Premier Danny Williams shows the way to electoral victory and there are lessons for Premier Stelmach in Alberta. Williams campaigned on strength pride and determination…values that will resonate in today’s Alberta too.
He also took on Big Oil for a fair share and negotiated government ownership equity deals for off-shore energy projects. Alberta in the early days was much like Newfoundland and Labrador today. They had government ownership positions in various energy projects in the early days and they morphed into the highly successful Suncor, Syncrude and EnCana entities of today.
The political lessons for Alberta coming out of Williams getting 70% of the popular vote was in no small part from his taking on Big Oil in the service of the greater good of all the citizens of his province. Premier Stelmach can take heart form these results and the pending consequences of some serious political decisions he is about to make on royalties and the role, relationships and the responsibilities between his department of Energy and the energy industry.
Stelmach, when perceived as a ditherer, saw his party’s fortunes dropped quickly to 39% in recent polls. When the “Our Fair Share” Royalty Review Report came out and Premier Stelmach said he would study it and would make a decision on royalties in a month. No more Mr. Dithers and no superficial responses either. Premier Stelmach also said he would not be “intimidated” by Big Oil he jumped to 45% support. Big Oil has been trying to intimidate him ever since the "Our Fair Share" Royalty Review Report was released.
The major political lesson from yesterday's win by Williams shows that siding with the voters/citizens interests over Big Oil is the way to go. Making a carefully considered royalty decision with a long term view of getting a fair share of non-renewable royalties for current and future generations of Albertans will put Stelmach’s support in the Williams’ territory of 70%.
If Stelmach instead decides to call a snap election this fall he will forfeit all this upside potential.
C'mon - Stelmach just thanks Kevin Taft after night before he goes to sleep. Any party with the name Liberal in it will never win in Alberta. Remember that the Liberal Party of Alberta has never won....since 1905.
ReplyDeleteIt was not long ago that a Liberal Party instituted the National Energy Policy that destroyed the Alberta economy - and the provincial libs are connected to the federal libs.
Funny how there are absolutely no stories running about the CPC's rebate issue. After all, you were making it sound like the Conservative Adscam - guess you were completely wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe CPC Ad-sham is under investigation by Elections Canada and before the Courts due to a lawsuit initiated by the Cons...That is the reason there are "no stories" about it right now - as if that was proof of anything.
ReplyDeleteAll the ugly facts are known - now we are awaiting the independent judgements of Elections Canada and the Courts on the Cons shameful adverting tactics.
Was it legal or not? It sure was outside the spirit of the law and has seriously jeopardized a number of unwitting official agents of a number of "Conned" candidates who did not know they were parties to law suit or even personnally under Elections Canada investigation because of the national campaign office Ad-sham idiocy.
If you "guess that means I was compltely wrong," it is a stupid guess on your part.
Interesting to note that this Anon 'contributer" thinks politics is measured in the number of media stories on an issue and not about the principles involed. He must be a Harper Conservative.
Ken:
ReplyDeleteI know you will want to raise these issues with the Chair of the Royalty Review Panel:
1. The Alberta Energy technical reports and the van Muers reports were supposed to all be made public prior to the release of the Panel report. Openness and accountability are mentioned often in the Panel report. The Panel had access to these reports many weeks prior to Albertans. I don't believe that is fair. Perhaps the Chair of the Royalty Review Panel can address.
2. I agree that there was misleading information provided by a number of industry presenters. But that also applies to other presenters as well. Those groups, including ENGOs, know who they are. Perhaps the Chair can address.
3. Wood Mac...Some members of the Panel used Wood Mac as justification for their recommendations. That would have been fine if they had presented the complete picture. I would refer to the Wood Mac news release of October 2, 2007 for further background. I don't believe in cherry picking some information, but ignoring other pieces of relevant information. Perhaps the Chair can address.
4. Cost data. One of the objectives of the OSST is to discourage excessively high cost upstream projects as part of a policy to modestly reduce the level of overall activity. Fine. While this is elegant in a theoretical context, actual experience is limited at best. The Panel seems to define the threshold for a high cost integrated mining project to be $66,706 free flow cost per barrel at $60 WTI. This would seem to make any new integrated mining project that is proposed in Alberta, uneconomic. Since the cost of raw materials is driven by factors beyond Alberta's borders, I assume the Panel's recommendations are designed to reduce labour input costs. Perhaps the Chair can address this issue.
5. Ziff Energy. F&D refers to finding and development. Ziff collects cost data from natural gas producers. Once again, I assume that the Panel is interested in reducing labour inputs as a means of influencing the cost environment in the natural gas sector. I would assume that the Chair is aware that Ziff collects actual cost data. Perhaps the Chair can address.
