Author Topic: No llores por mí Alberta  (Read 34727 times)

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Offline waldo

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No llores por mí Alberta
« on: October 26, 2019, 07:37:53 am »
ah yes, the song with lyrical platitudes where Eva Peron member kimmy tries to win the favour of the people of Alberta!

Trudeau campaigned around Quebec and Toronto on "fighting Jason Kenney" and "standing up to big oil".  That might be a vote-getter in Toronto and Quebec, reaching for those cheap easy lines to win votes comes with a cost. Scoring cheap political points by attacking some hated "other" is a long-standing political tactic, but it tends to not go over well with the people you've "othered".
"I've heard your frustration and I want to be there to support you" has to actually mean something, it can't just be words.

if only member kimmy had put some quoted/cited specificity into her statement about PM Trudeau "scoring cheap political points"..... by, as she states, "fighting Jason Kenney & standing up to big oil" - if only! Giving member kimmy the benefit of the doubt, that missing specificity leads the waldo to surmise member kimmy is speaking to the carbon tax. Now certainly Alberta Premier Kenney (and his fellow Conservative Premiers... along with weak Andy) is against a carbon tax, but Big Oil has long ago come out in favour of a carbon tax. How did member kimmy get this so wrong? In any case, this claimed duplicity by PM Trudeau was... is... a favoured point of stated hyprocrisy by climate activists wailing on about, "how can the Liberals balance proposing a carbon tax while also buying/favouring the TMX pipeline"? Of course, this apparent contradiction has been explained many times over before and throughout the campaign; accordingly, if member kimmy was knowledgeable... topical... on this point, she would recognize, appreciate and accept that one can, "fight Jason Kenney over the carbon tax... while still working for Albertans to realize a TMX pipeline to tidewater" - go figure, hey!

Alberta didn't want the gov't to buy the pipeline, they wanted the pipeline to get built. And that still isn't happening, after a botched round of consultations and new court challenges claiming that the new redone consultations were also botched. The timeline keeps getting pushed back.

waldo pro-tip: if one presumes to speak to the Liberal government rationale behind a TMX pipeline purchase, one should actually understand key background facets before embarrassing oneself!

=> Harper Conservatives 2014 Canada-China FIPA includes a Canadian commitment to build a tidewater pipeline in exchange for the mega tarsands investments that China made/pledged to make
=> {former} Alberta Premier Rachel Notley openly stated the TMX pipeline approval was integral to allowing Alberta to accept a tarsands emissions cap in the form of passed legislation... law... the Oil Sands Emissions Limit Act
=> the tarsands emissions cap became a key element of both Alberta Premier Notley and PM Trudeau’s respective strategies to cut overall carbon emissions
=> without the Liberal government purchase of the TMX pipeline, Kinder Morgan was quite willing to shutter the expansion plan and walk away from the millions of investment dollars it had already spent - that purchase kept the pipeline expansion viable.

as for member kimmy's emphasis on "botched consultations":

- Harper Conservatives did not realize a tidewater pipeline... even after governing for a full decade
- the first consultation round, effectively, relied significantly upon the work/process put forward by the Harper government... simply a move by the Liberal government to attempt to expedite the process and realize a pipeline result sooner... than later - imagine that! With the resulting judicial push back, it's easy to suggest the Liberal government should have "done better" and outright scrapped the Harper Conservative work... and started over! Yes, ain't hindsight reliance an easy go-to!
- effectively, the second consultation round was that "start over" - with the 1st round judicial ruling as guideline oversight. And now member kimmy wants to criticize this round of consultations because there are also court challenges to it. Yeesh, aside from there being no pleasing certain persons/groups dead set against the pipeline, perhaps member kimmy should first wait on the actual court proceedings to commence/complete - yes?

