Surplus ???

[Horse]

In this county we have very little oil but we do have lots of water associated with it and hense we have a truck or 2 /3 on the same roads every day rain or shine.
Without a lot of work going on like some areas we are not all that handy to get an oil job unless you leave it all and go to work, I expect you can be home every night and not have to drive for 2 hr.
Most of our revenue comes from farm land taxes , we are one of the poorest countys in alta.

[Horse]

Horse, I just returned from four days of travelling the highways and I guess if the feeling was that somebody else could do the job I wouldn't have put 1320 kms on my vehicle !!! I don't just drive to the same office every day, I can do much of the work necessary for the administrative side from home but meeting face to face with folks is pretty difficult unless you travel, and I am old fashioned enough to feel that talking to folks face to face is still the best way to communicate important issues.

Cowman you are so right when you say that most of the $300 will be spent on things that aren't necessities. I have heard some folks planning on spending it for tickets to an Oilers/Flames game or something of that nature. I drove over some secondary highways today in the southern part of the province that were still MUD from the floods, the pavement was gone !! Seems to me that we do need to spend a bit more of the riches in areas that aren't in the centre of the province, but out in rural areas where average folks are beating the hell out of their vehicles on highways that are pounded to heck by industry.
The province does contribute a huge chunk of funds each year to municipalities under the resource road program which is intended to rebuild or construct new roads that are used as resource roads.
I can name at least a dozen highways that are no where near Highway 2 that could use millions of dollars in repairs, overlays, new bridge pipes etc.

[cakadu]

Here is an interesting article by Robert Roach of the Canada West Foundation with respect to this topic. I have to say that he makes some very good points.

Prosperity Bonus a waste of opportunities

Oh great, here comes a Grinch from a think tank to tell us that handing out cheques to Albertans is a bad idea! Well, it is. The Prosperity Bonus announced by Premier Klein is one of the worst ideas I have heard in a long time.

Compare Alberta?s oil and gas revenues to winning the lottery. Each person who buys a lottery ticket is willing to forego a small amount of money for the chance to benefit from winning a whole lot of money. The price of a lottery ticket does not go very far, whereas a million dollars is enough to buy a house, get out of debt, or retire. Similarly, an individual Prosperity Bonus cheque will not go very far, whereas pooling our oil and gas revenues presents us with an opportunity to do something truly special.

Because the surplus changes on an almost daily basis as the government plays a shell game with its budget numbers, it is difficult to predict the amount of the proposed Prosperity Bonus cheque, but it will not be a lot. Nonetheless, with filling up the car requiring a bank loan these days, most of us could use even a little extra cash.

To get this money, however, we have to sacrifice at least three very important things.

First, we have to sacrifice the opportunities created by pooling our natural resource revenue. For each of us to get our share right away and in the form of a cheque, we have to water down what we can do with the collective pot of money. We could, for example, use it to help turn the University of Alberta into a school on par with Harvard. Or, we could target its redistribution so that it really means something to less fortunate Albertans rather than see millionaires get cheques for a few hundred dollars that they don?t need.

It is important to pause here and note that the idea of using windfall revenues to help the poor should not be seen as a substitute for a comprehensive approach to helping people in need. Helping the poor or funding programs for seniors or any other core social program cannot be contingent on the price of a barrel of oil. High oil and gas prices, if used responsibly, present us with the opportunity to build a sustainable source of revenue that could be used to improve the lives of Albertans over the long-term.

Alberta?s oil and gas bounty does not, moreover, belong to individual Albertans, but to the people of Alberta as a group. Residents of Alberta have not forked over cash for shares in the province?s oil and gas reserves; we benefit from them simply by living here. The money collected by way of income taxes or a consumption tax like the GST comes from the individual earnings of Albertans. Oil and gas revenues, on the other hand, are collected from the businesses that pull the resource out of the ground. The government collects royalties on behalf of the collective owners of the resource, not individual Albertans.

Hence, if you want to dismiss the argument that oil and gas revenues should be pooled and used for collective projects as ?socialist,? you have to be willing to go one step further and argue that the royalties should not be collected in the first place, but left in the hands of oil and gas companies and their investors.

The second thing that we have to sacrifice to get a one-time dividend cheque is the opportunity to create a permanent savings account that would, with good management, yield annual dividends in perpetuity. It takes discipline to save for the future, but retirement planners will tell you that it works. Put some of your money away today, let it grow, and you will have a steady flow of income year after year. Albertans have the chance to do the same thing by saving a portion of our annual oil and gas revenues. Imagine the tax savings or public works we could finance using the earnings of a Heritage Fund worth $100 billion or more. This is what we should be shooting for.

The third thing we have to sacrifice is the prosperity of our children. Alberta?s natural resource wealth does not just belong to people living here today; it belongs to people living here 10, 50 and 100 years from now, too. Future generations have just as much right to share in this wealth as we do. Hence, we must act as responsible stewards and make sure that we leave something for future generations. The best way to do this is to set a large portion of our annual oil and gas revenues aside in a savings account. The rest we can spend as we see fit and, like our children, we will have access to the earnings on the spending account as well. It is a win-win approach, but it requires patience and discipline in the present to pull it off.

