Cannot logically compare Alberta’s oil situation to Norway’s
By Letter to the Editor on December 7, 2018.
Re: “Conservatives responsible for current mess in Alberta,” Dec. 1 Once again, Peter Mueller is gushing socialist reasoning. As a former teacher he should know that Norway is a sovereign nation and Alberta is a province within Canada. Comparing Norway to Alberta is like comparing the Queen of England to the mayor. The country of Norway owns 67 per cent of Equinor, the largest oil and gas operator on the Norwegian continental shelf. They have operations in Australia, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, China, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, United States, and Venezuela. Norway has miles of ocean front, plenty of off-shore drilling activity and shipping ports. Equinor is the 26th largest company, by profit in the world. This huge company is government controlled. That is socialism! Take a poll and ask Albertans, if they want that level of government control. In 2016 six per cent of Canadian oil imports came from Norway! Yes, eastern Canada buys oil from Norway rather then their fellow countrymen in Alberta. Alberta is both landlocked, politically locked and has $24 billion per year taken by the federal government. Who is confiscating Norway’s money? Canada can’t even build a pipeline as a nation; how would we possibly compete with Norway. Peter, if sales tax is the answer, then why hasn’t “clear-headed, pragmatic, and energized” Rachel Notley implemented one? Peter, if you want to compare Norway to the country of Canada, fine, but once you do that, it will become clear that Canada is being run by a boy wearing man’s clothes. Mike Somerville Medicine Hat 9-8
Well Mike that’s exactly what our oilmen are doing , comparing us to Norway and Alaska, so where is your comments about Alaska, they aren’t a sovereign nation, like you whine about. I was in Norway a few years ago and was in Alaska again last July talking to the people about their oil wealth and they pointed out that they have $66 billion in their Alaska Permanent Fund, pay no state taxes and their property taxes are next to nothing, and every man woman and child has received some $43,000. each since 1982 in total annual dividend cheques. So where is ours? They have all this wealth even though their oil production isn’t anything like what it is in Alberta’s. There is certainly nothing wrong for a government to own and control a commodity that is owned by all the people to make certain they are getting a fair price for it, and it’s no secret that had Klein not destroyed the royalty and tax structures Lougheed put in place we would have at least $300 billion in our Heritage Trust Fund today, and as some oilmen have indicated Albertans likely wouldn’t be paying any provincial taxes, and their property taxes would be well controlled and you would all likely be getting an annual dividend cheque today.
So why did guys like Mike allow Ralph Klein to slash royalties and taxes to benefit his rich friends, close hospitals, close hospital beds, and cut 5,000 nursing positions while destroying teaching jobs, and allowed our infrastructure situation to fall into such a horrific mess that it’s costing billions of dollars to fix it? We were short 55 schools when Notley was elected, had a massive shortage of hospital beds, doctors, nurses and teachers along with a massive shortage of nursing home beds. Whether Mike wants to believe it or not seniors and their families have been paying as much as $14,000, yes $14,000. per month for a bed in a nursing home thanks to what Klein did to them. Our family paid $10,600. per month for five years, all thanks to what Klein did to us, and it could happen again to anyone of us. And people wonder why I get so mad at these ignorant seniors who allowed it to happen.
After Don Getty told me in 2003 that inviting Liberal Klein into the conservative party was the dumbest thing he had ever done and I certainly agreed, six of us formed SUN , Seniors United Now. The idea was to travel the province talking to our fellow seniors about what Klein’s policies were doing to them and what they were going to do to this province. Even though everything we said would happen did happen we got called Traitors, Communists, Leftists, Left Wing-nuts, or Closet Liberals by these ignorant seniors, because we weren’t as dumb as them. My problem was that our family had known Klein personally since the early 1960s and knew what a jerk he was. When he was campaigning to become premier his mother Flo told my mother that she didn’t think he was capable of running this province properly. Mum told her that we shared her concerns and no one in her family had any intention of supporting him and we didn’t . Mum said flo wasn’t surprised. Then when he began ramming his destructive, Reform Party polices down our throats, closing hospitals, hospital beds and destroying the careers of thousands of Albertans, his estranged father Phil , living in Edmonton began voicing his concerns. He was furious with what his son was doing to this province. Then before the last election Ralph’s daughter Angie urged all Albertans to vote for the NDP. She knows what these Reform party policies have done to us. In other words the Klein family we knew was a lot smarter that the people who supported Ralph.
Now they have a new hero, a well known Liberal , from Saskatchewan in Jason Kenney, and they are believing every lie he feeds them, just like they did with Klein, despite the fact that everything he is promising will only make their situation a lot worse, but apparently aren’t smart enough to understand it.
As the retired oilmen I had lunch with on Monday pointed out there was nothing intelligent about what Klein did. Slashing royalties and taxes down to the lowest levels in the world , then inviting the world to come and get our next to free oil, while failing to create a way to get this oil to foreign markets, wasn’t a smart idea. But then those of us who knew Ralph Klein, never accused him of being too smart, dad called him a sleazy bastard.