ALF V1

Today the HarperCons stepped into the [cesspool / polluted waters] tar sands issue to announce a water monitoring project which will take 3 years and $50 million to fully implement. The Regina Mom agrees with Halifax NDP MP Megan Leslie; this is a PR stunt. And, TRM shares Edmonton MP Linda Duncan's concerns that First Nations communities were not adequately consulted and that many more tar sands projects could be approved before this monitoring begins. TRM considers this announcement to be a reflection of the great work the ecojustice community "radical groups" are doing to educate citizens on the issues. Well done, radicals!

One such radical, Andrew Nikiforuk, declared a political emergency regarding the tar sands years ago. His latest piece at The Tyee cites a "detailed analysis" submitted to the National Energy Board by Robyn Allan who is the former president and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. Ms. Allan's report "concludes that "Northern Gateway is neither needed nor is in the public interest."

"I assumed that it would be a wealth generating project," the 56-year-old retired investment and financial affairs economist told the Tyee. "But when I started digging none of those assumptions held. The project is an inflationary price shock to the economy."

...

Allan, once rated by the National Post as one of Canada's top 200 CEOs, says she started to study the economic case for the project after a query by her son. That was when she discovered that Enbridge's economic benefit models were based on "misleading information, faulty methodology, numerous errors and presentation bias."

TRM's readers can download Allan's full report, "An Economic Assessment of Northern Gateway" at the Alberta Federation of Labour's website. Note that, according to Nikiforuk, "Allan's report supports the findings of Dave Hughes, a retired senior analyst with Natural Resources Canada. He described the pipeline as a risk to Canada's economic and energy security" a report to which TRM has previously linked.

Further commentary comes from the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada which also says that the Gateway pipeline is unsustainable, based on a report they commissioned from Informetrica Inc.

rabble.ca, Fri Feb 3 2012

Disagreements on the Keystone Pipeline continue in Congress as Republicans insist that the project move forward.

The House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing Friday on a bill to mandate approval of the pipeline. Before the subcommittee met, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) held a press conference to express his opposition to the project.

"With the pipeline, we're going to get more carbon pollution, more dangerous oil spills, land seizures by a foreign company and higher oil prices," said Waxman. "The American people will bear the risk, and the oil companies will reap the profits."

Waxman accused Koch Industries of being behind efforts to lobby for the pipeline. The company, headed by billionaire oil tycoons Charles and David Koch, is known for contributing to conservative causes.

"When we asked Koch Industries a year ago whether they had an interest in this matter, they told us no," Waxman said. However, Waxman stated that Canadian documents have proven otherwise, and that they reveal a direct financial interest from the company in the pipeline.

Koch Industries ignored Democrats' calls for them to send representatives to testify at today's hearing.

UPDATE: A spokeswoman for Koch Industries responded to TRNS's request for a comment in response to Waxman's claims. Here is the full statement from Philip Ellender, Koch's Government and Public Affairs President and COO: (also available here)

"In response to the repeated false allegations by Representative Waxman and some news media, Koch has consistently and repeatedly stated that we have no financial interest whatsoever in the Keystone pipeline. In addition, this fact has been verified by TransCanada's CEO. Further, the notion that Koch as an intervenor means that we have an interest in the project has been completely debunked. An 'intervenor' status in the proceeding does not mean that the Koch subsidiary at issue has a financial or ownership interest in the project. In fact, some of the intervenors in this case include Sierra Club Canada, Alberta Federation of Labour, several First Nation groups, other companies, and numerous individuals."

In addition, Koch's General Counsel, Mark Holden, had this to say:

"Contrary to Representative Waxman's claim, we never said that we have a direct and substantial interest in the pipeline project. What Flint Hills Resources Canada said was that it had an interest in the application that was pending before the National Energy Board. We have been completely honest with all involved in this matter, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply not true."

talkradionews.com, Fri Feb 3 2012

2012 January AFL Written Submission Northern Gateway Project

A well respected Canadian CEO and some labour leaders are ramping up their opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline project.

Robyn Allan has published an 80 page report, examining the economic impact of boosting oilsands bitumen shipments to China via the west coast.

The company behind the pipeline project, Enbridge predicts the development will add $270-billion to the Canadian economy over the next 30 years.

Allan, who is an economist and a prominent businesswoman, disagrees and says the pipeline will not only drive up energy costs but will cost people their jobs.

The President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Gil McGowan tells 660News, now is the perfect time to look at building more upgraders and increasing our refining business.

