Two guy's idea of an Alberta strategy

[grassfarmer]

Two guy's idea of an Alberta strategy to deal with some of it's problems.

[URL="http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/11/04/Clean-Up-Plan-for-Alberta-Oil-Pollution/"]http://http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/11/04/Clean-Up-Plan-for-Alberta-Oil-Pollution/[/URL]

[SASKFARMER]

Get rid of the useless NDP you don't need two guys to figure that out!

[grassfarmer]

If the NDP were the problem....which they aren't. The problems discussed here have been building for 30 years or more only 18 months of which the NDP has governed, the rest was solidly of PC making.

[stonepicker]

Grassfarmer. What have the conservatives done that's so bad in the past? The richest province in the country, lowest prov. debt, ( which the ndp are going to triple in one year ) prob. the best roads in the country, lowest unemployment and all this while having to pay 100's of billions in welfare payments to the rest of the country.

[stonepicker]

Between 2000-2014 alberta paid 200 billion in equalization payments, quite a chunk of change to take from a province eh grass farmer? There's good reason why alta. couldn't put money in the bank.

[perfecho]

Really Stone....the richest and yet no money in the bank (Prentices's budget was also a deficit).... a system that did not collect the royalties that were deserved and, as we found out later, not even collected on. A system that allowed some to not even pay there fair share of taxes...a system that is going to leave us with a real mess to clean up at our cost...a system that did took the low hanging fruit and couldn't plan into the future....a system that rewarded their buddies...a system that got full of themselves. Sure, the equalization is a problem, but that doesn't excuse the mismanagement.
So...you are saying corruption is good...as long as it's making me money....or at least that's what I hear.
The Nd's are not the answer down the road, but they have done some things that were long over due...although blinders don't usually let some see other than what they want.
And don't forget, equalization did come to Alberta many, many years ago....but now it's unfair.

[grassfarmer]

Stonepicker read the article and see how Government policies in AB over the last 30 years have left the taxpayer on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars in environmental remediation work that's what the PCs allowed under their watch. This is a serious issue and one that affects farmers and ranchers in AB and will increasingly affect them in the future. It's nothing to do with transfer payments to other provinces.

[stonepicker]

Let me know when you find the perfect party perfecto , i've never seen one. Co's create jobs, industry creates jobs, in your ndp world these are bad things. I don't agree with gov. corruption, but i do believe in free enterprise and smaller gov.

[grassfarmer]

On the royalty issue economist Mark Anielski studied how the province would have benefited if it had kept Lougheed's approach to a robust and healthy royalty regime.

"Had Alberta maintained a 30 per cent royalty rate on the share of the value of the oil and gas produced between 1971 to 2014, Albertans would have generated $471.4 billion in oil and gas royalties. Had 50 per cent of these royalties been invested in the Alberta Heritage Savings and Trust Fund with annual average return of five per cent per annum we would now have an investment account worth over $481 billion."

Last time I checked there was about $18 billion in the AHSTF. We could have paid $200 billion in transfer payments and still been well ahead stonepicker if they just didn't give the resource away for peanuts.

[blackpowder]

OK, so we screwed up. I agree. We can't take money we don't have now, and aren't going to make in the future, to clean up anything today, to a unnecessary standard.

[sumdumguy]

As I remember it, Saskatchewan and Alberta were competing for oil exploration and each one was cutting royalties to entice oil companies to their own side of the provincial border. Not such a great idea in hindsight.

[Hamloc]

A recent article by Jack Mintz pointed out that after the recent NDP royalty review and minor tweaking to the royalty structure the NDP will be collecting lower royalties on conventional oil and gas than the PC's were. A little bit ironic since the NDP have said for years the PC's weren't charging high enough royalties. And still in 2017 it is projected that there will be more oil wells drilled in Saskatchewan than Alberta for the first time in 36 years.