I had a great conversation with Katherine O'Neill of the Globe and Mail yesterday on the Wildrose Alliance Party leadership and the pending Alberta Progressive Conservative Party Annual General Meeting leadership confidence vote for Premier Stelmach coming up November 7th. Here is the link to the story in today's Globe and Mail.
I think the Alberta political media attention will shift now to the PC AGM leadership confidence vote but with the Danielle Smith WAP leadership lurking in the background. The speculation will be rampant but pointless. What is on the minds of the delegates and what do they see and the confidence vote "ballot question" is the real issue.
There is a growing amount of grumbling in the PC rank and file these days. It may be that I attract the griping because I speak out about political and governance concerns on this blog. The big tent for fiscal conservatives and social progressives is wearing thin on both counts. Walking away for $2B in royalties for no good reason other than to appease the Calgary based energy executive suites and at the same time to be calling for the same $2B in program cuts in the coming fiscal year captures the essence of why both elements in the PC Party are dissatisfied.
The Premier's political response to the embarrassing third place finish in the Calgary Glenmore by election was restricted to blaming the results on the bad economy and the rapidly expanded government program spending. That presumption that the Stelmach government is not fiscally right-wing enough ignores the growing lack of confidence in the governance and leadership capacity of the current regime. It also ignores the revenue problem caused by politically motivated giveaways and concessions to the energy sector with no positive economic upside for the provincial treasury and the Premier painting himself in a corner with a hasty announcement about not increasing taxes on his watch.
Now the cost-cutting strategy is to give token claw backs of the massive recent Cabinet pay increases as if that would provide some moral high ground to go to public sector workers to induce them to walk away from legally binding mutually agreed to collective bargaining agreements. The not-for-profit community based service sector agencies doing the government's work in the volatile and vulnerable areas like seniors, children's service and the developmentally disabled are being penalized even more than the union based public sector workers.
Passing up non-renewable resource revenues in the face of market based commodity prices and putting the burden for that giveaway on the middle class and most vulnerable in our society is not good politics and even poorer governance.
Will this message come through loud and clear at the pending confidence vote at the November PC AGM? My betting is not at all. Even with all this crashing down on the shoulders of the provincial government and the downloading of the burden on municipalities, schools, hospitals, universities, community based not-for profit social service agencies, it will all be stifled and not talked about openly at the AGM.
The first rule of old-school politics is to get re-elected and the next election is a long way off in political time. There is a lot of water to go under the political bridge before Premier Stelmach has to face the people. The "people" in the PC party know this. The only thing that could cause Stelmach to face the citizens of Alberta earlier would be a low confidence vote in the party leader and Premier by the party faithful. That would trigger a PC leadership contest and with the party policy of one-membership one-vote process Albertans could destabilize the entire PC party tradition and structure.
The PC party faithful will stay "faithful" on November 7th if not to the leader at least to the PC brand. To do anything else will only hurt the party, the province and destabilize provincial politics by unnecessarily increasing the already considerable instability and uncertainty of being Albertan.
Bold blogging, Ken! If the PC Party establishment tolerates your frank assessments perhaps I have been too hard on them!
ReplyDeleteWhat do you hear about the competitiveness review, Ken? More giveaways to the oil and gas sector by the Stelmach Government.
ReplyDeleteOnly Ted Morton can save us now.
ReplyDeleteIt seems apparent that individuals do not understand the competitiveness of the Oil and Gas Industry. These aren't give aways. It's the way our economy works. In Canada, the government owns the rights to Oil and Gas and have formed a business relationship with free enterprise to attract capital and operate the business. In Canada, we provide compensation for Farmers, Service Companies (by way of employment) which stimulates our economy. The Oil & Gas Industry assumes the capital risk. In other countries, the middle east, Africa, their governments take all of it and do not provide infrastructure to their people, schools, hospitals, highways, etc. Wealth Creation starts from regulator/cost to royalties/tax and it takes large sums of capital to develop raw natural resources into products. The Oil & Gas Industry doesn't make more in times of "boom or bust" their margins are the same. The labour model and costs escalate proportionality. So before you bash the Oil & Gas industry perhaps we need to understand how it affects our economy.
ReplyDeleteGive me a break - Ted Morton can save us now -- gees whiz.
Giveaways to oil and gas? Please .... low commodity prices are certainly hurting the industry these days, but Alberta's foolish royalty review suddenly made Alberta uncompetitive with B.C. and Saskatchewan ... It's the oil and gas sector, directly and indirectly, that drives jobs and investment and government revenues in this province ... taxing them more through higher royalties means industry will simply invest elsewhere. Folks who think they can take another pound of flesh from the energy sector and spend it on another unncessary government program need to go take a basic economics course...
ReplyDeleteYes, Ted Morton is the one that can save the PC Party and bring it back to the conservative party that we need - and this will decimate the Wildrose Alliance in the process.
ReplyDeleteGiveaways to the Oil & Gas industry? The majority of the money raised each year to explore for new oil & gas reserves in Alberta comes from outside of Alberta. By allowing the Stelmach et al raise the provincial royalty rate by 66% (from a max of 30% to a max of 50%) has devestated our ability to attract new money into this province. If given the choice the new investment will go where it can get the best return. Do you think Ed has realized that we are taking in one billion dollars per year less at land sales than two years ago. This means a couple of things for sure 1) one billion less in the provincial coffers 2) much less land being acquired for exploration in Alberta. Less oil & gas exploration means less work and less oil and gas production in the future and of course that means less money in the provincial coffers. All bad for the province. It takes years to rev-up an oil & gas exploration project... Ed needs to get his head back in the game while we have a game to play.
ReplyDeleteHi Dear
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