“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
— P.J O’Rourke
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.”
— Thomas Jefferson
There’s much soul-searching going on by learned, institutional think-tanks, about the cause of Alberta’s near state of bankruptcy, focused mostly on whether we have an income, or a spending, problem.
Old folks, looking back to where we came from to where we are, would be inclined to say we have both problems, plus several others.
I was born into a hard-working agrarian Alberta. People were shrewd about the husbanding, saving, and stewardship of their own and our resources.
All that started to change ten years later, on Feb. 3, 1947, when Leduc No. 1 blew in, starting more than 65 years of carefree resource carelessness.
Even before that, my mother contended that Alberta suffered from chronic bad government.
Only once in her lifetime was she able to celebrate the election to the legislature of a candidate she worked, and voted for, Independent Bryce Stringam in 1955.
I have never voted for a winner in Alberta, because I remain convinced they were all losers, far right Conservatives who never conserve anything, particularly if they can flog it quick for a fast buck, living off and burning up the fat of the land, a never-fail recipe for bankruptcy.
The administrations of the late Peter Lougheed were sometimes an exception that, in retrospect, I could have voted for, and I’ll deal with the ruination of at least one of Lougheed’s best resource initiatives next week.
Occasionally I’ve felt badly about being a maverick, but reports of the institutes and think-tanks are now giving me a sense of vindication with findings similar to what I have been writing about for years: that we do have a bad government problem, particularly in the areas of taxation and the management, stewardship, and conservation of all our natural resources, both renewable and non-renewable.
Jeffrey Simpson, in a recent Globe and Mail column, laments that, despite all our advantages, Alberta “just can’t govern itself properly.”
The Alberta government has driven down corporate tax and instituted a flat personal tax, costing us billions and stupidly renewing debate about instituting a sales tax, hated by Albertans, but also the most reliable source of government revenue.
The Better Way Alberta website uses figures from the Parkland Institute to assert that the flat tax (the fat cat tax cop-out) cost us $1.5 billion in its first year, and that returning corporate tax rates to pre-2001 levels would generate $2 billion in additional
Not only do we have a government problem in Alberta, we have a runaway government giveaway problem of revenues and resources, to the fat cats that lurk among us, primarily big business, particularly oil and gas, and to other perceived supporters and friends of our conservative governments.
My legal and journalistic hobby for many years has been trying to find out how much money Alberta’s public land grazing lease farce has cost Albertans.
To summarize this boondoggle: the grazing fees are rock bottom, the leaseholders are permitted to sell the leases and receive the oil and gas surface disturbance payments on land we, not they, own.
Even our government, trustee for us all of all our public land, has no idea what this blatant patronage, this cowboy welfare costs us, but my estimate is $130 million to $150 million a year for decades now, and I will soon be sending my reasoning and calculations to the Auditor General.
Forestry?
For low stumpage we encourage clear-cutting of important watersheds, allegedly to save the trees from the pine beetle, but really destroying water producing capacity and the fish and wildlife that live in and on the waters.
Water?
Just fill your tanker for peanuts from any Alberta river and stream and inject it underground … if it’s for oilpatch purposes.
Serious and costly as these renewable resource giveaways are, their red ink fades to pink alongside the big non-renewable resource sellouts.
In terms of non-renewable oil and gas resources, Jeffrey Simpson cites the consulting firm, Wood Mackenzie as reporting Alberta “gave the oil and gas sector the lowest royalty rates around.”
Worse, the Parkland Institute reports that the Alberta government has only twice in the past decade managed to collect a minimum target of 50 per cent of the royalties: had it done so, it could have collected $35 billion more in that decade. Imagine collecting 75 or even 100 per cent of the royalties.
We are too quickly and too cheaply liquidating our non renewable natural resources and handing huge windfall profits to the ones really running this province — the oil and gas companies.
Better Way Alberta asks “how can we allow our government to fail us so badly?
Low royalty rates, and the government’s dismal record of actually collecting those royalties means our share of the province’s energy wealth has plummeted.”
An excellent question and comment, that inspire further questions about the future of this province and those who try to survive in it after the wreck.
(To be concluded next week)
Bob Scammell is an award-winning columnist who lives in Red Deer. He can be reached at bscam@telusplanet.net.