Reboot Alberta

Sunday, May 30, 2010

What Will Albertans Get From Yet Another Royalty Rollback?

I wanted to do a blog post today on the latest retreat from responsible royalty rates by the Stelmach government. My research made me realize that Don Braid of the Calgary Herald more than captures my response.

The short term thinking of generating activity by single minded policy approaches is hindering integrated thoughtful policy approaches.  We know from our research and the early findings of The Big Listen by the Alberta Party that Albertans want a public policy approach that has a longer term view. We can't ignore the ecological and social impacts of shallow, simple-minded and myopic approaches to competitiveness that is exemplified by a constant foregoing of rents from non-renewable resources. 

These resource royalties rents are one time chances to grasp the intergenerational and birthright benefits of our kids and their kids.  We are being told our government can't afford to pay teachers according to the contracts we negotiated with them but we can walk away from another $1.5B of royalties because why?  More drilling activity in more marginal areas?  How much more have the companies who are doing this more drilling committed to do as a result of the royalty give-away?  Are there any guarantees from them in this deal?  What about a condition of a rollback that these companies first clean up and reclaim some of the old wellsites, roads and seismic lines they no longer need so wildlife can return to these areas?

We are not well governed and the Wildrose would be worse. They appear to be already owned and controlled by the conventional energy sector.  These guys are so cloaked in anonymity that they will not even disclose their contributions to the leader of that party.  We need a viable political alternative in Alberta that has Integrity, is Honest with us, truly Accountable, actually Transparent and who sees Stewardship of public assets and resources in the greater public of all Albertans interest as its job.  

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:05 pm

    What about the risk that the companies take? Give me a break. If it wasn't for the Wildrose Alliance the energy sector would have been decimated. Premier Danielle Smith will finally restore freedom to Alberta.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The risk is paid in profits.

    That's the problem with current PC and Wildrose thinking. There seems to be an idea that risk has to be subsidised and ensured by someone (read gov't).

    Crap.

    Go do your business. Pay the prices the business entails (including paying for the resource and access to the resource). Then take your product and sell it for what it takes to make your business profitable. If that expense is too much for the market to bear, then you can't do business and someone will come along to do it cheaper or to find a new way to satisfy a market.

    Stop asking for handouts to make yourselves profitable. Drives samll business people like me insane. Do you believe in the market or not? Stop playing both sides rink. You believe in the market or you don't.

    I own a greenhouse. The weather has been totally crappy the last two weeks and no one has bought my product. Now it's getting "long in the pot" and I will have to severely reduce prices to sell it (if I'm luckey)... or not sell it at all. I will be lucky to break even this year and will receive nothing for the hundreds of hours of labour.

    Where is the government protection for my risk? In a good year, I profit. This year I will take a kicking. Tough nuts for me. That's business... and I bought into it when I bought decided on owning a greenhouse.

    Stop playing both sides of the issue. Take the risk, pay the prices, charge what the market will bear.

    Only trouble with that is... the market may not bear your true cost... and then all of us would be forced to find a better way to power our societies and lessen our dependency on your sense-of-entitlement laden industry.

    P.S. Good deals on bedding plants at the non-government subsidised New Sarepta Gardens greenhouse.

    ReplyDelete

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