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A $2.4 billion drop in resource revenue has put Alberta on pace for a deficit of between $3.5- and $4 billion — one of the highest deficits in history, Finance Minister Doug Horner revealed Tuesday in the province's third quarter fiscal update.

The sea of red ink will be four times deeper than was forecast in the budget last February. The province initially predicted an $886 million deficit, but by the second quarter had increased its deficit forecast to $2.3 to $3 billion.

Now it's forecast to be $1 billion more, which will rival the $4 billion deficit the Don Getty government posted in 1986-87.

Horner blamed the ballooning deficit on the discounted price Alberta companies are getting for the heavy oil or bitumen from the oilsands, which has had a dramatic impact on royalties and taxes.

"We're seeing declining resource revenues in Alberta and that's, for the most part, a result of Alberta's market access problem," Horner told reporters at Calgary's McDougall Centre, "I know you have heard me talk a lot about the bitumen bubble. ... It is a bubble that is not going to pop any time soon and it is costing us a lot of money."

But he noted it is not just the differential between the price of Alberta heavy oil and West Texas Intermediate that is hurting the treasury, but also the higher exchange rate and lower land lease sales.

"It doesn't paint a pretty picture for the third quarter, and to be honest, it's not getting all that prettier," Horner said.

The new deficit projection doesn't include $1.1 billion the province is borrowing for the twinning of Highway 63 to Fort McMurray or the $4.1 billion already borrowed for various financial corporations and for lending to municipalities.

The sustainability fund which has covered four previous deficits has been reduced to $3.4 billion from a one-time high of $17 billion.

The flood of red ink prompted the government to simultaneously announce a three-year management salary freeze that it says will save taxpayers $54 million. Horner also announced plans to cut public sector managers by 10 per cent over the same three-year period.

While he said he didn't want to interfere in the ongoing collective bargaining, unions should take the management wage freeze as a sign of the times.

"We've been fairly consistent in saying that there is no new money," he said. "They should take that as a strong signal of what we have in mind."

The province froze MLA wages earlier this month, rejecting a one per cent cost of living increase to their $156,311 salaries.

Horner said his Conservative government has also found $600 million of in-year savings across all ministries.

Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, said he doesn't think the government should be blaming a $3.5 plus billion deficit on the discounted price of bitumen, which accounts for less than $1 billion of the shortfall.

"It seems rather strange that the minister of finance would tell Albertans that this is a long-term situation because it's probably not going to be," he said. "It seems to be very much a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that won't last."

Smith said Horner is obviously interfering in the collective bargaining process before it even begins and that rather than slash management jobs, he should be redeploying managers to the front lines to meet the province's rapidly growing population and its demand for more public services.

Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan said the finance minister appears to be more intent on finding scapegoats than solutions.

"It's clear they are desperate to blame anyone but themselves," he said. "It's time for the government to stop playing the blame game."

McGowan said the question Albertans should be asking is not where to cut, but why does the province have a deficit in a booming economy.

"The real cause of the problem has to do with years and years of cuts to taxes for high income earners and corporations, and years and years of royalty giveaways," he said. "It has nothing to do with how much we pay our public sector workers."

Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith said the fiscal update shows Premier Alison Redford's provincial budget is unravelling.

"We're seeing the budget was an absolute farce," she said.

She dismissed as "window-dressing" the government's plans to cut management by 10 per cent and to freeze their salaries.

Liberal critic Kent Hehr said it was folly to blame slumping oil and gas revenues for the financial problems, saying the government needs to budget more conservatively and change the tax structure.

"Everyone knows our revenue structure is broken," he said.

NDP critic David Eggen said Albertans are angry over the Tory government's bungling of the province's finances.

"They know our economy is growing," he said. "What's wrong with this government? Why did they miss the boat that's been sailing along in Alberta?"

The Calgary Herald, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013
Byline: Darcy Henton and Chris Varcoe

The Redford government's promise to keep building Alberta despite budget woes and bitumen bubbles could lead the province to embrace alternative financing to pay for high-priority construction projects.

Premier Alison Redford and high-ranking cabinet ministers have said repeatedly since last fall they will borrow to bankroll critical infrastructure projects such as the twinning of Highway 63 to Fort McMurray.

Some of that debt could come in the form of public-private partnerships — an alternative method of building, maintaining and paying for major public works projects often referred to by the acronym P3.

"I think we've been pretty clear, we're not only going to be using P3s, but we're going to be using the capital markets for infrastructure and only when it makes financial sense to do so," Finance Minister and Treasury Board president Doug Horner said in an interview last week.

