Vital for UCP to address issues that are important to southeast Alberta

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on May 2, 2019.

After an election couched in big picture items – a major pipeline, the environment, the state of Confederation – some of the fine details should start coming into view now.

We are but two days after new Premier Jason Kenney and his cabinet were sworn in, and three weeks out from a proposed spring sitting of the legislature.

While big topics – a potential shutdown of energy exports to B.C. for example – are still holding the most real estate on the current political landscape, key, yet mostly obscured, issues are of importance to the southeast region.

Chief among them is focus on girding the natural gas sector.

Tuesday’s cabinet announcement includes the creation of an associate minister of natural gas – Dale Nally, a mostly unknown new MLA from St. Albert area.

The position, promised in the UCP platform, will be most welcomed in the sector that’s been stressed after a decade of poor prices, but has been a secondary consideration behind stabilizing oil.

Potential fixes, mostly continuing from NDP efforts announced last year include more use in province (i.e. power and petrochemical production), but are still years away.

It’s becoming obvious that a discussion of the viability of the City of Medicine Hat’s gas business is approaching on the horizon.

In another area crucial to the City of Medicine Hat’s utility business interests in a UCP-planned review of an ongoing remake of the Alberta electricity market.

Local officials have been generally supportive of a “capacity market” which could stabilize city profits from power export sales.

As well, Medicine Hat politicians have been pleasantly surprised with most of the changes stemming from the last government’s 2017 review of the Municipal Government Act.

Council members recently gushed about a tax exemption available to help redevelop troublesome brownfield sites. The ability for large centres to partner with outlaying towns and residents to cover costs of city services is a long-held wish of Mayor Ted Clugston.

Towns and cities with major cannabis or other greenhouse facilities, like Medicine Hat and Redcliff, want the new government to revisit business-friendly exemptions brought in by the NDP that phase out local taxes for “intensive agriculture” facilities.

The MGA also covers local taxation powers, and the oilpatch has lobbied heavily for several years for property tax relief as energy prices struggle and wells become uneconomical.

On the flipside, rural municipalities such as Cypress County depend heavily on that income to provide expansive and expensive services while keeping general tax rates low.

Axing the Alberta government’s carbon levy could save the city’s operating budget between $210,000 and $450,000 per year, depending on if a national levy survives next fall’s federal election.

The issue of the Springbank Dam, near Calgary, is also in flux. It was the former government’s key new flood control on the Bow River, and therefore South Saskatchewan, river basin.

The NDP was well on its way in arranging land and announced several purchases of ranches in the area, aided by federal dollars and carbon levy receipts.

Support and funding is now in doubt as the obvious but unsaid political consideration here is property rights of ranchers in the area.

Such sentiment galvanized in the creation of the Wildrose Party about a decade ago. Getting this project done, or not, could be the defining philosophical issue for the united party that’s only two years old.

Also in the category of “more consultation required” is a UCP plank regarding supervised consumption sites, such as the controversial location chosen in downtown Medicine Hat.

We’re about 48 hours into a four-year mandate for the United Conservatives. There are about 400 specific campaign promises to keep, and in them, a lot of details that this part of the province needs to be finalized.