are made out to some company not his campaign fund, it is too cluttered and not appealing in its appearance. Social networking seems to also do well with Mark face book is up to date and Mark also twitters.

Jeff Willerton when googled has his website, previous elections, and gay pride bashing. I have to admit he is not the conventional type to run. At the AGM I had received copies of his book as well as the two letters he left for the audience. I won't go into detail what was in them outside of a strong opinion of Danielle Smith and her beliefs. His website offers nothing to his running for leader and I could find no social networking at all.

Summing it up Danielle seems like she would be a great leader the general public could warm up to, and seems to have the media's eye if she can break free of looking like she is still at the CFIB. Mark is well spoken and presents himself well. I think his downfall will be he is too far right for the average Albertan, something that has held the party back in years past. This campaign is growing more and more into a Craig Chandler/PGIB campaign which seems to lose Mark in it, if he can break free from this his odds are also good. As for Jeff Willerton from what I have found is not right or left simply out there in space. Any thoughts

Your wrong ED

Yesterday Ed and company told us that the announcement they were to make today would out date the institutes rank of Alberta. As expected from a government that does not understand the industry they came up with nothing more than extending the current incentives. Thanks Ed this will put us back in first in Canada as the best place to invest in oil and gas. Don't you have sick days or a holiday you can take?

Ed's Help Hurts Alberta

Whats with Ed and his royalty regime?

Today the Stelmach regime announce that once again we will tinker with royalty incentives. Is moving us from first to eight in Canada as the best place to invest in Oil and Gas not enough? When will the PC government open their eyes to the economic damage they have caused the province and the people in it?

Let's review the energy tampering that has happened since 2007. In 2007 Ed and company decided to form a panel to review royalties paid on our oil and gas by the producers. In September of 2007 the unqualified panel released the report titled "Our Fair Share". In this report was flawed data showing that we were being shorted for billions of dollars, which could easily be collected without repercussions. This ignited into a hotly debated issue pitting industry against Albertans, and divided the province north and south. Industry threatened to pull billions in capital, reports showing it was inadequate by think tanks, even as far as rig workers protesting on the steps of the legislature could not show this government it was a bad idea. In October of 2007 against the advice and concerns, Ed and company implemented the "New Royalty Framework" with the Liberals and the NDP claiming the govt. was not taking enough. The only party with a MLA in the legislature that spoke out on this was Paul Hinman with the Alliance.

Industry was outraged and immediately started to withdraw it's investment dollars from the province. Mel Knight tried to calm the public by telling them the junior oil and gas companies would pick up the slack and the Big Oil companies had no where else to go. I think to the PC's surprise they did have other places to go, with capital flowing into the U.S., Sask, and BC. Once again the service sector tried to approach the regime with no success, the layoffs started immediately. In an attempt to save face and hopefully stop the bleeding in November of 2008 came out with the first incentive program. This did very little outside of confirm Alberta was not a safe place to invest in for the long term. Since then the Alberta government has screwed around with different incentive programs, each time industry not having a solid foundation to count on. Projects worth the billions they are looking to invest need long term commitments from the province not the short term crap being doled out almost every other month. This was proved at the investment symposium Mel once again put foot in mouth at.

Let's move ahead to the now. Prices of oil and gas depressed, world in recession, Alberta bleeding jobs in the hundreds of thousands, and the Stelmach regime spending like there is no tomorrow. BC has one land sale that almost doubles the year to date total for Alberta. " Alberta, long hailed as Canada's oil-producing giant, now lags behind Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador in terms of the provinces that petroleum executives prefer to deal with, according to the institutes Global Petroleum Survey 2009, which ranks the "investment climate" of 143 oil- and gas-producing regions." of this Alberta ranks 92. Today Ed announced another incentive coming that will out date this report immediately. If I had a dollar for every time he claimed to have something right i would be rich. Unfortunately the way he has proven his knowledge on this topic to date, I think I should just hide in embarrassment for him now. It's pretty bad when we rank behind the Phillipines and Brazil in terms of investment.

