There are twelve ministers in the Alberta cabinet, including Notley herself, each with a chief of staff. And ten of those chiefs are, like Mitchell, NDP activists from other provinces, many of whom will commute each week to Alberta from Vancouver, Toronto, or elsewhere.
Nice. First off, any guesses who foots the travel bill?
Second:
There is something weirdly colonial about non-residents being sent in to run a province to which they have few or no ties. It feels as if the NDP believes Alberta lacks people with talent and judgment to govern themselves. It feels nepotistic – highly paid consolation prizes for failed NDP activists from other campaigns.
Like Nathan Rotman. He worked on Olivia Chow’s unsuccessful campaign for Toronto mayor. Now he’s the chief of staff to Alberta’s Finance Minister.
Was there no-one in Alberta with any financial background? No socially conscious businessman, or even an NDP-friendly professor or think tank economist? Four million Albertans, but not one who understands Alberta’s fiscal situation better than an Olivia Chow door-knocker?
The Wildrose Party says it’s a troubling sign that the NDP energy minister’s top staffer was registered as a federal lobbyist for an organization opposed to pipeline projects proposed to ship Alberta oilsands crude.
Considering Alberta is the only province with no sales tax and it was a policy of the Conservative government long before the Dippers were even heard of in Alberta, that is a totally weak and unimpressive comparison. Too bad Brad Wall couldn't govern both though. I went to school with his dad and like his dad, he's a fine guy.
Lots and lots, Don. No argument there. That doesn't mean it's not the most valuable resource that exists though. You can live without oil and gas; you can't live without water.
By the way, have you checked the election results for Atlantic Canada yet?
You could have all the oil and gas in the world, but you'd be dead inside of a week without water. Don't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. (Inception)
You could have all the oil and gas in the world, but you'd be dead inside of a week without water. Don't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. (Inception)
After reading a veiled threat online last weekend against Premier Rachel Notley, MLA Karen McPherson reported it to the legislature security team.
The Facebook post suggested that taking over the government would require "a lone gunman," adding it was not something the poster condoned but that "bad things happen to bad leaders."
McPherson had seen disturbing comments about the premier before, but this post on a Facebook page called Out the NDP in Alberta was of particular concern.
"The tone went from dissatisfied to more action focused," said McPherson, who has also been the target of online misogynistic comments since being elected in the riding of Calgary-Mackay-Nose Hill in May.
"The comments I'd seen before that hadn't referred to harming anyone. That comment seemed to be a tipping point, where more of that violent imagery was used."
On Tuesday CBC revealed Notley's security detail is closely monitoring online activity following several posts that appear to threaten her life.
Many of those posts take aim at her gender, using profane references to female anatomy.
One post suggested someone kill the premier, calling her a c---.
Another said, "That dumb bitch is going to get herself shot."
And here it comes... Notley is set deliver the largest deficit budget in Alberta history. Of course, they have to pay lip service to the unions so the public sector will be spared. The NDP has been crying for years in the wilderness, wanting to show Albertans how socialists can transform the economy. Thankfully they have all the answers required to make things right.
Lost in the hullabaloo over Rachel Notley’s NDP snuffing out the 44-year Tory dynasty has been the magnitude of the fiscal squeeze now facing the province.
The collapse of crude oil prices that had former Progressive Conservative premier Jim Prentice warning Albertans to brace for a $7-billion hole in provincial revenues will result in his NDP successors tabling a budget Tuesday that forecasts the largest-ever deficit in the province’s history.
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Earlier this week, Notley assured reporters there won’t be “any big surprises” in the budget.
“It will be a budget that focuses on three primary things: preserving the stability and effectiveness of our front-line public services,” she said. “It will also be focused on mapping out a plan to balance (the books) and … looking at new initiatives around economic stimulation and job growth.”
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Paige MacPherson, Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, warned the government that it can’t create jobs or grow the economy by giving out money.
“Economic diversification in my mind is mostly code for subsidies,” she said. “If you look in the past in this province, corporate welfare has been a big failure and we’ve wasted a lot of money.”
At the legislature Friday, Wildrose Leader Brian Jean expressed alarm that the NDP is putting Alberta’s triple A credit rating at risk by continuing to borrow for capital projects.
And here it comes... Notley is set deliver the largest deficit budget in Alberta history. Of course, they have to pay lip service to the unions so the public sector will be spared:
Makes up for the public service not being spared for the last three budgets when times were getting good for everyone in the private sector. You only see what you want to see. Do you even live in Alberta? Or do you just like to stick your nose in?
Was talking to some around Traverse City, Michigan who said the peninsula now has the highest number of craft breweries per capita on the continent. Said local farmers are turning to growing hops just to supply them all:
Yeah, I watched him and heard him utter the word diversify once. Too bad he never offered anything concrete to diversify anything. Unless of course blowing away our flat tax system to hit Albertans squarely in the wallets is diversification? Could it have been 5% on booze, or was it the $5 a carton on smokes? Wonder if that will apply to Justin's upcoming smokes?
“It outlines an ambitious infrastructure plan that will fix roads, build schools and expand hospitals in communities right across this province, putting Albertans back to work and supporting economic growth,” Finance Minister Joe Ceci said Tuesday during an embargoed news conference before he delivered his budget speech in the legislature.
Imagine that. Recall what I said earlier about the two sacred cows, Health Care & Education? Bang on.