While I myself could use a few extra bucks in my pocket this winter, good public policy demands that we resist the temptation of a dividend cheque and demand that our government take a higher road and invest our money wisely.


Emrald, I thought you were retired. If you're on the road this much now, I would likely cringe at what you were doing when still a councillor. Do you still make it to Red Deer once in a while? I'm there every day now and wouldn't mind meeting up with you sometime.

[cakadu]

Linda, I have been in Red Deer twice within the past week . I am no where near retired, never will be as long as I can do something productive. Will let you know when I am going to be in RD again and maybe we can grab a tea at Glenns.

[cowman]

The thing I have a problem with, in this scenario of a "trust fund" or whatever, is the management of it? I mean the management of the Heritage trust fund hasn't exactly been very good? In fact it has been really poor over the long haul?
The sad fact is whenever you get government running anything in the "public interest" it usually degenerates into a gong show with most of the benifits being eaten up by the managers, waste and the beuracracy!
Unfortunately, the best recourse for private property is to always let the people who own it, have it to do with as they will?
Perhaps we need to create a corporation called Alberta INC. and issue shares to every Albertan? Let them decide who will run the company and give them the right to sell their shares, or buy out the other guy, or keep the shares and expect dividends?
Now that may sound strange to people? But isn't that exactly what we have today in our farm land? We can buy and sell or keep it and hope for a return? It's simply property rights?
The oil and gas are owned by the people of Alberta....collectively! Unfortunately some people benifit more from it than others? The bum lying in the gutter...is he getting his share? How about the concept of: We all own a share of the assetts...so how come we all don't get an equal dividend? How come the bum, who owns a share of untold billions, freezes to death because he can't afford to get out of the cold? A better way would be to divy up the assetts and let people decide how they will manage them? Yes the bum would probably sell and blow it on booze...but that would be his decision?
Personally I believe in being responsible for yourself and not relying on the "collective" to take care of you. Government is nothing more than a huge inefficient collective that demeans the individual and takes away his freedom to be responsible for himself! Government should be very small...not the monster it has grown into!

[cowman]

cowman, the bum, if he happens to be in Calgary has a state of the art shelter to stay in overnight, food in the morning and likely other places to stop during the day for a hot meal courtesy of some volunteer group who are funded by the generosity of citizens like you and I. The riches of this province provide opportunities for free enterprise thinking and for others who wish to work in the spin off industries.
This province has done a fairly shabby job of taking care of those that through no fault of their own ( I do NOT include those who choose to 'p' everything they get away on dope and booze) are not able to care for themselves. The continuing care review has given the province and its health regions a fairly black eye and certainly we have seen far too many cases of abuse etc. in foster homes so obviously social programs for kids in distress need to be looked at and improved.

[cowman]

cowman, the bum, if he happens to be in Calgary has a state of the art shelter to stay in overnight, food in the morning and likely other places to stop during the day for a hot meal courtesy of some volunteer group who are funded by the generosity of citizens like you and I. The riches of this province provide opportunities for free enterprise thinking and for others who wish to work in the spin off industries.
This province has done a fairly shabby job of taking care of those that through no fault of their own ( I do NOT include those who choose to 'p' everything they get away on dope and booze) are not able to care for themselves. The continuing care review has given the province and its health regions a fairly black eye and certainly we have seen far too many cases of abuse etc. in foster homes so obviously social programs for kids in distress need to be looked at and improved.

[cowman]

sorry for the double post, too quick on the trigger this morning !

[cowman]

You were probably too darned anxious to get out in that gas guzzling SUV and burn up some more miles of our roads! LOL... just trying to be funny.
I wonder how come if Calgary has all this support, we always hear about all these bums freezing to death? Do you think it is just the media sensationalizing things?
I do know in Red Deer they have a virtual "tent city" on the west side of town and the food banks do a rock and roll business. Must be kind of brutal living in a tent when it is forty below?
I guess everyone makes choices in their life?
The growth of the crystal meth business seems to be snaring more and more people in the area and I guess it is a pretty ugly scenario.
I would hope our government would consider giving more aid and support to the down and out...no matter how they got there? Unfortunately in Alberta it is a dog eat dog environment and the politicians are more into taking care of the "haves" than the "have nots"! Tough world.

[cowman]

Edmonton has street ministeries that have a tent city in the downtown core handing out hot soup and coffee all hours of the day and night. The most unfortunate part of any programs for the down and out is that so many of them have no clue how to access those programs. Also, many of the down and out either don't want to or can't change their lifestyle so they are dependent on the rest of society to look after their basic needs of food and shelter.

There are a lot of kids in crisis in this province, many because the adults in their lives have scewed up so damn much that the poor kids have nobody to look up to or no role model to help them along the way.

The meth issue is horrible, kids as young as ten getting hooked on the stuff.