You Don't Say.

What I make out from here in Ontario, is that Ed Stelmach is a late model of our (a former Ontario premier) Bill Davis the Red Tory.
Fortunately Albertans have Danielle Smith in the wings to salvage Alberta from the Albertan Red Tory mush.
And hopefully before too many eastern Canadian lefties migrate to Alberta replicating the political landscape, the eastern socialist entitlement swamp.

WILD ROSE!!

WildrRose gets results!!!

Watching from this side of the Rockies, I have been thoroughly unimpressed with the Stelmach government these past three years. However, on the oil and gas royalty issue, I actually am prepared to cut him a little bit of slack.

Let me be clear, I thought the royalty changes a couple years ago were abjectly stupid, and I take no pleasure in being proven right by recent events.

However, Stelmach and the Alberta Tories were largely supported in the move by rank and file Albertan voters. So, not only did the Tories win re-election after proposing the royalty changes, but Albertans resoundingly supported increased royalty rates, feeling they weren't getting their "fair share" of royalties from oil and gas companies.

I find it more than a bit ironic, therefore, that the Stelmach government is taking heat, seemingly, from the same voters who once supported the royalty increases.

The rates came into effect last year, but amidst soaring budget deficits and a sagging economy the government has dropped them back down in hopes of encouraging new investment.

What Red Ed had done when he unilaterally scrapped the Alberta government's Royalty agreements with the energy industry was to demonstrate that the Alberta PCs couldn't be trusted to honour an agreement anymore.

The new Royalty regime he had implemented made it so that when the value of a barrel of oil went up, so did the percentage of the Alberta government's Royalties.

But the price of a barrel went down, taking the Royalty percentage with it, and that left the Alberta government in a revenue bind.

What investors want to do is invest in a commodity and see their investment grow when demand for that commodity grows.
By taking a larger Royalty percentage as the value of a barrel of oil rises, an investor sees a reduced return on their investment.

Now who wants to invest in Alberta energy with a flip-flop Alberta PC government that leans left and has proven that it can't be trusted to honour agreements?
(these Leftist PC goofs were even talking about a provincial sales tax)

Seems like a risky investment to me until the Alberta PCs get turfed and replaced by the Wild Rose Party.

Any administration that economically ham strings the life blood industry of its jurisdiction has a political suicide death wish. He was actually taking talking points from McGuinty and Cherest at the Premier's meeting about how Alberta's oil sector is "too affluent" and that damages Canada. Duhhhhh

Mad Eddie Stelmach has to be the most dyslexic, inept premier we've seen in a long time

Reality is that governments only creat jobs by expanding the government. Stupid math.....government produces nothing.
Now I expect a lot of whining about government producing all sortsa stuff........like not teaching kids and closing hospital beds?
Here in Ontario we had BOOB RAE and are currently hobbled by the civil service union directed McSquinty regime....which prides itself on undoing all the common sense stuff Harris et al did.
All the Stelmach did was back away from the edge.

Colin

One must be careful making those generalized statements that "it was proposed and the voters supported it, by re-electing Stelmach (sic)"

Remember, Dear Leader Gordo instituted his carbon tax, and was then re-elected......not for one moment, did it mean that most people supported a carbon tax, it was a fact that most people still distrust the NDP, at least up until the last election.

Now with the whole HST fiasco, all bets are off! With Gordo, Hansen, et al, defending tax -increases- as good for the economy (contrary to their agenda for the previous 8 years), our choices here at home are NDP or NDP Lite. This is now a government that defends government, rather than whats good for the electorate! They have jumped the shark. That's the question for Stelmach, has he jumped the shark, or has he slowly started backing away from the fins and the sharp teeth?

A third party, a REAL rightwing party is badly needed. Yes, it might end up electing NDP by default, however, it seems with every government, after they've been in power too long, a good housecleaning is necessary. Gortdo has offended that middle ground voter, and has lost them. Next election day, there are better things to do than voting.....maybe I will show up, and vote 'other'

Why doesn't the left start a half dozen right wing parties and ensure a liberal victory in Alberta?