McGowan says building more pipelines will certainly help Alberta's economy but that will come at the expense of other parts of the country.

Federal NDP leadership hopeful Nathan Cullen, who is in Calgary stumping for support, says he knows first hand the impact of exporting raw products.

Cullen, who lives on the west coast, says every week he sees lumber shipped overseas and every second week the province announces another saw mill is being closed.

660News, Thurs Feb 2 2012
Kevin Usselman

CEO and labour leader agree: Canada should upgrade bitumen rather than send value-added jobs to China and U.S.

Building a pipeline to send millions of barrels of raw bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in China will make some oil companies richer – but those riches will come at the expense of consumers and non-energy businesses across Canada.

That’s the main conclusion of a detailed report prepared by Robyn Allan, an economist and prominent businesswoman who was once named one of Canada’s top 200 CEOs.

The report was filed this week as evidence to the federal panel currently considering Enbridge Inc.’s application to build the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline.

In her report Allan projects that the Northern Gateway pipeline, if approved, will reduce Canada’s GDP, increase unemployment and put downward pressure on personal incomes because it will impose a two-to-three-dollar per-barrel increase in the price of oil – something she describes as a “price shock” that the Canadian economy can ill afford at this time.

“Somehow this project is being presented as ‘nation building’“ by people like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, writes Allan.

But “all available research, as well as the experience of most Canadians, points to just the opposite. Higher oil prices mean a decrease in family purchasing power, higher prices for industries who use oil as an input into their production process, higher rates of unemployment in non-oil industry related sectors, a decline in real GDP, a decline in government revenues, an increase in inflation, an increase in interest rates and further appreciation of the Canadian dollar.”

Allan’s report concludes that industry predictions that the pipeline will add $270 billion to the Canadian economy over the next 30 years are fatally flawed because they don’t factor in the depressing effect of an across-the-board increase in oil prices.

Allan’s report almost didn’t see the light of day because the National Energy Board (NEB) refused to grant her status as an intervenor in the hearings. But the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) did have status and chose to submit Allan’s report as part of its evidence.

“Both Robyn and I agree that the oil sands should be developed,” says AFL president Gil McGowan. “But that development should not come at the expense of the rest of the Canadian economy.

“The good news is that there is a way to avoid the price shock that Robyn talks about. By doing more upgrading and refining in Canada, we can make sure that Canadians keep much more of the value created by development within the country. And, by developing markets in eastern Canada instead of Asia, we can ensure that Alberta’s growth isn’t coming at the expense of growth in other provinces.”

In addition to Allan’s report, the AFL submitted its own 42-page analysis which argues that the Northern Gateway pipeline, if approved, would close Canada’s window of opportunity for “moving up the value ladder” for at least another generation.

“By increasing bitumen prices, the pipeline will remove the major competitive advantage that had traditionally been enjoyed by Canadian upgraders: access to cheap feedstock,” says McGowan.

“In essence, the pipeline will dramatically undermine the economics of Canadian-based upgrading and refining. In the process, we’ll be forced, again, into the role of ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ Other nations will take the jobs and profits associated with adding value to our resources, and we’ll be left with pollution and inflation. It may even drive existing Canadian refineries out of business. I fail to see how Stephen Harper and other boosters of the Northern Gateway pipeline can argue that this approach is in the public interest. The evidence clearly suggests that we will seriously regret opening the door to bitumen exports to China.”

A copy of Allan's report, entitled "An Economic Assessment of Northern Gateway" can be found here. A copy of the AFL's brief on the same subject can be found here. Allan's bio can be seen here.

-30-

For more information call:

• Gil McGowan, President, Alberta Federation of Labour @ 780-218-9888 (cell)
• To arrange interviews with Robyn Allan, please call Terry Inigo-Jones, AFL Communications @ 780-483-3021 (office) or 780-910-1137 (cell)

The Alberta Federation of Labour is opposing construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat, British Columbia on the grounds that the construction jobs would only be "transitory," higher oil prices would result and jobs in refining would not be created in Canada.

AFL announced this week it is filing a third-party report, by economist Robyn Allan, as evidence to the federal panel currently considering Enbridge Inc.'s application to build the pipeline. If approved, the 1,150-kilometre Northern Gateway would take bitumen from Bruderheim, Alberta and send it to the port of Kitimat for export abroad. The project also proposes construction of an import condensate pipeline, terminal facilities and marine infrastructure in Kitimat.

A joint review panel established by the National Energy Board is holding hearings and AFL submitted Allan's report after NEB denied her intervenor status.