Expand hospitals, what an f'ing joke. Nearly every small town in the province lost its hospital in the great centralization experiment. So, instead of getting them back, the big centres will get bigger & better. Screw the rural folk. Thx. Plus, where do they expect to get staff for all these expansions? There's already a shortage of doctors & nurses in the province.
What we need is more efficiency, not more wasted tax dollars thrown at the same problem & expecting change.
Squeezed by falling oil prices and a lack of pipeline capacity, Royal Dutch Shell plc said Tuesday it is halting the development of its Carmon Creek thermal oilsands project in northern Alberta and expects to take a $2 billion restructuring charge as a result of the decision.
It’s a disaster for Shell — they’re writing off $2 billion dollars.
More importantly, 1,450 Canadian families are out of a job. Those were six-figure jobs, many of them held by First Nations workers.
And of course the 80,000 barrels of oil per day that Carmon Creek was going to produce is gone too. Even at forty dollars a barrel, that’s $3 million a day.
Obviously low world oil prices are part of the problem. But Shell is investing billions in other parts of the world.
So why did they announce they were killing the project yesterday, at 3:46 p.m. Alberta time?
Well it’s obvious. Because they were waiting to see what Alberta’s first NDP Budget looked like. It confirmed their worst fears. So they pulled the plug.
Haters gonna hate. It wouldn't have mattered much what she announced. Do you have anything constructive to say? Do you have any specific suggestions for how to get the price of oil back up to where it used to be? Otherwise you just sound like you're whining.
Time to cut the size and wages of Alberta's bloated public sector down to size. If I'd seen a healthy dollop of that, the other stuff might have constituted a balanced approach. As it is, it's all about maintaining Alberta's inflated government at the expense of everyone else.
The price of oil will come back, but the industry will not--it's already withdrawing following delivery of the budget--as long as Notley remains in power.
Alberta’s NDP government is taking bold steps to reduce its reliance on oil, including borrowing heavily to boost infrastructure and sponsoring economic diversification.
Alberta NDP’s budget will force the oilpatch to fend for itself
Claudia Cattaneo: Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci tabled a “shock absorber” tax, spend and borrow budget Tuesday for Canada’s top oil and gas producing province to ease the impact of low commodity prices on provincial finances
But while it can run away from oil for a while, or downplay it while pursuing its green agenda, it won’t be able to hide from it.
Alberta still needs an oil-price recovery to balance its books — or end up in a risky spot. The likely unintended outcome: The higher the debt, the more Alberta will need oil and gas to be its reliable cash cow.
Credit rating agencies were already sounding the alarm Wednesday.
Moody’s Investor Services warned Alberta is facing “a deterioration of its credit metrics over the next 24 months.”
The agency said in a report it expects the province’s debt burden to increase to around 60 per cent of revenues by 2016-17 from 30 per cent as of March 31, rising to around 80 per cent by 2017-18.
FP1028_Alberta_Budget-GS
“This projected debt burden is high for an oil-dependent regional government, and surpasses Moody’s previous expectations,” Moody said.
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Of course, Alberta could significantly boost its resource income by promoting export pipelines, which would increase the prices received for its oil, a strategy that doesn’t seem high in Notley’s agenda.
Ceci said his government is prioritizing stable funding for health care, education and social services as the province battles a mild recession, plans to return to a balanced budget by 2019/2020, and will help with job creation and economic diversification in areas like petrochemicals, agriculture, tourism, technology, creative industries and manufacturing.
I wish this neophyte Ceci would actually explain what he's trying to do. Under successive PC governments, the economy was already diversifying quite nicely. Seems like his strategy is to strangle the oil industry so that the other sectors will look bigger by comparison.
Devon Energy says it has cut 15 per cent of its Canadian workforce as the company responds to lower capital spending plans.
Oklahoma-based Devon said the staff reductions, completed Wednesday, mean about 200 employees have been let go in all areas of the company's Canadian operations, including its Calgary offices and northern Alberta field operations.
Devon spokeswoman Nadine Barber said the company has significantly reduced capital spending in Canada after completing some major projects such as its Jackfish heavy oil facility.
She said the company expects Canadian capital spending to remain at "lower than historic levels for the foreseeable future."
While hundreds of thousands of Alberta families are exercising restraint in their family budgets, the New Dems are bulling ahead with an additional $1.5 billion in spending this year, despite running a deficit of $6.1 billion, despite already having the highest per-capita spending of any province and despite having to borrow money ($4 billion) for day-to-day operations for the first time in 23 years.
Albertans are trimming expenses wherever they can. The NDP can't even find a single employee to lay off out of the 117,000 - many of thousands of them middle-level managers - at Alberta Health Services (AHS).
I'm going to brand them the "Not-me" government. Pain everywhere, except in the well-larded unproductive sector.
Where is all her anger that the previous government didn't finance oil refineries to create jobs? If that's what's required to create value added employment, why is this now off the table?
I love Ceci's announced plan for diversification, which includes diversifying into petrochemicals!
I stopped reading when they accused the Fraser Institute of having extreme right wing ideologues. If you are going to conduct an objective analysis of anything, try to keep the hyperbole out of it...
Likewise, this anger over the government failing to diversify the economy when it was diversifying on its own. The Parkland Institute is "non-partisan: but always left wing. It supports a glut of deficit spending as easily as it breathes.
Nasty creatures to sharpen that axe at Klein's death.
I'd finish pointing out the errors if you wanted to debate them, fjn.
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