The 2013-14 budget to be delivered March 7 should add clarity. But if the province decides to use P3s to spread out construction costs, it will build on a decade of experience with the format.

Since 2003, the government has used the financing method to build large sections of Edmonton and Calgary's ring roads, as well as 41 schools and a water and sewer treatment plan in Kananaskis.

Under a P3, a government signs a contract with a private partner who agrees to design, build, maintain, and sometimes operate, the project over a period of time. That private company finances some or all of the project, and the government repays the company, with interest, over a set term of several years.

As an example, the northeast leg of Anthony Henday Drive, scheduled to open in 2016, is a $1.81-billion P3 project that will be repaid over 34 years.

Redford has made no secret of her interest in P3s. When she became honorary chairwoman of the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships in November, she said in a statement she was pleased to work with the council to champion P3s across Canada.

After last week's Alberta Economic Summit, Redford described discussions related to P3s as "fundamental."

"There was much comment about the fact this isn't about incurring debt, this is about assuming risk," she said. "That these are still assets that continue to be publicly owned, but they allow us to build them in a more effective way."

Still, the subject of borrowing to pay for schools, roads or housing projects — always contentious in a province that wore its debt-free status like a badge of honour — becomes even more complicated when discussing P3s.

Advocates praise them as an efficient way of building and transferring risk from the public to the private sector. The P3 for the northeast leg of the Henday means the 27-kilometre stretch of road will be finished three years faster than through traditional channels and for $340 million less, according to the province.

Critics, however, pan P3s for their lack of flexibility and contractual secrecy.

NDP MLA David Eggen pointed to the complaints that surfaced in the first round of P3 schools that opened in Edmonton and Calgary in September 2010. Those schools, built on a standard design, faced many restrictions on how they could be used.

Alberta Education said last March they adjusted the contracts for the next round of P3 schools to allow outside groups to lease space for things like child care programs or community events.

Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan said he was disappointed to hear Redford focusing on P3s after the summit. He believes they do not provide better value for taxpayers.

"We now have more than three decades of (international) experience with P3s and what that experience shows us is that P3s are a shell game that almost never works for citizens and taxpayers," McGowan said.

"P3s are helpful to politicians in the short run because it allows them to move upfront costs for large infrastructure projects off the books in the short term, but over the long term we end up paying at least as much, if not more."

Wildrose leader Danielle Smith said P3s are simply another form of borrowing, which her party opposes in all forms. "We simply do not believe that once you start down the track of borrowing money that a government will ever stop," Smith said.

Anthony Boardman, Van Dusen professor of business administration at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, studies P3s. He said experience indicates that if a project is complicated, it may be better to keep it within government.

"Over time, what's happened is some governments are better at managing them, although there's still a fair amount of evidence we pay too much for them," Boardman said.

There are ways the government can make sure a P3 is a good fit, he said. One important step is to have an independent evaluation process looking not just at the financial impact of a P3, but also the social costs.

Governments often fail to take the social consequences of P3s into account, such as limits the arrangement might impose on community groups' use of a school building.

"That's a problem," Boardman said. "The reason why they don't is because it's not easy. But instead of doing the wrong thing because it's easy, on all projects we should devote the resources to getting it right."

The government also needs to be as transparent as possible, Boardman said.

In Alberta, the provincial government publishes more information today about new P3s than it did for the first P3s a decade earlier. Alberta Transportation's information about the northeast leg of the Henday includes a value for money report and contract information. (http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/3787.htm).

It also consults with the Advisory Committee on Alternative Financing, a panel of private-sector experts that examines the business cases for P3s and gives its opinions to Treasury Board.

Committee chairman Tim Melton, executive chairman of Melcor Development's board of directors, said P3s can be an excellent way for government to build but are not the best fit for every project.

Whether the government uses P3s, traditional bonds or cash to pay for construction, Alberta's finance minister said the province will take the advice Albertans have been giving to act more like a business when it comes to deciding how to pay for infrastructure.

"Money-in-the-mattress mentalities don't work," Horner said. "It certainly doesn't create value for future generations of Albertans.

"We have growth in this province and that makes us different than almost every jurisdiction in the country and we have to manage for that."

The Edmonton Journal, Monday, February 18, 2013
Byline: Sarah O'Donnell

CALGARY - A research paper is reinforcing the idea that Canada's resource industry is at risk of being left behind internationally if it doesn't find a way to get oil to receptive markets in the Pacific Rim.