If we look at the help he has given our economy in the last two years one can only hope he stops helping. I try to come up with a solution to help on the issues I complain about, the only one I have on this one is get him out of power before there is nothing left!!!

Iris Evans

Where do we start with Iris Evans?
I would have to say she is truly incompetent for the role of a finance minister. In years past when we had huge revenues coming in from the oil and gas sector and Albertans taxes the job would be pretty easy. To every ones surprise the economy tumbled, oil and gas industry came to a standstill due to the royalty changes and followed by the price collapse, investors not willing to invest in our province, and tens of thousands of job losses. The deck has definitely been stacked against her.

Should we take pity on these facts? Absolutely not!! The job is what it is, if our finance dept. is incapable of balancing it's books and acting quickly with the changes that are occurring, then they should certainly not be in this important government role. Government is a huge business and therefore must run along the same principles. If a business can not change with the climate it will certainly fail, running deficits this large are not only bad business, but illegal in Alberta (unless of course you conveniently change the laws). We have sacrificed for years to be deficit free, and fought hard to grow the savings only to have a free spending PC liberal government come in and wipe us out in just more than a year. This is not sustainable.

Review some of the things Iris has done and said:

• When the unemployment numbers in April were around thirty thousand in the province, Iris stuck by her initial 15000 job losses in the province for a year average. At that time we would have to have 100% employment the rest of the year to attain those numbers. Not too hard of math to do.
• Spends more than double on infrastructure than the per-capita average of the other provincial governments. It also doles out about 23 per cent more on government services.
• Seeking to borrow as much as $5 billion over three years to pay for infrastructure projects, up from an estimate of $3.3 billion.
• Forecast a $4.71-billion deficit in its $36.4-billion budget. The province plans to drain its emergency savings to pay for four straight years of expected shortfalls, totalling $10.3 billion.
• The Heritage Savings Trust Fund (HSTF) took a massive$3-billion hit last year --the largest loss in its 33-year history
• ATB paid out $24.5 million in staff bonuses and performance pay last year, even as annual profits at the Crown corporation sank to $6.4 million and it wrote off about $225 million in bad debt.
• Implemented punitive sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco
• Budgeted oil at $75.00 per barrel and natural gas at $5.50 per gigajoule. What a joke!!
• Deflect responsibility from the province's own poor fiscal management by going cap and hand to Ottawa for$700 million more in annual trans-fer payments
• Insulted families that out of necessity with the cost of living in Alberta, required both parents work in order to make ends meet.

These are only a few of the many things that prove Iris incapable of the role she is in. My fix for this is simple, Bring someone in who can add. There is the link for you Iris.

Elected Government

How exactly is our government formed in the province? Every election year we go to the polls (or 40% of us) and elect an MLA for our riding that we feel would best represent us in the Legislative Assembly.

The last provincial election in 2008 we as Albertans elected a government that consisted of 72 seats to the PC party, 9 Liberal and 2 to the NDP. Why is it we elect the members, but yet when the government is formed only the majority party view is represented? Surely even with a PC majority one of the other 11 members must at least have one or more reasonable ideas to help, otherwise why would we have them in office? This constant "tow the party line" attitude needs to be replaced with doing what is best for your constituents. I can not believe that the geographic needs change to each party, we vote them in as people we hope can bring us effective govt. Effective govt. can only exist if it is open minded and has open dialogue with the voters. David Swann of the Liberals won his riding, why is he known as the opposition? Would this imply the PC government believes the mountainview riding he represents should not have a say in the province? Vindictive?

It is for this reason in the next election I will vote for the Wildrose Alliance providing they have a reasonable candidate in my riding. Their new policy booklet adopted at the AGM is very realistic unlike prior policy which had more separatist views. They have gone back to the grassroots of politics where the members have a voice in forming policy. The MLA if elected is entitled to free vote in the legislature, representing their constituency views. This will form better government, especially when it comes to bad policies. Coming up with sound solutions is way harder than just opposing what is proposed, is this the job of non-PC MLA's? How do we fix this? I suggest having private voting stations in the Leg where MLA's vote by secret ballot, and include all MLA's.

Wouldn't that make bill 44 more interesting having an actual free vote.