Laurentian Elites

[blackpowder]

Is that list just the symptoms?
What's the disease?
Insulated long term grip on power?
Faulty confederation guidelines?
Faulty govt structure?

[chuckChuck]

Its a nice distraction in Alberta from having to explain how Alberta saved nothing from the last boom like Norway and Alaska have done.


Norway and Alaska never had to transfer all their profits to other states or countries...........hence there is where Albertas savings went “equalization”.

What?

Alaskans like Albertans still pay federal taxes. Norwegians pay some of the highest taxes in the world and still put away over a trillion dollars in savings.

Federal taxes paid on income in Alberta are the same rate as every other province. And they are paid on the profit. No one in Alberta or any other province is transferring all their profits to the federal government.

That’s not an excuse not to collect sufficient provincial taxes or royalties on resources owned by the citizens of Alberta.

[chuckChuck]

Natives are not the private sector.

Native run companies are the private sector. They will find finance and take ownership under what ever corporation they decide to set up.

Are you opposed to native run corporations or what?

[jazz]

Are you opposed to native run corporations or what?

A group of people who are wards of the state getting preferential access to an investment opportunity funded by the govt at a subsidized rate IS NOT THE PRIVATE SECTOR.

A 7B dollar gift.

[chuckChuck]

A group of people who are wards of the state getting preferential access to an investment opportunity funded by the govt at a subsidized rate IS NOT THE PRIVATE SECTOR.

A 7B dollar gift.

Have you seen the terms of any sale or the structure of any ownership? If not you are making up crap!

First Nations run many businesses in the private sector. Are you suggesting that they all get preferential treatment?

Sounds like you are opposed to First Nations ownership. For what reason?

[jazz]

Have you seen the terms of any sale or the structure of any ownership? If not you are making up crap!

First Nations run many businesses in the private sector. Are you suggesting that they all get preferential treatment?

Sounds like you are opposed to First Nations ownership. For what reason?

Sounds like you don't know how financing is done in this country. No native assets can be used as collateral as the Indian Act forbids it. So they have no path to financing it on their own. No bank will touch them without collateral. No Canadian corporation will partner with them without them putting up security.

Basically another deal with the govt as subsidizer and guarantor. Bought for twice the price, sold for half and backed with pixie dust by Trudeau.

[seldomseen]

Chuck I find your view of the world disturbing! You seem to think sending all wealth to the State and that the State should own everything and we just work for the State?
You think that's the way way for a country to be Happy and prosperous? I guess that's your dream.
We will all be equal Comrade!

[sumdumguy]

If you’ve ever watched “Frontier and The Fur Trade”, you would see that “Eastern Superiority” was alive and well in 17 and 1800’s. Back then Eastern Canada saw the West as a source of valuable furs destined for Europe. In the early 1900’s, the western provinces became “ Western only” grain suppliers that could be controlled by The Canadian Wheat Board. Western farmers would be subservient to The East for decades. Then the equalization formula carefully eliminated Eastern resources in the calculation and subsequently extracts billions from the West annually.

Feel like a milk cow?

So it goes, Eastern Power conniving to suck us dry! No more buying anything made in Quebec or Maritimes. nada!

[blackpowder]

By all means have First Nations run the pipelines etc. Give them purpose. Make them accountable. Stop the guilty welfare.

[jazz]

By all means have First Nations run the pipelines etc. Give them purpose. Make them accountable. Stop the guilty welfare.

I don't think that's a good idea. While they should have business opportunities to develop, owning and operating critical pieces of national infrastructure shouldn't be one of them.

Look to their own reserves on how that would turn out.

Kinder Morgan is a public traded company. Natives could have bought their stock decades ago. They wont do anything unless the govt holds their hands with dollar bills stuffed between.

[rumrocks]

Chuck . . . .When you say Norwegians are some of the highest taxed citizens in the world but are still able to put away over a trillion in savings, its a bit of a circular argument. Because of high taxes from it's citizens, the government can use that revenue to finance their day to day expenses without dipping into the oil revenue ( taxes and licensing from oil companies ) which fuels their Oil Fund.

So in a indirect way Norwegians are taking money out of their wallets and filling the Oil Fund.

That didn't happen in Alberta.

Secondly, Norway doesn't have pay some of their tax revenue to Ottawa.

That happens in Alberta.

[chuckChuck]

Some examples of fist nation owned and run businesses in the oil patch.