The report from the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary says demand for heavy oil from Alberta's oilsands lies primarily in southeast Asia, but warns the window of opportunity will begin to close.

Author Michal Moore says Canada needs to find a way to get into those markets in the next two to five years.

"If we can get our products into the market in that stream we're going to be competitive," Moore, a professor of energy economics at the school, said Wednesday when the paper was released.

"The equivalent of being late is you have to take a bigger and bigger discount on your product, or switch and start supplying a more higher valued-added product."

The Alberta government has turned up the volume in recent weeks about the hole the oilsands oil discount is eating in the province's bottom line. Premier Alison Redford has warned of a $6-billion revenue shortfall this year because oilsands crude has been fetching a significantly lower price than the U.S. and global benchmarks.

She's also referred to the buildup of crude in Alberta as customers get a cheaper product elsewhere as a "bitumen bubble."

Moore says competition is an issue for Canada.

"There's a lot of that oil out there in the market. There's plenty of capacity in the Pacific Rim/Asian markets for heavy oil like ours, but it's not infinite and it's certainly competitive."

The Canadian Press, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013

Maya heavy oil from Mexico and Arab Heavy are very close to Alberta's product in weight and sulphur content, Moore said.

The challenge becomes getting Alberta oil to ports so it can be loaded onto ships and sent to willing customers in China, Japan or Korea. Moore said the most cost-effective way of doing that is through pipelines, but delays in the proposed Northern Gateway project to the West Coast present a problem.

Some Alberta heavy oil is already being processed at refineries in California. Moore also pointed to the possibility of shipping Alberta oil eastward to New Brunswick. And there is talk of a rail link to a port in Alaska.

New Brunswick Premier David Alward was in Alberta this week and said he'd welcome a pipeline carrying oilsands bitumen to the 300,000-barrel-per-day Irving Oil refinery in Saint John - the largest in Canada - with the possibility of exporting some of that crude by tanker.

But the Alberta Federation of Labour says Alberta should require energy companies to upgrade oil in the province before they are allowed to ship it.

Citing an Alberta Energy Department analysis obtained under freedom of information laws, the group argued Wednesday that oilsands mining projects with upgraders will become hugely profitable as the light-heavy oil price differential expands.

Federation president Gil McGowan said the Alberta government continues to approve in situ oilsands projects without requiring associated upgrading, which is flooding the U.S. market and driving down the price.

"These projects become less economically viable as the price difference between bitumen and crude expands," McGowan said in a release.

"And yet these projects have mushroomed throughout the province. We’re flooding the market, and these documents show that the government knows it."

Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason said the government's refusal to increase Alberta's upgrading capacity is part of a "bitumen bungle."

"Here we have a clear message from the market, from industry, from policy analysts and from the government’s own research, yet Redford continues to bury her head in the oilsands and stubbornly insist that we can only talk about moving bitumen because that’s what is in the ground,� Mason said in a release.

According to experts inside Alberta Energy, it's much more profitable to refine more of our oil before we ship it.

With all the discussion recently over the lack of so-called value-added jobs, one might wonder why that debate is confined to one sector of the economy.

For example, in 2010-2011, Canada exported more than 12 million tonnes of wheat. Also in 2011, a $100-million bread plant opened in Hamilton, Ont., bringing about 300 new jobs to that city. Presumably, more of that wheat could be "upgraded" here at home, thus creating more of the kinds of jobs that the Hamilton plant is providing.

The same could be true of the billions of dollars worth of lumber exports produced by Canada each year. Surely, we could provide a multitude of jobs in the production of kitchen tables and baseball bats by discouraging the export of such raw materials.

Fortunately, there are no serious calls for such interference in the economy — at least in those sectors. When it comes to the export of raw bitumen, though, there's no shortage of such calls.

With the price differential for Western Canada Select (as measured against the price for West Texas Intermediate) oil having a significantly negative effect on Alberta's bottom line, there have been demands for a government strategy to encourage more upgrading and refining in our province.

First of all, it should be noted that there is a great deal of such activity that already occurs. As a report last week from the Canada West Foundation notes, there are eight refineries operating in Western Canada — three of them are in Alberta, representing almost two-thirds of the West's refining capacity.

Additionally, there are five upgraders in Alberta, and in fact, upgrading capacity in Alberta more than doubled from 2001 to 2011. That doesn't include the recent expansion of Shell's Scotford upgrader, and there is also the massive $5.7-billion North West Upgrader, which has just recently been approved.