In its own submission, the Alberta Federation of Labour argues the pipeline would results in the loss of tens of thousands of potential jobs in upgrading, refining and petro-chemical production.

"Construction jobs would be 'transitory and migratory' lasting three to four years at the most," AFL argued.

The AFL release comes a week after the Director of Canadian Affairs for Building and Construction Trades Department (BCDT) of the American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), Robert Blakely, came out in support of Northern Gateway. At the time, Blakely stated he was encouraged by a promise by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the federal government would ensure energy and mining projects are not subject to unnecessary delays. At the time, Canadian Building Trades noted the jobs created by Northern Gateway would include those in permanent operations and maintenance, not only in construction.

Canadian Building Trades also supported TransCanada Corp.'s application to build the Keystone XL pipeline, would carry oilsands crude from Alberta to Texas. That application was denied by the United States Department of State but TransCanada plans to submit a new application.

Both Allan and the AFL agree the Northern Gateway would cause an increase in oil prices.

"The good news is that there is a way to avoid the price shock that Robyn talks about," AFL president Gil McGowan said of Allan's report in a press release. "By doing more upgrading and refining in Canada, we can make sure that Canadians keep much more of the value created by development within the country. And, by developing markets in eastern Canada instead of Asia, we can ensure that Alberta's growth isn't coming at the expense of growth in other provinces."

Allan was a Commissioner on the Barrett Commission of Inquiry into the Quality of Condominium Construction in British Columbia. She has also been President and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.

Daily Commercial News and Construction Record, Thurs Feb 2 2012

Former ICBC boss says predicted rise in cost of oil serious risk to economy

EDMONTON — A new report says the Northern Gateway pipeline will boost crude oil prices $2 to $3 per barrel annually over the next 30 years, causing significant damage to consumers, businesses and the Canadian economy.

The economic assessment of the $5.5-billion project by former Insurance Corporation of British Columbia CEO Robyn Allan says the price shock will have "a negative and prolonged impact on the Canadian economy by reducing output, employment labour income and government revenues."

Allan, an economist who researched the impact of the pipeline proposal out of curiosity, says it has been touted by proponents as a nation building enterprise, but it really represents a "serious economic risk" to the Canadian economy.

"The emperor has no clothes," Allan said in an interview. "We're told it is a gross producing economic opportunity, but in fact it's an oil price shock to the economy."

Allan said when the price of oil goes up, that means Canadian consumers and businesses will pay more for anything produced by that oil.

That will result in inflation, business being down-sized and employees being laid off, she said.

Enbridge forecast a $2 to $3 annual increase in the price per barrel of crude in its pipeline application to the joint National Energy Board-Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency panel.

Enbridge spokesman Paul Stanway said the company can't comment in detail about the report because it is evidence tabled before the NEB-CEAA at its ongoing pipeline hearings, but it will get a chance to rebut the report in September.

Stanway confirmed, though, the projected price increase in the application.

"The price of oil in Canada is estimated to increase $2 to $3 per barrel as a result of market diversity and exposure to global pricing," he said. "That's correct, but that is taken into account in our estimation of an overall benefit of about $270 billion to the Canadian economy."

He said there is a significant benefit to the federal treasury and to Alberta as a result of having an outlet to world markets.

"If we don't get that outlet to the global marketplace, we're trapped with essentially being able to sell into just one market and we're going to get a heavily discounted price for that resource," Stanway said. "We're talking about Canada's most valuable export commodity. Why would we want to sell it continuously at a discount?"

Allan said Enbridge has exaggerated the benefits of the pipeline and downplayed the economic impact of price shock on Canadian refineries and businesses and consumers.

"They used the wrong model to answer the question of what will happen to the economy when Northern Gateway is successful in raising oil prices," she said.

Allan, named as by the Financial Post as one of Canada's top 200 CEOs, said she wanted to present her information to the hearing panel and question Enbridge on its model, but was denied intervener status.

The 145,000-member Alberta Federation of Labour included her report in its submission to the panel this week.

AFL president Gil McGowan called the report "a game-changer" and a wake-up call to those who have been seduced by the public relations campaigns of the oil companies.

He said Allan's report suggests the promises of economic growth and job creation "are nothing more than a mirage."

"Once Albertans and Canadian read Robyn's report and realize they are being sold a bill of goods by proponents of the pipeline, I think they will first get angry and then second, start asking some serious questions," he said. "What Robyn's report shows is that if this pipeline is built, the public interest will be undermined — not enhanced— in terms of broad economic growth and job creation."

