Is He Gone Yet??

Dion has been stinking up Alberta with his green shaft for too long, it's about time he left us, so we can go back to reality. Albertan's are polite by nature, but our patience can wear a little thin when some goof from Quebec comes here and proceeds to tell us what we should think.

Meddling Dion got off lightly

For four long and glorious days Public Enemy No. 1 waltzes around Alberta.

He's allowed to promote his devious plan to suck $15 billion a year out of the country's "700 large final emitters" - a large number of whom form our hydrocarbon economy heartland.

And nobody lays a glove on him.

...Dion says his big number is $15 billion a year. And he makes the preposterous claim that it will be "revenue neutral" because he will send it all out the door in a myriad of income tax tweaks.

It's designed to impress the above-mentioned soccer moms, who will see those bad Alberta oilsands and power plants punished. Plus, they'll have a little more left on their paycheques to spend on ME.

This Liberal urge to punish Albertans always seems to be lurking under the surface.

That is, until one of those 416 Liberal MPs brought it bubbling to the top last week when Garth Turner praised his great leader for taking it to those "self-aggrandizing, hostile, me-first, greedy macho, selfish and balkanizing" Quebec separatists.

"I guess he can do it again in Alberta," Turner sneered on his blog.

"Did I go too far?" Garbage Mouth Garth wondered later.

Not at all. You finally levelled with Albertans.

.....So I get to pose THE QUESTION: how big is the Alberta haircut?

"It's very difficult to do," Dion answered, adding something about taxing at the "wholesale" level rather than the "production" level.

But how you determine if a wholesale kilowatt of power is wind, coal or dam juice baffles me.

He did admit that " emissions are more concentrated in some provinces than others. Alberta is one of them."

Kinda had that figured already.

"We cannot come to an exact number," Dion insisted.

Dion didn't get the hostile reception he expected from Albertan's, from what I can see, he was pretty much ignored. So how brave was he? Not brave enough to appear on the David Rutherford show. Not brave enough to take questions from reporters at city hall. He appeared before Liberal party members in Calgary, at a youth rally against the oilsands in Edmonton, and one town hall meeting filled with hard core lefties, where adults prompted a little 8 year old to ask a pre-arranged question. Now that's brave!

Now he can go back east, and talk about his "success" in talking down to those nasty Albertan's who make all that "easy" money. Could you keep him there? Thanks.

Garbage Into Green Fuel, Beat That Toronto!

When Edmonton first started their recycling program, very little could be included in your blue box. Now we have 5 times more blue recycle bags at the curb than regular garbage. I used to get tired of tin cans and plastic taking up counter space, along with my compost containers. Now I have a big blue bag at the bottom of the steps that I toss 95% of our garbage into.

Edmonton is about to go one step further. Ninety percent of our residential waste will be diverted from the landfill and made into ethanol, by 2010!!!

A new ethanol plant is expected to turn most of Edmonton’s garbage into green fuel by late 2010.

“There’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world,” says Don Pierce, executive vice-president of GreenField Ethanol, which will operate the site.

The 2.5-acre plant will be the world’s first industrial-scale fuel-to-ethanol facility.

It will produce 36 million litres of biofuel each year, which Pierce says will end up at Alberta gas pumps.

“Ethanol is cheaper than gasoline and, more importantly, it’s keeping the price of gasoline down by about 20 cents a litre,” he says. Biofuels are mixed with gasoline before they are used in vehicles.

The plant will turn landfill into ethanol by burning materials like wood, cloth and non-recyclable plastic, says Vincent Chornet, president of Enerkem, which is teaming up with GreenField Ethanol to build the plant.

The process creates an ash byproduct, which can be used as an aggregate for cement.

“If you do it right, you won’t have anything (going) back to the landfill,” Chornet says.

When the facility opens, 90 per cent of Edmonton’s residential waste will be diverted from landfill.

So, Toronto are you still trucking (tisk, tisk, think of all those GHG's) your garbage to the US?? Come on out here to green Alberta, you can take some lessons from us "conserv"atives. We don't just cry and whine, we "get 'er done". Bet Dion wants to tax that too, the green shaft is a tax on everything, and good for noone.

Question. Why don't apartment dwellers have to recycle? What makes them less polluting then us homeowners? Maybe you apartment dwellers can tell me I'm wrong on this point.

Mucker's Off Dion!

I can see the Liberals drooling over this news.

Alberta posts a 4.6 billion surplus.

Record high oil prices and a booming population pushed Alberta’s budget surplus to $4.6 billion in the 2007-08 fiscal year — despite record spending.

The financial report for the year ended March 31 shows that resource revenues shot well past early predictions and reached $11 billion — the third-highest in Alberta history.

Government officials concede that with oil now trading at more than US$130 a barrel another windfall of resource revenues is in the offing.

But a bustling economy also pushed government spending to record levels to relieve a backlog of building projects and higher health and education costs.

Oh, I know us selfish, rednecked Albertans aren't willing to share with poor, soon to be have not, Ontario. Hey Ontario, who do you think is buying all those big honking trucks you produce?

I miss Ralph! He would have been in Dion's face about NEP II, and making no bones that Alberta will NOT tolerate this tax grab. Stelmach, come out, come out, where ever you are! You are the Premier, stand up for your province. Crickets.

This article at least shows someone has some backbone left in Alberta.

It's good news because the 2007-08 final figure is expected to exceed the $4 billion she booked in her April budget documents by another half a billion bucks. That surplus started life 15 months ago as a $2-billion windfall.

The usual suspects are to blame: Oil, gas and a roaring economy which cranks out mega-millions in provincial taxes.

The bad news, of course, is that there are cynical politicians out there who are devising devious ways of tapping the province's energy wealth pipeline.

"Some of the other provinces do look covetously at Alberta," Evans sighed.

Other pols - step forward, Ottawa Liberal Leader Stephane Dion - are not even being subtle about it.

Last week, Dion launched his "Green Shaft" tax-and-redistribute scheme to suck as much as $15 billion a year out of the energy economy, most of which is located right here.

Dion's describing it as a "good, bold idea" which will be "good for the planet and good for your wallet."

Iris begs to differ with the nutty professor.

'POOR PLAN'

"It's a poor plan," she spat. "It's not even a green plan. It impacts industry and everybody," Evans continued. "Not only in Alberta, but in other places."

While Dion's $40-a-tonne carbon tax gouge isn't aimed at the Alberta government's cash flow directly, like Pierre Trudeau's national energy program did 27 years ago, it's designed to suck the surplus energy revenue out of Alberta.

When our economy falters, so do Evans's revenues.

But Albertans aren't in this thing alone, Evans stressed.

"My hope is that they recognize that no matter what the surplus is, 50% of the taxes from the oilsands goes to other governments," she pointed out. "And 40% of the jobs."

She calls it a "shared-wealth component."

There's another reason for Dion and other eastern provincial governments to keep their hands off Alberta's economy.

"Even though on the face of it, Alberta has a surplus," the finance minister said, "we've been responsible for a large part of the strength of Canada."

But Liberals don't see it that way, they see it as a way to gain votes in Quebec and Ontario. What happens if they kill the energy industry with their green shaft? How will Ontario and Quebec be better off when those manufacturing orders from Alberta stop coming? PM Harper is right, it's a crazy plan to screw our economy.