So when the Alberta New Democrats and the Alberta Federation of Labour seize upon government documents as proving a "strong economic case" for more upgrading capacity, they overlook the fact that some companies have already made that bet.

But the decisions being made in the here and now tell a different tale.

Just last week, we learned that Suncor's proposed $11-billion Voyageur Upgrader project is in serious jeopardy. The project has already been on hold for the past three years, and Suncor has confirmed that cancellation is now one of the options it is considering.

Suncor's struggle illustrates the weaknesses and challenges in the economics of upgrading that the Canada West Foundation addresses in its report. There is surplus refining capacity elsewhere. There is falling demand for refined petroleum products. There is also, of course, massive upfront capital costs that are coupled with low returns.

If indeed there is a "strong economic case" for building new upgraders and refineries, then it does not follow that industry would need to be bribed, cajoled, or threatened into acting on it. True evidence for a strong economic case lies not in the analysis contained within some government document, but rather the actual investments being made by the private sector. Like, for example, the investments in new pipelines.

As University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach wrote last year, if we want more refining capacity, it's likely to come at the government's expense. He then frames the issue thusly, "should we be willing to subsidize ... upgraders and refineries in this country in order to export a higher value end product?"

To look at it that way illustrates for us how this notion of "value-added" is really a reallocation of the value that already exists in the resource.

Why should we value refinery construction jobs over pipeline construction jobs? Why are jobs at new upgraders more important than jobs in existing and new oilsands projects?

Both the Canada West Foundation analysis and a separate study last week from the U of C's School of Public Policy illustrate the importance of additional pipeline capacity. Delays in proposed new pipeline projects are costing the economy millions of dollars daily.

Even if we were to do more upgrading here, we'd still need pipeline capacity to get that product to market.

The evidence is clear: Alberta needs more pipelines, not more pipe dreams.

The Calgary Herald, Monday, Feb. 11, 2013
Byline: Rob Breakenridge

With academics and everyone but the Tories themselves realizing that the government is too dependent on energy royalties, it was obvious Saturday's economic summit was little more than a feel-good exercise. Even the government itself said the meeting was a conversation about the direction Alberta needs to take moving forward and wasn't likely to shape next month's budget.

But of all that was said at the meeting, the best wisdom was expressed by the president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

"Albertans are willing to make tough sacrifices when necessary. We're prepared to take it on the chin when we've been convinced it's the right thing to do," said Gil McGowan. "But allowing yourself to get punched in the face when it's not necessary is not brave and it's not noble. It's stupid."

McGowan's remarks appear to be in response to comments made by Tom Flanagan, who pointed out that the across-the-board cuts of Ralph Klein in the early 1990s balanced the province's books and set the stage for Alberta's economic boom.

Conservatives should heed what McGowan has to say, but instead, agree we shouldn't take tax increases on the chin while the budget has all but doubled in the past decade and a University of Calgary report found that 95 per cent of the increases in revenues during the same period were swallowed up by the public sector.

McGowan is right: we'll make sacrifices when necessary. But the fact the government can't do its job is no reflection on ordinary Albertans, who provide the highest tax contributions per capita in the country.

The Calgary Herald, Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013

CALGARY - Alberta Premier Alison Redford says a sales tax isn't on the agenda, even though many of the panellists at an economic summit that her government convened Saturday said it could be one solution to the province's fiscal woes.

"Oh, I don't think we're anywhere near that at all. I think the fact that people are beginning to talk about it as an idea is a really important thing," Redford told reporters after the day-long event.

"Ideas are important, but no need to jump the gun on that."

By law, Albertans would need to vote on a provincial sales tax through a referendum.

Alberta has prided itself for decades on being the only province not to have a sales tax and Albertans were amongst the most angry when the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney brought in a federal sales tax in the 1990's; two Tory MPs from Alberta left the Conservative caucus in protest.

Redford's government has said it faces a $6-billion oil and gas revenue shortfall, mainly due to the inability for Alberta crude to access markets that will pay the best price.

Among the business people, economists and academics in favour of bringing a sales tax to Alberta were George Gosbee, CEO of investment firm AltaCorp Capital, and University of Calgary tax expert Jack Mintz.

"It's my view that we don't have a cost problem, we have a revenue problem," Gosbee, who said spending cuts would be "draconian."

Gosbee said he's also in favour of bringing back health care premiums.

Mintz said Alberta's challenge has more to do with spending than it does revenue, but that it has a "tax mix problem" as well.

