Hello Chestermere!
I will be celebrating Diwali at Camp Chestermere on October 29th and I would love to see you there. From Wikipedia: “One of the major festivals of Hinduism, it spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair.” This is a universal message of hope common to all faiths and all are welcome. We hope that you have found your perfect pumpkin, your costumes, and a parka as we head towards Halloween. We were at the Lions Club pumpkin patch this past weekend and as always they do a fabulous job bringing a little bit of Charlie Brown to Chestermere. Thank you to the volunteers that stood in the cold and carved pumpkins and gave out buckets of hot chocolate. It has been a chilly start to fall, and I don’t know if your trees look as shocked as mine do after the snow, but my flowers were still trying to bloom over the weekend and the grass is still trying to be green. I hope that Mother Nature has a change of heart and we will get a little bit of late summer weather.
This is akin to the hope that I have going into the next round in Edmonton at the legislature. We will be heading up on Halloween, and scary is how I would describe the upcoming session. We have been pushing for an early start as many pieces of legislation are awaiting us and in the spirit of previous sessions, our government seems determined to ram through as much legislation as it can before Christmas. Some of the more exciting news this week was the announcement of the newest of 11 panels created by this government. We were in all honesty expecting this one as the Royalty Review Panel recommended that there be another panel for petro-chemical diversification. Wow! A panel recommended a panel. Now that’s job creation! The most interesting and concerning part is the fact that the head of the Alberta Federation of Labour is the co-chair! Let me see. The diversification panel is set up to ask stake-holders about mid and upstream development of resources, which could mean the creation of refineries, incenting methane and propane value added and this will incent investment for Alberta and Canada. I am very concerned that these incentives of 500 million in royalty credit subsidies will do nothing but pick winners and losers. The government has said that they have no cost-benefit analysis and simply want to kick start an economy. So suddenly diversification equals subsidies? My questions: Who is going to buy our value added materials, and where is our market? Why are union bosses on the panel that will ultimately influence the decisions of our government. Will only unionized businesses qualify? The government by their own admission has stated that they will look through the proposals and then pick the projects they deem as the best. By what criteria? They will hand pick projects based on “environmental sustainability and responsible development” which certainly has merit but what about economic viability? The private sector has avoided building refineries because it is not economically viable. The government feels that once construction is done, the plants which create products from natural gas and the storage units are built, then we will be competitive. If that is the case, then why do we need to subsidize a sure thing? Then the really interesting part is that the chosen companies will be rewarded with $500 million in royalty credits that they will then trade with oil and gas companies that can use the royalty credits to reduce their payments to the government. Are they trading credits for feedstock? I wish I knew. I am not so sure that funding business is the way to go. I would suggest that the industry would be ready and willing to tell the government exactly what they need in order to be successful. I would wager a guess that companies would like to see government streamline regulations and create an environment that is conducive to business.
I would like to take this opportunity to express our deepest sorrow for the loss of our former Premier Jim Prentice. We send our love to his wife Karen, the girls and his two beautiful grandchildren. Our sincerest condolences to his family and friends, and those of Ken Gellaty who was father-in-law to Prentice’s daughter Cassia, along with friends Sheldon Reid and retired RCMP officer Jim Kruk who piloted the plane.