Alberta is importing liberal voters from the east who arrive to find that all those who are "entitled to their entitlements" are dissapointed at the Alberta tradition of working for a living and demand change NOW.

They would drag the Alberta economy down to match the one they ruined and left behind.

Actually Collin Special Ed was not supported by rank and file Albertans. There was no choice and most people took the last election as an opportunity to stay home. There were no WRA candidates and so we Albertans had the choice of Communist, Communist lite or Socialist. Conservative was not on the ballot.

Special Ed and his forehead smackingly, jaw droppingly stupidity of trying to raise government revenues when the government was running annually 7 billion dollar surplus' made me wonder who taught Special Ed to breathe when he was born.

You're mostly correct, Joe.
The voter turnout last Alberta provincial election was abysmal.
However there was a WRA candidate in our riding and my wife and I did turn out and vote for him.
He lost.

Gee, you raise taxes and they all go away, lower taxes and they all come back.

Could there be a lesson here?

Go Wild Rose! Wild Rose is going to be THE thing that keeps Harper and the CPC moving forward with conservatism and government size reduction.

Plus I'm loving the sight of all these red tories all over the country getting purged. Pink underwear ain't in fashion, boys.

But Phantom...what happened to:

"Besides, are y'all a bunch of pussies? You want some knight on a white charger to come in, slay the dragon and sweep you off your feet like a swooning maiden? There is no knight. There is no great leader going to come and save you.

Get the hell to work. Pick up the phone, write a letter, or better yet write a check. Put up lawn signs. Start a blog. But for god's sake stop whinging about how government isn't giving you what you want."

Or does a popular uprising against a conservative party only hold validity when there's already been a popular uprising against a conservative party?

Posted by: DanBC at March 14, 2010 1:04 PM

DanBC, your point is correct, as far as it goes. But, I specifically cited poll results that confirmed Albertan voters, by a large margin, supported the royalty changes.

Posted by: Joe at March 14, 2010 1:46 PM

Again, Joe, note the poll results I linked to. Two-thirds of Albertans supported the royalty changes according the the linked story.

Had I simply cited the Tory re-election as evidence that Albertans supported the royalty changes, I would have been fair game for both yours and DanBC's objections. Frankly, in Alberta (until recently), a Tory election wouldn't be evidence of anything by itself, simply business as usual.

Well Colin the real question is what was the wording of the poll you cited not the result of the poll you cited. As for support for Special Ed look at the turn out at the last election. Even by Alberta standards that was extremely low because there truly was no choice.

Joe, shall I drill down to methodology as well to determine statistical validity? I recalled by memory that the royalty changes were supported by and large by Albertans, but felt simply citing my memory would be discourteous to the readers here, and would frankly make for a weak argument. Thus, I cited the linked story.

Furthermore, you're arguing a point I didn't make, that Albertans generally support the Stelmach government. I was making the point that the specific policy vis-a-vis oil and gas royalties was supported by Albertans at the time.

Joe, further to your first post, please note I did not say Stelmach was largely supported by rank and file Albertan supporters. What I said was, "Stelmach and the Alberta Tories were largely supported in the [oil and gas royalty] move by rank and file Albertan voters.

If you check the actual vote results at Elections Alberta you find the following: - the total number of votes cast for the Tories went UP (501,063 in 2008 vs 416,886 in 2004) while the number of votes cast for the like of the Lib's and ND's went down (each lost about 10,000 voters a piece). In fact, the total number of votes cast in the 2008 election (950,363) was up over 2004 (894,591) , but the voter turnout as a percentage was down due to population growth (an excellent example of how to lie with statistics).

Did the royalty change have an impact - maybe. One has to look at the alternatives and certainly many people who normally voted ND or Lib parked their votes elsewhere.