He said the province relies too much on "harmful and volatile" sources of revenue.

Mintz advocates switching from income to consumption-based taxes, whether that's through user fees, excise taxes or a sales tax.

"Many Albertans believe that having no sales tax is a tax advantage. It is the opposite. Not having a sales tax is a disadvantage in today's global economy," he said.

He added U.S. state governments that have low income taxes but have a sales tax, such as Texas, are seeing stronger economic growth.

Danielle Smith, leader of the right-wing opposition Wildrose Party, said she was disappointed to see how much revenues dominated the day's discussion, whether it was through taxes or debt. Some panellists said low interests rates make borrowing money a good option.

"I'm very worried that what we're going to see is laying the table to try to soften the ground for tax increases in future years. I don't think that's what Albertans want," she said.

"I don't think that's what they voted for in the last election."

NDP Leader Brian Mason said the economic summit did little to address the underlying issues plaguing the province.

"We didn't learn what it was that created the dependence on royalty revenue in the first place, which was of course cuts to income tax for the wealthy and for corporations. That never really came up. We were just into a sales tax all of a sudden," he said.

"My sense from that was that those panels were stacked with people who wanted to have a sales tax. It was not unanimous but pretty close and nobody talked about a progressive income tax, nobody talked about making sure that the wealthiest in our society pay their fair share."

Derek Fildebrandt, Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said spending has increased 25 per cent over the last decade, adjusted for inflation and population growth, even though revenues have increased 21 per cent over that same time period.

"It is precisely our unwillingness as a province to hold spending increases to a reasonable level that has resulted in expenditures outgrowing revenues," he said.

Tom Flanagan, a University of Calgary political science professor who led the Wildrose campaign in the last election, said spending cuts are something concrete that can be done today, and that revenue is more of a long-term matter.

In order to be politically palatable, those cuts would have to take place across the board, Flanagan said when panellists were pressed on what spending they'd target.

Alberta Federation of Labour leader Gil McGowan said Albertans would be willing to make sacrifices in tough times — but he's not convinced times are all that tough and that spending cuts are necessary.

"Allowing yourself to get punched in the face when it's not necessary is not brave and it's not noble, it's stupid," he said, asking if Alberta "learned anything at all" from spending cuts during the tenure of former premier Ralph Klein.

"We've seen this movie and it's a horror story."

The economic summit, Redford said, was not meant to deal with the upcoming March 7 budget, but have a more forward-looking view.

Victoria Times Colonist and The Canadian Presss, Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013
Byline: Lauren Krugel

Alberta's current financial woes may offer a silver lining, says the Alberta Federation of Labour. Two weeks after Premier Alison Redford warned the province that resource royalties were expected to drop by $6 billion in the next fiscal year, AFL President Gil McGowan says Alberta's "bitumen bubble" could provide an opportunity for increased upgrading and refining jobs in Canada.

"The price of bitumen is low right now because we're flooding the market with bitumen," says McGowan.

"The solution they're proposing is building more pipelines to flood the market even further. That's just not how markets work," he said. "We need to refine the bitumen here, so that we're selling what the international markets want: synthetic crude."

McGowan justifies his arguments with a 2011 internal government report the labour group obtained through a Freedom of Information request. The report shows that the price difference between Alberta's heavy oil and the benchmark West Texas Intermediate grows, resource projects that both mine and upgrade bitumen locally become economically viable, while only mining becomes less economically beneficial.

"These documents paint a picture of a government that knows what needs to be done, but is afraid to act," said McGowan. "This 'bitumen bubble' has a silver lining, and the province knows it. They wrote the documents to prove it."

There are currently seven pipelines that carry oilsands crude to markets outside Alberta, with the majority heading to the U.S. Midwest.

The AFL, and several other Canadian labour groups, have argued against the proposed Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines, instead favouring more domestic refining and upgrading operations. The AFL argues that building more refineries in Alberta, instead of relying on refineries in the U.S. and Asia, will create more long-term jobs and net better value for the oilsands, since the refined product garners a stronger price.

However, the day before the AFL released their documents, Suncor Energy announced its planned Voyageur upgrading project might not happen due to decreased demand for Canadian crude. A decision regarding the project will not be made until the end of March.

At the same time, North West Upgrading Inc. has partnered with Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. to build the $5.7-billion Sturgeon upgrader and refiner. The plan will provincially-owned bitumen to privately-owned refineries. The Sturgeon project will be the first refinery to be built in Alberta in approximately 30 years.