Despite oil's collapse, First Nations businesses thrive

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/first-nations-businesses-faring-better-than-others-as-oil-sands-capital-spending-collapses/article37775102/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/first-nations-businesses-faring-better-than-others-as-oil-sands-capital-spending-collapses/article37775102/

https://bouchier.ca/who-we-are/

DRIVING TO BE CANADA’S LEADING INDIGENOUS BUSINESS

Launched in 1998 with nothing more than a used Caterpillar bulldozer and a passionate entrepreneurial spirit, Bouchier has grown and expanded its workforce and service offerings to become one of the largest and most respected Indigenous-owned and operated service companies.

[chuckChuck]

Chuck . . . .When you say Norwegians are some of the highest taxed citizens in the world but are still able to put away over a trillion in savings, its a bit of a circular argument. Because of high taxes from it's citizens, the government can use that revenue to finance their day to day expenses without dipping into the oil revenue ( taxes and licensing from oil companies ) which fuels their Oil Fund.

So in a indirect way Norwegians are taking money out of their wallets and filling the Oil Fund.

That didn't happen in Alberta.

Secondly, Norway doesn't have pay some of their tax revenue to Ottawa.

That happens in Alberta.

The reason Norway has a large savings fund is because they decided to put away 100% of the royalty revenues from their oil resource so that future generations could benefit from one time finite resource revenues. Norway treated the oil as owned by Norwegians.

Alberta chose to let most of the revenues go to the private sector and corporate shareholders with low royalties.

They used resource revenues to fund core services and keep provincial taxes low and increased government spending.

Read this from the Fraser Insititute about how Albert saved only 4.5% of its resource revenues from what likely was the biggest boom in the provinces history.

Fumbling the Alberta Advantage: How Alberta Squandered a Decade of High Energy Prices
— Published on February 19, 2015

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/fumbling-the-alberta-advantage-how-alberta-squandered-a-decade-of-high-energy-prices

It is well-known that Alberta’s provincial budget is highly dependent on resource revenues. Over the last decade, as a proportion of total revenues, resource revenues have accounted for as much as 40% (2005/06) and as low as 19% (2009/10). In the most recent year (2013/14), resource revenues accounted for 21% of all revenues. What is often less remarked is how program expenses have grown much quicker than the combined effect of population growth and inflation would require. In 1993/94, per-person program spending (in real dollars) was $8,978. The Ralph Klein government cut real program spending back to $6,828 per person by 1996/97. By 2004/05, per-person real program spending had risen again to $8,965; in essence, back to where per-person program spending was before the mid-1990s expenditure reductions. By the mid-2000s, even though the province was again spending at a level that contributed to deficits in the early 1990s, after 2004/05 the province allowed program spending to escalate even further and beyond inflation and population growth. The result was that by 2013/14, the province spent $10,967 per person on government programs. That was $2,002 higher per person than in 2004/05.

Had the province increased program spending after 2004/05 but within population growth plus inflation, by 2013/14 the province would have spent $35.9 billion on programs. Instead, the province spent $43.9 billion, an $8 billion difference in that year alone. That $8 billion difference is significant. In recent interviews, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice has warned that the drop in oil prices has drained $7 billion from expected provincial government revenues. Thus, past decisions to ramp up program spending mean that provincial spending beyond inflation and population growth is at least as responsible for current budget gap as the decline in revenues.

The Lost Opportunity

While discussion over the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund is temporarily muted due to concerns over the pro-vincial budget deficit, some have advocated higher taxes on the basis that the Alberta government should make regular and significant deposits into the Heritage Fund. But, the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund could have seen significant deposits over the past decade had spending been more carefully controlled: between 2005/06 and 2013/14, and adjusted for inflation, the province of Alberta garnered $101.3 billion in resource revenues. Had Al-berta imitated the state of Alaska in requiring 25% of all resource revenues to be deposited into the Alaska Perma-nent Fund, from 2005/06 to 2013/14 inclusive, instead of just $4.5 billion in actual deposits, the deposits would have amounted to $25.3 billion. Given what is now known about the spending patterns of the last decade, a deposit of 25% of resource revenues, or $25.3 billion, into the Heritage Fund would not have been unreasonable. Instead, the province deposited just $4.5 billion, or 4.5% of all resource revenues between 2005/06 and 2013/14.
Authors:

[chuckChuck]

https://thewalrus.ca/give-alberta-oil-back-to-the-people/


"In another interesting difference, Norway had created a state-owned oil company, Statoil (recently renamed Equinor), which is the eleventh-largest oil company in the world. With assets of more than $100 billion, Equinor is majority-owned by the Norwegian people, adding yet more to their collective wealth. In the 1970s, Alberta created the Alberta Energy Company, which was half-owned by the province. Today, the Alberta Energy Company is the second-largest oil-and-gas producer in Canada, but the province privatized it in 1993, ( Now called Encana and Cenovus after a split) leaving Albertans with no ownership stake in their oil industry or the corresponding wealth that goes with that."

