Surplus ???

[gordie]

Ralph and crew are meeting in Bonnyville to decide what to do with the huge surplus. Word yesterday is that they intend on giving a one time check to Albertans plus spending on schools etc. I am very interested to hear what your views are on the one time check vs spending on the failing infrastructure ? For those of us that travel Albertas highways on a daily basis, it seems as though billions could be spent repairing, rebuilding etc., and that would be a benefit to all Albertans at one time or another vs a little check that will be spent in five minutes !!!

[cowman]

Well without a dougt we need to keep up the infrastructure. The provincial Tories have let things slide quite aways in the last several years as well as letting Ottawa siphon off a good deal of cash that should have been spent on infrastructure!
There is a healthy surplus this year and I suspect if the government does decide to give the people of Alberta a dividend check, you'll hear the howls across the country? Maybe it would be better if Ralph eliminated the health care premiums...after all what other province charges health care premiums?
My own preference for the surplus would be to take that money and start setting up the firewalls to get Ottawa out of our lives!

[farmers_son]

I think the one time cheque is designed to take pressure of the government for higher energy prices. In effect it will be a one time gain for long term pain.

[cropduster]

f-s,when you say`pain` do you mean higher energy prices or the `pain` of having those sodomite endorsing LIBERALS in our back pockets?????

[Horse]

I would like to see a cheque a real big one to replace the income I never got out of the marketplace.
As for infrastructure I think the resource companys that have been the largest users should put more in as in larger royalties.
If emerald would like better roads to surf dayly mabey a little more tax on the gas would do .
I think I would like to spend some of the so called alta advantage on something I feel is important rather than Ralph saying I can have some money if I give it to the energy companys like they did in the past.

[cowman]

So I wonder Horse. What do you think is important to spend the surplus on?

[cowman]

With all the speculation about a dividend of $300, or whatever, I wonder what kind of game Ralph is playing? I suspect he is attempting to make it very difficult for Ottawa to get their grubby hands on it!
But the fact is a lot of that $300 dividend will probably end up in the casinos or bars!
If Olberg says we need to borrow $7 billion for infrastructure spending(and I have no doubt he might be right) then what is this $300 about? Spend the surplus on some much needed improvements in the infrastructure...where all Albertans will benifit? A solution to the transportation situation to Fort Mac comes to mind? Or an upgrade of Highway 2 in the Calgary/Edmonton corrider?
And I might suggest instead of building some more grand schools, how about a few shelters for the homeless so they don't end up freezing to death?
How about using some of the money to bankroll the education of apprentices? Or some new processing facilities? Or some innovative things like biogas, or solar power?
All of the above things are actually investing our money back into our province? Is that better than just blowing it at the VLTs or in a bottle?

[Horse]

I think some serious thought not political thought should be done . Sure schools sound good will we have a population to fill them in the future or will it be like all the hospitals they built tro get elected?
Highways I thought the fuel tax was for that.
How about some rural water lines we could tap onto there is some very poor water on a lot of farms now and probably about to get worse with the coal bed methane .
Our rural roads are taking a hell of a licking by the energy sector and I L O these roads were not built to standards for the heavy and sustained trafic.
Then there is always to posibility of paying actual producers of ag products dont see much diference why we cant get a decent living when oil is paying exorbident wages and machine dealers and plumers and so on and after all I need to eat more often than I need a trip around the world or a lunch in calgary.
When you get right down to it we are the second most important people after those controling water and we are at the end of the line to get paid, so to answer cowmans question on another thread mabey I am Gentry.Or should be.

[Horse]

Emerald1 just a query ? Do you realy have to travel the highways every day ? Are you sure there isnt someone there at your destinations that could do your job and save a lot of resourses.
What about all this electronic parafanalia is it no good . I have always suspected if I could take oil and turn it into s--t and show a profit the gov would be glad to back me.

[cowman]

Horse: I never thought about the water issue but of course that would be a very worthy project. I will note the federal fuel tax in Alberta is $1 billion/year and I believe we got a few bucks back out of it last year...about ten cents on the dollar...which was a big improvement over the ZERO dollars of the last several years.
The municipalities are raking massive amounts of money in from oil field developement? Quite a bit more than from farm land tax?
In my municipality the farm land and residential tax makes up less than 30% of the total tax take...and that was two years ago before we saw the explosion in coalbed activity! These light drilling rigs don't really beat up the roads all that much?
The biggest destroyers of the roads around here are the silage trucks and manure trucks. When a rig is moved it is monitored and they post a bond. If the road is beat up they pay for the gravel and the grader...that doesn't happen when the silage/manure trucks destroy the roads...the taxpayer picks up that tab.
I agree a lot of these roads weren't built for heavy traffic, whether oil and gas or modern farm equipment!

[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!