Having said the above, I personally think the original royalty change was stupid. Any smart politician receiving a report called "Our Fair Share" should consider it toxic waste and burn it as soon as possible - not turn it into policy.

lance at 2:02 PM

the actual problem is that you elect a candidate, and end up with a politician

these fools in parlament no longer represent the electorate, they go by their conscience. Translated, they are writing their resume,24/7

No lance, Wild Rose is what "get to work" looks like. Looks like a bunch of people willing to put themselves to a lot of trouble.

It does not look like "nobody showed up to vote".

I was replying to all the people on that other thread who say they are going to spoil their ballots, or not vote, or "Harper's an idiot I'll vote Liberal that'll show him", and etc.

I lack the skill and resources to start a successful party of my own. In fact, I lack the skill and resources to even build a successful blog of my own. We can't all be Kate or Stevie Harper.

Therefore I can only help other people doing things I agree with. I support Harper because I have no federal alternative who does more of what I want. I have no problem cheering for Wild Rose to push him along if he needs any pushing. I support the odious Progressive Conservatives in Ontario because I have no provincial alternative at this time who can beat McGuinty. Should Wild Rose or the CPC decide to have candidates here, I'll work for them instead.

There are plenty of people who do a lot more than I lance, you may very well be one of them. In fact, it seems likely. But it seems there are a lot more who do nothing but wait for a savior.

There ain't going to be a savior. -We- have to do it.

Sorry if I didn't make my point better in the other thread.

So Phantom supports parties that already get a lot of support...catch-22 anybody? WRA is exactly what many like me want at the Fed level, so I guess we agree after all!
I'm not worried about the WRA's victory at the next electio, but I am concerned about the party itself. Smith is solid, but the MLA's aren't. They say things that aren't conservative, like condemning Stelmach for the few cuts he makes and then suggesting that the premier's office should be reduced instead, even though that accounts for a very small part of the budget.

Colin, as a resident Albertan I can assure you that Special Ed and his royalties were not widely supported. What was happening was a wide frustration with a government that was taking in huge sums of money and providing no services. The highway system resembled the ones you might see in Zimbabwe. Small construction jobs were taking years to complete. I'm sure some twenty something worked all the way to his retirement building on the Henday/Calgary Trail interchange. Don't even mention the Fort Mac death road that still isn't twinned 20 years on. Calgary was in perpetual gridlock, the schools were not being built or run efficiently and forget about the hospitals and wait times. In a background like that if you ask the stupid question, "Are you getting your fair share?", guess what the answer would be? And yes that is the words the government was using through its public service unions etc to pave the way to royalty rate increase.

My apologies Phantom. I misunderstood your points.

WRA has found, as Reform before them, that there is always enough support for a truly conservative party. I miss Reform, more particularly, I miss the policies that made Reform, reformers.

To tell the truth, I've given up on Federal politics. I just don't really care, no one speaks for me, everyone I trusted because they sounded like they spoke for me has betrayed that trust at one point or another.

Mulroney brought in the FTA, and then blew it with air planes in Quebec. (Incidentally, how much per year goes to Bombardier?)

Chret/Martin attacked debt vigorously, but then we had Allan Rock and Sheila Copps launching an attack on property rights. Then of course came all the scandal.

Harper _was_ me. Not so much anymore.

I love watching the feds and I'll probably cheer for the CPC, but I really don't have a dog in the hunt, I've given up...lost my drive, my will to fight for what I believe because it'll just be wasted energy anyway. It's easier to snip from the side-lines and vote for the best local candidate.

Now Provincial politics...that's something completely different.

I find the Sask Party here and the WRA in Alberta fascinating. Alberta is like the outliers of Canada. The WRA is a reaction to a right thinking province being shifted left by its gov't. How different is that from every other gov't in Canada? Totally bucks the creeping Liberalism trend in any other jurisdiction.

The other thread gave us plenty of examples of people willing to trade in their conservative credentials for power. That seems to be the norm in Canada. They think that 13 years was punishment because the right (Reform/CA/CPC) was so extreme. I completely disagree.