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Offline waldo

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2019, 08:15:19 am »
notwithstanding the lamestream media fueling it... and Alberta Jason Kenney igniting it, a lot of that "Wexit" separation bullshyte I'm reading about is wrapped around Alberta's debt/deficit numbers in relation to {perpetual} misinformation over the equalization process.

why does Alberta have such deficits if its fiscal capacity is so high? Can we say... low taxes? Aside from having NO SALES TAX, Albertans pay the lowest provincial tax rate in Canada! By their {governing} choices, Albertans have a deficit: per Trevor Tombe (associate Economics Professor UofC; research fellow at the School of Public Policy), the following graph plots Alberta’s actual revenue as a percentage of what could be raised if each province had tax rates equal to the current national average => showing Alberta is, by far, the lowest tax jurisdiction (nearly 30% below the national average) while Quebec is the highest (nearly 30% above).



additionally, Alberta had the lowest corporate tax rate in Canada @ 11%. The recent days old budget release includes an intent by Alberta to lower that rate even further - to 8%! Of course, this latest reduction intent follows the standard Conservative mantra that, "lower corporate tax rates create jobs"... and flies in the face of the consensus of economists that there is no correlation between lower corporate tax rates and increased job creation.

c'mon Albertans, step-up and pay representative taxes... before whining/wailing about being "ignored/mistreated" - ya think!

as for all those claims that the Liberal federal government has/is ignoring Alberta, a dose of fiscal reality in terms of examples of federal funding to Alberta:

- Extended EI benefits from 2016 to 2019 - $1.3B
- Federal aid package to oil and gas - $1.6B
- TMX pipeline purchase - $4.5B
- Federal oil industry subsidies - $3.3B
- Infrastructure (Transit) - $3.32B
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Offline waldo

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #2 on: October 26, 2019, 11:57:18 am »
"I've heard your frustration and I want to be there to support you" has to actually mean something, it can't just be words.

surely you know that Alberta knowingly, willingly, and repeatedly takes known risks in funding public services with volatile resource revenues. Riddle me this member kimmy/Alberta: for all the year-upon-year multi-decadal blathering concerns acknowledging the need for Alberta to diversify its economy, how's that been working out, hey!

can ya help a bro understand just what is the so-called problem/and where it lies? I mean, c'mon... look at historical Alberta production numbers - and, by the by, as I read, the so-called glut has been/is being addressed. So, other than that price differential thingee, where's the beef exactly - particularly when rail-by-oil movement has been huuuge?



speaking of that rail-by-oil, even as a temporary "stop-gap" measure, how does Alberta's Conservative Premier Kenney rationalize his promise to cancel the purchase/lease contracts for 4000+ rail cars... an action taken by the former Alberta NDP government? By the by, the waldo highlighted "bitcrude" transfer previously in another thread - somehow, Alberta's Energy Minister seems to raise its profile but Alberta Premier Kenney won't mention anything about production numbers... or rail transfers - cause that just gets in the way of his SepartistTrolling agenda - yes?


Offline waldo

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #3 on: October 26, 2019, 12:49:14 pm »
hey now! How come no Alberta luv for PM Trudeau/Liberal's long-standing support for the Keystone pipeline expansion?

and no Alberta luv for PM Trudeau/Liberal's approval for the Enbridge Line 3 replacement? Speaking of:




notwithstanding other industry support PM Trudeau/Liberal's gave in green-lighting the Kitimat LNG project - that will rely upon train/rail delivery of fracked gas from northeastern B.C.

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #4 on: October 26, 2019, 01:02:41 pm »
waldo, yes they have very low taxes.  That used to work fine in AB when they were making money hand over fist.

Then global oil prices dropped by 40% a few years ago, putting a big hole in their economy.  Oil output may keep increasing, but the price of oil is $60 a barrel, when in 2016 it was $110. That's a 40% drop, not good for tax revenues.

So yeah, mostly not the fault of the feds.  But the feds just put in the carbon tax.  That will add 10 cents a liter to gas prices in Canada in a few years, it's up about 5 cents a liter now.  Not to mention cost of doing business in AB.  It's a complex situation.  I can see why they're frustrated.
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Offline wilber

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #5 on: October 26, 2019, 01:24:53 pm »
waldo, yes they have very low taxes.  That used to work fine in AB when they were making money hand over fist.

Then global oil prices dropped by 40% a few years ago, putting a big hole in their economy.  Oil output may keep increasing, but the price of oil is $60 a barrel, when in 2016 it was $110. That's a 40% drop, not good for tax revenues.

So yeah, mostly not the fault of the feds.  But the feds just put in the carbon tax.  That will add 10 cents a liter to gas prices in Canada in a few years, it's up about 5 cents a liter now.  Not to mention cost of doing business in AB.  It's a complex situation.  I can see why they're frustrated.