"The newly elected Progressive Conservative premier, Peter Lougheed, was a businessman and lawyer who came from a very prominent Alberta family. Following the family tradition, Peter Lougheed was a conservative and was certainly pro-business. But that didn’t prevent him from recognizing that Albertans were not getting a good deal from the oil companies. And, unlike the earlier Alberta premiers the companies had faced, Lougheed did not see his role as simply one of keeping the industry happy.

The new premier broke sharply with his predecessors in vigorously asserting that Albertans owned the oil and gas in their ground and that they had to start “thinking like owners.” He showed what he meant by that when, in one of his first acts as premier, he announced plans to significantly increase the share of oil wealth going to the province by raising the royalties the companies had to pay. Accustomed to a sweetheart deal that limited royalties to 17 percent, the companies fought back when Lougheed pushed the rate up to 25 percent on newly drilled wells. The industry didn’t hesitate to revive memories of Depression-era Alberta, attempting to stoke fears that the royalty hike risked “killing the goose that laid the golden egg.” Oilweek, the Calgary-based magazine that functioned as a mouthpiece for the industry, featured a desolate abandoned farmhouse with the caption “What Would Alberta Be Like without the Oil Industry?” Another Oilweek cover hinted that the premier had lost his mind, running a photo of Lougheed beneath the heading “This Man Needs Help.”

But Lougheed persisted and prevailed. The oil companies, apparently concluding (correctly) that there was still profit to be made in Alberta, simply adjusted to the new royalty regime. More broadly, they found themselves obliged to adjust to a new regulatory framework in which provincial civil servants were actively involved in planning and overseeing the exploitation of the province’s resources.

In an effort to counter the dominance of the multinational oil companies, Lougheed established the above-mentioned Alberta Energy Company, half-owned by the provincial government with the other half owned by members of the public purchasing shares at affordable prices. The notion of Albertans investing in the province’s resources—privately and through public ownership—proved wildly popular. The Alberta Energy Company was given some attractive oil properties to develop and was touted as a vehicle for diversifying the province’s economy beyond oil, including establishing a spinoff petrochemical industry. Lougheed was keen to push Alberta out of its past pattern of exporting raw resources for processing elsewhere.

Lougheed’s determination to secure a better deal for Albertans was helped by the quadrupling of world oil prices, in the early 1970s, due to the rise of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. With Alberta awash in oil revenues beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, there was plenty to go around, easing the way for Lougheed as he pushed royalties up to 40 percent, providing the province with an annual $10 billion boost in revenues. Realizing that the heady oil prices wouldn’t last forever, he also established the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, with an initial investment of $1.5 billion in 1976, to hold a portion of the province’s resource revenues as a nest egg for the future.

It was Lougheed who launched the development of Alberta’s massive tar sands (or oil sands, as they’ve been renamed to soften their image). He saw the gigantic oil-sands deposit as pivotal to the long-term prosperity of the province, as well as offering a chance to break the dominance of foreign corporations. From its early days, the Lougheed government invested heavily in advancing the oil sands, funding government agencies that developed key technologies to extract bitumen from the gooey, tar-like sands, as well as creating a regulatory framework to supervise the development.

Lougheed’s time as premier, from 1971 to 1985, represented the high-water mark for assertive public control and management of the province’s oil reserves. In the later years of Lougheed’s premiership,"

[chuckChuck]

Alberta Keeps Low Oil and Gas Royalties, Committing ‘Profound Political Mistake,’ Critics Say

https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-keeps-low-oil-and-gas-royalties-committing-profound-political-mistake-critics-say/

"In another submission, the economist Mark Anielski reported 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.”

"The current savings fund holds less than $20 billion."

"In Alberta, the share has plummeted from a 40 per cent high during the Peter Lougheed years to less than four per cent today."