The Sask Party here is part of the time-honoured "it's their turn" movement.

Most usually think the Sask Party had to soften their policies before Sask would elect them. This is untrue and it's provable by comparing the policy before and after. What was different was a horrendous Elwin Hermansson selling the Sask Party compared to a dynamo named Wall.

Saskatchewan had to take enough of a time-out from the Devine PC's that Sask would trust them to run gov't and they needed to be sold on the idea.

It wasn't that the NDP was that great, but they weren't that bad. Heck, we wouldn't even be in a boom if it wasn't for the last three NDP budgets.

The NDP's biggest failing was the attitude, Sask-a-whiners. That was Wall's biggest breakthrough in Sask. His "Hope not Fear" speech during the campaign sealed the deal. The NDP simply couldn't respond to it nor understand why it caused the massive bleed to the SP's.

lance, the impression left by Wall and his cabinet at the Bear Pit session during the Rural Municipal Association convention in Regina this last week was that there will be big cuts coming to the swivel servants. At least that was my take. Here's hoping that a few departments and or programs could disappear.

I still support Wall, but the carbon credit thing has kool-aid drinking all over it.

http://www.saskatoonhomepage.ca/agriculture-news/no-till-farming-give-it-credit.html

Hopefully Wall and his people take the events happening in Alberta and store them in their mind.

This retreat by Mr Ed and company begs the question:

"if oil prices rise again and the industry booms, will you re-impose the royalty increases?"

Albertanis one of the worst regulatory regimes for O&G exploration for three reasons:

1. higher royalty rate than other juristictions. This has sort of been fixed this week but we are by no means the least taxed area.

2. Nil faith/trust that the AB govt won't reverse it's direction on rates sometime in the future. And that it might yet again break a contract like it did with Suncor.

3. Last, and perhaps most importantly, the environmental and other regulatory hurdles and paper work are far more onerous than in say SK. Shells THAI project took 56 days to get approved. They were told by the AB govt that it would take 5 to 6 years to do the same thing in AB.

Typical of the Stelmach machine it is too little too late and it sones with zero admission that they did anything to cause this slump.

Sones = comes

DanBC: "Gortdo has offended that middle ground voter, and has lost them. Next election day, there are better things to do than voting.....maybe I will show up, and vote 'other' "

I supported Gordon Campbell's Liberals until he went all mushy-green and instituted a carbon tax. I won't vote NDP, because its inner circle is beyond redemption (political piranhas) but I did vote for a common-sense Independent the last time around. I'm on Vancouver Island.

We DEFINITELY need a real, electable conservative party in B.C.

Alberta's conservatives elected Stelmach by default. Big mistake.

one cannot trust special Ed and his farm kitchen table economists.
the Bruderhiem farm crowd have been calling "not fair " for generations , mostly since they saw their neighbours on the reef trend catching big bucks whereas they were petroleum poor.

Chutz

Not to jack the thread, but, we see the similarity in whats happening in Alberta and BC, except the Fibs didn't switch leaders. Instead, I believe, they made a strategic decision to steal NDP policy, and take away their appeal to the middle ground.

And while I do believe they have offended the middle, I also believe they have offended their true believers on the far right, but, those voters will never vote ND either.

And while I may vote other, or Indy, or something other than ND or Fibby, my vote truly won't count for much, I am in the Capital region, which loyally votes for the Dippers over and over, despite their lack of ideas and action. And they complain the gov. doesn't spend on improvements here.....yeah, really?

One thing for sure, I'm done with the Fibs for good, until they renounce carbon tax, HST, and their mushy, soft-headed greeny agenda. Does Barry Penner look possessed or what?

By Eddy, & take your HRC with you.
Where a free people here, not your Buddies free feed.
You forgot the Cardinal rule in Alberta.
The Premier must always appear a populist choice. Not a liberal infiltrated parties lapdog.
Your day is done.
Your fly was left open.
JMO

lol at a possessed Barry Penner:)