"By not requiring upgrading in Alberta, we're pumping out more of the wrong thing," McGowan said. "We're shipping good oilsands jobs elsewhere, when the economics of upgrading make a lot more sense."

Fort McMurray Today, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013
Byline: Vincent McDermott

CALGARY - The inability to get western Canadian crude to the right markets is costing the country's economy dearly, according to a new report paid for by the Saskatchewan government.

Each stalled pipeline project means a loss to the Canadian economy of between $30 million and $70 million every day, said the report penned by the Canada West Foundation, a Calgary-based think-tank.

"The economic impact is just devastating," foundation CEO Dylan Jones said in an interview Thursday.

The Saskatchewan government paid $50,000 to commission the report.

Premier Brad Wall has been an outspoken supporter of new pipeline projects, most recently signing a letter, along with 10 U.S. governors, urging U.S. President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

Alberta's oilsands, the third-largest reserves on the planet, get most of the attention when it comes to the pipeline debate.

But Saskatchewan, which has considerable oil resources of its own, is affected by the pipeline pinch as well, Wall said in Regina.

"We hope that this helps get the message out, even to a greater degree than it is now, that we have a pipeline capacity issue in western North America and that's costing Saskatchewan people a lot of money," he said.

"Because of the pipeline capacity issue, we're losing up to 19 to 20 per cent return on the taxpayer's resource."

In recent months, oilsands crude has been trading at a painfully steep discount to both U.S. and global light crude benchmarks. It's a trend that has both eroded oilpatch profits and caused the Alberta government to warn of a $6 billion revenue shortfall this year.

At the heart of the problem is a lack of adequate pipeline capacity to get that crude to the markets that want it most. Proposals of eastbound, westbound and southbound pipelines are in varying stages of development, but environmental opposition and political wrangling makes their fates uncertain.

Most pipeline capacity out of Western Canada heads to the U.S. Midwest, which Jones calls "the worst place in the world to be selling oil" as booming production from areas like North Dakota floods the market.

The Canada West Foundation says new pipelines need to be built in the right directions.

A massive expansion to Trans Mountain and Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal would enable crude to be transported to Asia via tankers from the West Coast, but they face stiff opposition within B.C. on environmental grounds.

TransCanada Corp. is awaiting final U.S. government approval for the northern leg of its Keystone XL pipeline, which would allow Canadian crude to flow to refineries on the Gulf Coast that are thirsty for heavy oil. Construction on the southern leg between Oklahoma and the Gulf is underway.

Refineries in eastern Canada and the U.S. Eastern Seaboard rely on pricey imported crude from overseas, which is hurting their economics. Both TransCanada and Enbridge have projects in the works to send western crude eastward through reconfigured pipes that are already in the ground. It's possible those lines could extend all the way to New Brunswick, home to Canada's largest refinery.

"If pipeline project proposals such as Trans Mountain, Keystone XL and Northern Gateway don't move forward, Canada will be foregoing $1.3 trillion in economic output, 7.4 million person-years of employment and $281 billion in tax revenue between now and 2035," said Michael Holden, the foundation's senior economist and author of the report.

While most of the benefits would accrue to Alberta, Holden said those three projects would add a combined $84 billion to economies elsewhere in Canada.

The report calls on provinces to work together to tackle the problem, the way Alberta Premier Alison Redford and New Brunswick Premier David Alward did earlier this week in touting an eastbound oil pipeline.

Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaign co-ordinator at Greenpeace, says the Canada West Foundation report "misses the point."

"If we want to avoid climate chaos, we have to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure like new tar sands pipelines," he said.

"Canada can, and should be a winner by building the climate-safe, green energy economy that our kids need and deserve."

The Alberta Federation of Labour also has a different view of the issue.

The group said in a report earlier this week that Alberta should require energy companies to upgrade oil in the province before they are allowed to ship it.

Federation president Gil McGowan said the Alberta government continues to approve in situ oilsands projects without requiring associated upgrading, which converts bitumen from the oilsands into light oil refineries can use. That's flooding the U.S. market and driving down the price.

Environmental opposition has been particularly strong to pipelines that would ship oilsands bitumen, the thick, tarry stuff that needs to be diluted in order to flow.

And that alone might force governments to take a hard look at upgrading and refining opportunities at home, said Wall.

"There's all manner of politics, some of it based on reality, some of it not," said Wall.

"If we can't get pipelines built because of it, we just have to start not moving bitumen, but moving a refined product."

Times Colonist, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013
Byline: Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press with files from Jennifer Graham in Regina