If it is approved, the 1,177-kilometre line will carry 525,000 barrels of oilsand crude from near Bruderheim, outside Edmonton, to Kitimat, B.C.

Calgary Herald, Thurs Feb 2 2012
Byline: Darcy Henton

Pipeline project would boost price of oil in Canada

A study endorsed by opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline proposed by Calgary-based Enbridge says it would cause an oil "price shock" to Canada's economy.

The economic assessment was done by Robyn Allan, the former CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.

It concluded that the higher prices for Canadian oil that would be gained by access to world markets would have an "inflationary price shock which will have a negative and prolonged impact on the Canadian economy by reducing output, employment, labour income and government revenues."

"Higher oil prices mean a decrease in family purchasing power, higher prices for industries who use oil as an input into their production process, higher rates of unemployment in non-oil industry related sectors, a decline in real GDP, a decline in government revenues, an increase in inflation, an increase in interest rates and further appreciation of the Canadian dollar," Allan said.

The study said industry predictions of $270 billion in economic benefits from Gateway don't consider the depressing effects of increased oil prices.

The National Energy Board refused to grant Allan status as an intervener in regulatory hearings, the Alberta Federation of Labour said, so it included her report in the AFL's submission.

Argues for more refining in Canada

AFL president Gil McGowan said the study shows that more upgrading and refining of oilsands crude should be done in Canada.

By doing that, he said, "We can make sure that Canadians keep much more of the value created by development within the country. And, by developing markets in Eastern Canada instead of Asia, we can ensure that Alberta's growth isn't coming at the expense of growth in other provinces."

Enbridge hasn't yet responded to a request from CBC News for comment on Allan's assessment of the Northern Gateway project.

Canada's oil industry has maintained that its inability to access world markets has kept Canadian domestic production trapped within North America, creating an oversupply and keeping the price below what it would be otherwise.

The estimate of a $2-to-$3 per barrel increase over 30 years came from Enbridge itself, in its submissions to the National Energy Board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

The NEC/CEAA joint review continued Thursday with hearings in Fort St. James, B.C., and is scheduled to last until April, 2013.

The $5.5-billion, 1,177-kilometre project would carry 525,000 barrels of oilsands crude a day from near Edmonton to a tanker terminal at Kitimat, B.C

cbc.ca, Thurs Feb 2 2012

Sooner or later, all conversations about the Alberta economy in the modern era come down to one key question: Where the hell did all the money go?

I guess you could rephrase this: Where the hell is all the money going? Regardless, it's been going somewhere and, over the past couple of decades, that destination has been a matter of lively discussion among Albertans and other Canadians.

This question is so often asked because, while Alberta is known to be rich -- Alberta's GDP per person in 2008 was $81,121, compared with $44,121 for the rest of Canada -- to those of us who live here it feels poor.

Whether it's the shabby condition of downtown Edmonton, our rundown capital city, our pothole strewn streets, the constant sight of desperate street people, the Third World conditions in our Emergency Rooms, the periodic mass layoffs of teachers, university professors and health care workers, or the unending whine by Conservative politicians that we simply can't afford quality health care, good education or other public services, it always feels as if the whole lot of us are just one paycheque away from the bread lines.

Here we are, plunk in the middle of the snowbelt, and most years even how we're going to afford to clear the streets is a constant source of worry and debate.

As a weird counterpoint to this constant refrain, we are also constantly reminded how lucky we are to live here in the Richest Place on Earth, the Very Best Province in the Whole Wide World, etc. etc.

So if we're so rich, how come we're so poor?

Well, now we know the answer, thanks to an important book by former Alberta Liberal Party leader Dr. Kevin Taft, who has been described in this space as the best premier Alberta never had. Follow the Money, Where is Alberta's Wealth Going? was published with the assistance of the Alberta Federation of Labour by Detselig Enterprises Ltd. of Calgary. It costs $12.95, and it's also available as an e-book.

The AFL also financed the production of a short video documentary about Taft's research by filmmaker Tom Radford.

Before he became an MLA in 2001, Taft was an education professor at the University of Alberta. After the 2008 election, in which the Alberta Liberals under his leadership were badly trounced by then-premier Ed Stelmach's Progressive Conservatives, he threw up his hands and resigned the leadership of the party.

This was probably a mistake, as the Alberta Liberal leadership was then held for a spell by David Swann, a well-meaning but ineffectual Calgary physician, and more recently was captured by Raj Sherman, the former Conservative who is now leading the party away from its long-held principles and away from its remaining core supporters.

