We have been spending some time in Calgary recently to look after grandchildren. For the first time since we moved to BC 39 years ago, I have felt like my car’s licence plate is a liability as I drive along Alberta highways and city roads. Such is the animosity here toward anyone who might be perceived as opposing to the Trans Mountain Pipeline project.
I routinely get letter to the editor submissions emailed from around the province, country and even beyond. They are typically sent to dozens or even hundreds of newspapers and, being from outside of our local subscription area, I simply delete them. A repeated theme of late has been our province’s hypocrisy in opposing the twinning of an existing pipeline while another, albeit much shorter, is being constructed from the coast to the Vancouver airport to increase the supply of jet fuel, much of which comes from Asia.
As I sifted through news items recently, I came across an op-ed piece about Alberta’s—specifically the Rachel Notley NDP government’s—need to diversify the economy and reduce its reliance on the petroleum industry. Some of the existing diversification plans, created in previous low oil price periods, need to be dusted off and put into action, the writer argued. Sensible enough, I thought, until I had a look at the writer’s credentials. He had been an Alberta cabinet minister—Conservative, of course—for 16 years. I have to admit to having a soft spot for that particular kind of hypocrite, the one that ignores the incompetence of a government of which he was a part in order to criticize the current administration. It shows just how childish political ideologies can get.
Not too long after, I read an economic analysis about the way Alberta has treated its petroleum industry over the last half century. Successive Progressive (and now, non-Progressive) Conservative governments were loath to take much more than token royalties and taxes from the industry, which has earned trillions in revenue. What do Albertans have to show for all that money that has poured into, and out of, the province? A multi-billion dollar government deficit, while corporations and investors have made out like bandits. It’s always interesting to compare how the people of Norway have benefited from their petroleum resources, with that country’s trillion dollar fund, only a small portion of which can be spent annually. No frittering away allowed, like governments in Alberta did when they just couldn’t resist dipping into the Lougheed government’s Heritage Fund. By relying on petroleum revenues instead of consumer and property taxes, like most provinces, Albertans have suffered through the boom and bust cycles more than they needed to. That former cabinet minister argued for governments to budget for low petroleum revenues, and then to use revenues in high price cycles to build infrastructure and those lefty frills like schools and parks. Of course in reality that would require increased taxes, and maybe even a provincial sales tax, but good luck to the government that wants to impose that one. In Alberta the lack of a sales tax is as deeply ingrained as the boom and busy cycles of oil prices. The only problem is that bust cycles are increasingly frequent and, inevitably, will eventually just flatten as the industry withers.
I am writing this early on Tuesday morning, the day the federal government is expected to announce more about Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline, with the possibility it will purchase the business and build it themselves. Such a decision, of course, would be further evidence that the petroleum industry really is the corporate welfare fraud that its opponents have been claiming for decades.