6. Synenco. The May 1, 2007 news release and backgrounders are contained on the Synenco web site. I assume the Panel had access. Again, the Chair may be able to provide further clarification.
7. Fort Hills, Northern Lights and the Syncrude expansion. The PetroCanada and Canadian Oil Sands Trust presentation to the Panel provide additional information on project economics. Northern Lights is the aforementioned news release and backgrounders from Synenco.
My interest is to ensure that Albertans, as owners of the resource, have access to all the information that the Panel had access to, other than confidential company information. I assume the Chair shares that view.
Anon at 9:21 PM needs to learn a little history. The Liberal Party of Alberta formed the government of Alberta from 1905 to 1921; so they won several elections in Alberta.
ReplyDeleteIt's my understanding that the provincial Liberal party has severed ties with the federal Liberal party.
I bet anon was barely born when the NEP was negotiated between the feds and the province and when a world wide depression affected Alberta as well as many other places; it did make the NEP more damaging than had been expected, but the mythology around the NEP is ridiculous.
Thx for the Comment Holly. The NEP was a real program, taht was actually negotiated between Ottawa and Alberta - not imposed on Alberta. But it never was implemented.
ReplyDeleteThe real reason the Alberta economy went down the tubes in those days was due to a dramatic decline in energy commodity prices.
That commodity price collapse was the direct result of President Reagan releasing the US strategic supply storage reserves and flooding the market.
The NEP would have been a disaster if it had been implemented in a timely fashion but it wasn't.
The American decision to flood the market with oil was the real cause of our demise back in the day.
The Alberta mythosphere over NEP is reality but it is not fact.
Ken, your ad hoc attacks do not address the validity of my arguments. Go ahead and call people "studip" who do not agree with your viewpoints - look how that worked in the last election.
ReplyDeleteMy point was that the media has not taken the story like the Liberal Adscam and, thus, there has been no damage politically to the CPC. Quite simple, isn't it?
Ken, the National Energy program was not negotiated between the provincial and federal governments. It deemed, uncorrectly, that the resources of Alberta were the property of the federal government.
ReplyDeleteYou are partially correct about the real cause for the crash - however, it was the idea that the Liberal Party of Canada could essentially steal Alberta's oil revenue and distribute to parts of the country that vote for them was most disturbing.
With the economy doing so well right now, we must not forget that it can be equally gone if the LPC ever gets in power again.
Anon @ 5:09 - your arguments have no validity if your test of political integrity is based on the amount of media coverage a breach of trust or a flaunting of the law gets.
ReplyDeleteIf your political principles are measured by the amount of media coverage and that result some how legitimizes the CPCs consent to govern then they are scarier that even I thought.
We have to wait until the Courts and Elections Canada decide the facts and consequences before we can tell if the CPC suffers any political damamge.
My bet is they do suffer and big time.
Maybe you should heed your own advice and wait for the decision - you have already basically said that the Conservatives have broke the law. Shame.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 12:44 - the Cons have clearly broken the spirit of the law. That will result in some political damage. If they are found to have broken the letter of the law the political damage will be greater.
ReplyDeleteIf however, they are found to have not broken the letter of the law they will have some technical vindication for their actions. However the high handedness of how it was done by the National Campaign within the party "faithful" will cause some internal residual political strife I am sure.
Like I said, there has been no damage with respect to your so-called "violation of the spirit of the law". Liberal bloggers have been drawing diagrams trying to link the issue with that of the liberal scandal - it hasn't worked.
ReplyDeleteThe only diference between the Liberal Adscam and the Conservative Ad-sham is quantum and fraud...and those are significant differences of fact but not of intent or motivation.
ReplyDelete?? Fraud is, by definition, an intention to deceive and knowingly violate the law. The Conservatives have a valid argument that they complied with the law.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, might as well wait for your so-called political bomb to explode. Just don't be surprised if it doesn't happen.
I want to see your post once the LPC does not vote down Harper when he states that Kyoto is "unattainable" - that would definitely symbolize a lack of courage and principles. So much for your so-called "leader".
Wow, Anon at 4:55am is bang on. Hunter is good at bouncing his comments around but he obviously didn't really learn anything about the industry. Although we do now know he hates it.
ReplyDeleteNEP/FIRA is not mythology. It destroyed the Alberta economy. You could almost hear the sucking sound of investment dollars leaving the country starting in ~81. The US industry didn't crash from the commodity price crash until '86. There has been too much revisionism on this issue from Liberals eager to bury their ignominous past.
Randy