But if Taft's departure from politics was a bad thing for Alberta's Liberals, it's not necessarily a bad thing for the rest of us, as he's recast himself as an author on political and economic topics who has the skills and credibility to definitively answer such questions as the ones posed above. What's more, he manages to do it in a readable way without sounding too much like a Liberal Party partisan -- even going so far as to confess that he was wrong as Liberal leader to join the chorus that bays constantly for less spending on public services.

Working with researchers Mel McMillan and Junaid Jahangir and relying heavily on Statistics Canada's CANSIM (Canadian Socioeconomic) and Financial Management System databases, Taft makes a case that I doubt can be effectively challenged by the government's spokespeople, its apologists among the legions of far-right "think tanks" that serve as the Greek chorus for Alberta's perpetual state of scarcity and crisis amid fantastic wealth, or far-right entities like the Wildrose Party that demand ever more vigorous attacks on public services.

Before we give away the ending -- it won't surprise you -- let's talk about the places Taft was able to establish pretty convincingly are not getting our money:

1. It's not going to government spending. While government spending in Alberta is incompetently managed by the Tories, gyrating between throwing money at problems to massive and disruptive cutbacks, over the long term our government spending is close to the Canadian average.

2. It's not going to public services. "As a society, Alberta spends a steadily shrinking portion of its increasing prosperity on public services."

3. It's not going to education. Comparing five-year averages to smooth out individual years' ups and downs, K-12 education went up 2 per cent, total, over 20 years.

4. It's not going to health care. When you adjust for the size of the provincial economy, spending on health care puts Alberta last in the country. No matter how you measure it, "health care spending in Alberta and Canada is on a gradual long-term upward trend that is well within reason." Over the long-term, smoothed out with five-year averages, health care spending in Alberta has been rising at about 1.2 per cent a year.

5. It's certainly not going to housing and social services.

6. It's not going into savings. You can tell from a glance at one of Taft's many useful charts that, as he puts it, "Alberta's natural resource treasure wasn't going into the Heritage Fund," or any other savings pool.

7. And most of it's not going to personal incomes. Over the last 21 years, average personal incomes in Alberta rose about 35 per cent, accounting for inflation.

So where is it going? It's going to corporate profits, of course. And the greatest corporate profits are in the oilpatch, naturally. In fact, so much of our money is going into corporate profit that we're actually selling our collective property at a loss to pad the corporate bottom line!

"Profits in Alberta have grown at rates simply unknown in other jurisdictions, often well beyond double the rates in other provinces and the United States," Taft writes. "There is no such largesse for public services, and the government is drawing down public savings rather than building them, doing nothing to prepare for the future.

"The transfer of public wealth to private shareholders is blistering, and our own government, rather than fighting like an owner, or even thinking like an owner, is just happy to find investors who want to cash in." (Those investors, Taft notes as an aside, are often state-owned companies from such places as China, Abu Dhabi and Korea. Which makes our "ethical oil" what? Semi-ethical?)

We're giving away our resources, people, and we're getting very little in return. "It was going to profits," Taft summed up in his conclusion, "and it was doing so at an astonishing rate."

How astonishing? Corporate profits were up 317 per cent in the same period health care spending rose 28 per cent, incomes were up 35 per cent and education spending increased 2 per cent!

One question Taft says he couldn't answer from the data he worked with is where all the money goes once it flows into these bloated corporate profits. But you and I don't need a book to tell us the answer to that one: It leaves the country for places where it does nothing for Canadians.

No wonder, when you think about it, why corporate special interests and their paid representatives in Canada are so aggressive in defending their right to rapidly export even more of our resources via pipeline to wherever -- the environment, the rights of Canadians, and due process itself be damned! This does not, however, explain why so many of our Conservative Western Canadian politicians behave the same way.

Taft's highly readable work is important to Canadians who don't live in Alberta, because the philosophy of government in Alberta is now in the process of being exported to the rest of Canada, thanks to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and because the way we are developing our resources has profound implications for the economies of other Canadian provinces. Our mighty oil-pumped Loony, for example, is contributing to the decline of the manufacturing economy of Central Canada.

Moreover, Taft's conclusions are also not going to be something that you'll hear reported very enthusiastically in the media, either here in Alberta or anywhere else in this country. Was it just a coincidence that at the same time Taft's book was being released, a "research paper" worthy of a Grade 9 class project that argued Alberta was paying its public employees too much was being released to massive media fanfare by a claque of neo-Con ideologues associated with the University of Calgary? Whatever the motivation, that was the research that got all the publicity.