$60 would be great  but Alberta is getting less than $40 largely because they only have one customer.
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Offline JMT

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #6 on: October 26, 2019, 01:41:00 pm »
$60 would be great  but Alberta is getting less than $40 largely because they only have one customer.

Also, their product is completely inferior.

Offline wilber

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #7 on: October 26, 2019, 02:05:37 pm »
Also, their product is completely inferior.

Alberta heavy oil trades at over $16 a barrel less than the world heavy oil price.
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Offline waldo

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #8 on: October 26, 2019, 03:33:29 pm »
Oil output may keep increasing, but the price of oil is $60 a barrel, when in 2016 it was $110. That's a 40% drop, not good for tax revenues.

you probably meant to say... royalty revenues.

$60 would be great  but Alberta is getting less than $40 largely because they only have one customer.

confusion reigns because U.S. and Canadian dollar amounts are continually being mixed within discussions. Member Poonlight is correct in terms of the Canadian dollar value; the present 2019 average price for WCS is ~$45 U.S..



that Canadian versus U.S. dollar aspect becomes further muddled because the Province of Alberta structured... publishes... the royalty framework in Canadian dollars - and WTI, not WCS. Of course, this simply highlights another revenue aspect that Alberta controlled (vis-a-vis negotiations with 'BigOil')... the present royalty framework is open to significant criticism in terms of recognizing how much (or how little) Albertans are receiving for their resource.

I'd suggest you're speaking incorrectly of (or only partially to) the price of WCS being subject to, at present, effectively "only one customer (the U.S.)". Many people are under the incorrect impression that simply getting tarsludge/dilbit to tidewater will reap "world prices". Of course, the most significant difference between WCS & WTI pricing is the "heavy unrefined" factor - that factor won't be eliminated with additional market penetrations. I wasn't successful in finding something that estimates price gains for selling WCS into both U.S. & "Asian markets"...

So yeah, mostly not the fault of the feds.  But the feds just put in the carbon tax.  That will add 10 cents a liter to gas prices in Canada in a few years, it's up about 5 cents a liter now.  Not to mention cost of doing business in AB.  It's a complex situation.  I can see why they're frustrated.

please, let this thread be Scheer free in not acknowledging rebates;D As I'm aware, per calculations put forward by the Department of Finance (among others), if only the direct cost of the carbon tax is used, 8 of 10 Albertans are better off under a carbon tax regime... that figure slips to 7 of 10 Albertans being better off if both direct & indirect costs are used.

Offline JMT

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #9 on: October 26, 2019, 08:21:20 pm »
Alberta heavy oil trades at over $16 a barrel less than the world heavy oil price.

That's a much more honest metric - thank you. That discrepancy though, has nothing to do with the Liberal government...or any government.
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Offline waldo

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #10 on: October 27, 2019, 01:49:34 am »
The problem isn't that Alberta hasn't heard enough Trudeau, it's that they've heard too much Trudeau.
Part of it is that if an industry is floundering, voters are angry and the government bears the brunt.  Whether it's fishermen or auto manufacturers or the oil and gas workers, the government gets blamed, often unfairly.

Albertans were so angry - so steamed... so fuuuurious that 69% of them voted Conservative!

wait, what... perpetually angry you say!  ;D

- so angry that in 2011 - 67% of Albertans voted Conservative
- so angry that in 2008 - 65% of Albertans voted Conservative
- so angry that in 2004 - 62% of Albertans voted Conservative
- so angry that in 1984 - 69% of Albertans voted Conservative
- so angry that in 1980 - 65% of Albertans voted Conservative
- so angry that in 1979 - 65% of Albertans voted Conservative
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Offline waldo

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #11 on: October 27, 2019, 12:00:21 pm »
Alberta's unemployment rate - oh Jason, the humanity! And you Premier Moe - WTF!


Offline waldo

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #12 on: October 27, 2019, 01:19:00 pm »
oh my Jason, oh my!


Offline Squidward von Squidderson

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #13 on: October 27, 2019, 03:32:32 pm »
Kenney meant it metaphorically.
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Offline waldo

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Re: No llores por mí Alberta
« Reply #14 on: October 28, 2019, 11:43:54 am »
Kenney meant it metaphorically.

no - the metaphorical shifts into the figurative when Premier Jason pointedly (and incorrectly) identifies "NDP Saskatchewan"!