No, if you want to read what Taft and his research partners have to say, you're going to have to make an effort find it yourself. If you come across a review, it's most likely to be on a blog like this or in an alternative publication.

Talk to your bookstore, ask the reference desk at your public library to order it or purchase the book online. It's worth the effort.

This post also appears on David Climenhaga's blog, Alberta Diary.

rabble.ca, Tues Jan 31 2012

It is the most contentious, the most polarizing and perhaps the most important topic in Alberta politics - which is why it will probably never be an issue in the upcoming provincial election.

It's just too controversial and divisive and, for politicians, potentially suicidal.

The only politician to embrace it is Liberal MLA Kevin Taft and he is only doing so because he is retiring from politics and doesn't have to worry about being re-elected.

It is the issue of tax reform, specifically making the energy companies pay higher royalties.

No political party has embraced this issue and even the New Democrats are being careful how they approach it.

But the issue is out there as part of a pre-election campaign called "Better Way Alberta" on radio ads, in mailboxes and on the Internet.

The $200,000 campaign - being run by the Alberta Federation of Labour and the social lobby group Public Interest Alberta - is trying to spark some interest in an issue that most politicians won't talk about, either because they're opposed to it or they're afraid of it.

After all, Ed Stelmach pretty much killed his own career, undermined his party's popularity and fostered the birth of the Wildrose party by introducing a new royalty regime on energy companies.

Actually, introducing the regime wasn't the problem. Increasing royalties to give Albertans their "fair share" of royalties was initially popular in 2007.

It became immensely unpopular after the collapse of energy prices during the economic meltdown in 2008 when critics and energy companies blamed Stelmach for driving away business.

Stelmach was simply guilty of bad luck and bad timing.

He reversed direction on royal-ties several times but his popularity never recovered.

His fate is a cautionary tale for Alberta politicians who know that the two surest ways of getting in trouble are to talk about a provincial sales tax and raising royalties, even though both options are supported by many economists. But then again, most economists are not running for election.

Neither is Bill Moore-Kilgannon, executive director of Public Interest Alberta. "Alberta has a broken tax-and-revenue system," he says. "The wealth we need to fund quality services is here, but the cupboard is bare because our politicians have made it bare."

The argument presented by the Better Way Alberta campaign is that the province has a revenue problem, not a spending problem - the exact reverse of the argument made by parties such as the Wildrose.

"As a result of years and years of ill-advised tax and royalty giveaways to corporations and high-income earners, the government has blown a gaping hole in the revenue base needed to fund the services that Albertans value, like education and health care," says the campaign's professionally designed web page. "The solution, then, is not to hack and slash at services that Albertans value and which are already only modestly funded. The real solution is tax and royalty reform to fix the hole in our revenue base."

Besides raising energy royalties, that solution includes scrapping the province's flat tax on personal income and replacing it with a progressive tax that would make the wealthy pay more.

Only the New Democrats have expressed sympathy for the Better Way campaign, but in his efforts to attract non-traditional supporters, NDP Leader Brian Mason is choosing his words carefully these days, saying he is not out to attack energy companies.

Liberals are playing coy, refusing to say what their stand is until the election campaign starts but the party has being moving further to the right, not left, under leader Raj Sherman and he'd sooner embrace a cactus than the Better Way campaign.

That leaves it as a bit of a political orphan, a cause without a rebel.

The campaign might stand a better chance of sparking debate if the folks behind Better Way could run their ads during the upcoming election - but they can't because the government passed a law after the 2008 vote in response to an anti-government ad campaign that happened to be run by many of the same folks as this time.

The group behind the 2008 ads - Albertans for Change - included the Alberta Building Trades Council, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees and the Alberta Federation of Labour. At the time, they insisted the ads (which targeted Stelmach for having no plan to fix education, health care or the economy) were aimed at sparking debate, not sup-porting a particular political party.

In the end, the ads were not particularly effective. If anything, they backfired, inadvertently allowing Stelmach to play the victim to big labour.

Even so, the government didn't want the unions to launch a similar campaign during another election so they passed a law designed to prevent any organization with deep pockets from attempting to sway public opinion via advertising during an election campaign.

That's why the Better Way campaign is underway now ... and why it might be long forgotten by the time the election campaign starts.

Edmonton Journal, Tues Jan 31 2012
Byline: Graham Thomson