Oilsands Rip Off

Here is a damning confession from Alberta's CEO, Ed Stelmach. Our provincial royalty rate is so low that the Feds make more money off the Tarsands then the people of Alberta!

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has urged caution on a Commons committee report that suggests more federal involvement in the oil sands and a reduction in tax benefits for producers.

"Everyone forgets that over the next 20-year period, about $51-billion, 41 per cent of the income, flows to the federal government," he said yesterday.

"They actually make more on the oil sands than we do.

And if that isn't bad enough the panel appointed to look at Alberta's royalty scheme is made up of the same Calgary Petroleum Club boys that got us in this mess in the first place.Critics skeptical of board chosen to review Alberta's petroleum royalties


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Tarsands To Go Nuclear

The Greening of Alberta's Tar Sands will result in a green glow of radiation.

So along with Greenhouse Gas emissions there will be more destruction of the Athabasca water basin when it is used to cool a nuke plant planned for the Tarsands.

Nuke plants require vast amounts of water as coolant, the result is hot water returned to mix with the original source water.

Henuset and Hank Swartout - founder and executive chairman of Precision Drilling Corporation - are co-directors of Energy Alberta Corporation. The new firm has an exclusivity agreement with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to develop nuclear power in Alberta. Later this year in early 2008, AECL and Energy Alberta hope to file an application with the Alberta Energy & Utilities Board for a permit to construct a 750 megawatt generating plant.

The partnership estimates that a two-reactor nuclear plant over its 50-year lifetime would be 15% less expensive than its natural gas equivalent (including capital and decommissioning expenses as well as operating costs). Crucially important in Henuset's view, the long-term price of uranium to fuel those reactors is more likely to remain stable than natural gas. "Nuclear power is a natural hedge against rising gas prices," he states. His firm's nuclear-versus-gas cost projection assumes an Alberta gas price of $7.04 per gigajoule in the year 2015, which the former oilman considers highly conservative.

Energy Alberta is well aware that its project faces high hurdles. Because these power stations are large, big sums of money must be raised. In fact, nuclear power ranks as the most capital-intensive form of electricity generation, although its operating costs are correspondingly low. Time is another factor. The period required to win regulatory approval and construct a nuclear facility is estimated to be 10 years. Further, there are rival forms of power generation, notably coke and coal gasification (see accompanying article).

Perhaps most formidable of all, North Americans have lived inside a "no-nuke" bubble for several decades; hostility toward the technology among many people is deeply emotional as well as intellectual. In response, Henuset points out that uranium-fueled power continues to develop rapidly elsewhere in the industrialized world.

And the folks behind the push to go nuclear are none other than the Alberta PC party. The same folks who brought you the unplanned, unorganized, rapid expansion of the Tarsands. And though they ousted Ralph Klein for his failure to plan for the boom, they have elected Steady Eddie Stelmach in his place who promises more of the same.

David McColl: Why An Energy Economist Helped Oust Ralph Klein

A fair amount of technical and economic analysis of these issues has already been done by the Alberta Energy Research Institute, the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy and other organizations. McColl himself has researched and co-authored studies on the oilsands development, nuclear options and related subjects for the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) and Energy Alberta Corporation.

What's still missing, the Calgary consultant maintains, is any meaningful political response. McColl, who holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Waterloo and a master's in economics from the University of Alberta, has been president of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives' youth wing for more than two years. From that post, he helped instigate the party leadership review which led to the ouster of Ralph Klein as the province's premier. "Many Albertans had a discouraging sense of public policy drift, even paralysis, at the Cabinet level," says the 26-year-old economist.

Also See:

Nuke The Tar Sands

Dion Pro Nuke

Cutting Your Nose

Energy

CANDU

Peak Oil

Tar Sands



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Return Of the Work Camps

Ah shades of the dirty thirties in Alberta......Company wants to set up work camp near Calgary

Back then they were called Relief Camps for unemployed single men. We would call them internment or concentration camps today. Return Of Internment Camps

However this work camp will be for new temporary workers imported to work in Alberta and then kicked out after two years.

Padrone Me Is This Alberta

Forward into the past, backwards into the future.

See

Temporary Workers

Labour

Unions

NAFTA

AFL



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Tories Crush Whistleblower

The Conservative Government in Ottawa likes to regale us with tales of how much they are doing for Aboriginal people in Canada. They tell us that accountability and health care are their big priorities.

In fact they have colluded with Big Oil and the Alberta Government to attack a Whistle blowing doctor.

A doctor who works in one of Canada's poorest first nations regions, on the edge of the Tarsands.

The unplanned, unorganized, rapid expansion the Tarsands, is an ecological threat to the North, to Saskatchewan and to the whole of Canada.

So much for the Conservatives concern for health, first nations, the environment, and protecting whistle blowers. Thats four out of their six priorities.

Health Canada officials have filed a complaint against Dr. John O'Connor.

O'Connor alerted the media last year to what he believed was a disproportionately high incidence of colon, liver, blood and bile-duct cancers in patients who live in Fort Chipewyan, a small community downstream from major petroleum refineries.

In filing the complaint against O'Connor with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, Health Canada did not explain the action, but said the doctor was causing undue alarm.

Meanwhile, physicians who work alongside O'Connor in Fort Chipewyan believe officials are targeting their colleague because his comments potentially threaten billions of dollars of investment in the province's oilsands.

Dr. Michel Sauvé, who heads the intensive care unit in Fort McMurray where O'Connor is based — he flies in to Fort Chipewyan on Tuesdays and Wednesdays — said doctors who identify potential public health problems should be protected rather than punished.

"Obviously, we need some whistleblower protection, some laws that will banish these kinds of repressive censorship. Punishing and trying to single out a physician to shut him up is not in the public interest," he said.

See:

Aboriginal

Oilsands


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Still Waiting On Wait Times 2

Wait Times reduction is a major priority for the Harper government, right?

Wrong! Gatineau women wait up to 5 months for breast cancer test

And Gatineau is in the governments backyard.

See:

Still Waiting On Wait Times 1

Medicare

Healthcare


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Making Good On Liberal Promises

Once again the Harper government makes good on Liberal promises.

During the announcement, the government also said it will spend $14 million on 775 projects for seniors under the New Horizons for Seniors Program, which was launched in 2004.

And none of the Seniors groups even mentioned Income Splitting as a priority!

CARP wants changes to the clawback on the Guaranteed Income Supplement, Cutler said.

Under current rules, Cutler said, if a senior receives any other income on top of the GIS, he or she loses 50 cents on each dollar from the supplement, which is aimed at very low-income seniors.

CARP doesn't want that rule to kick in for the first $5,000 of extra income a GIS recipient gets. That would encourage seniors to find part-time work, Cutler said.

See:

Pension Plans

Income Splitting

Pensions

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Kill The Wabbit

Canmore residents asked about wiping out bunnies



See

Why Bugs Bunny?

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Criminal Capitalism Business As Usual

Yesterday the Chairman of RIM, makers of the Blackberry stepped down as the company was caught up in the scandal of back dating shares. This was prior to any actions taken by the SEC, against RIM, which is looking into the back dating scandal.

No indication was given if they gave shares to deceased members of the board however.

Once again this in not a quirk of the boom times or an oversight, it is another company caught playing fast and loose with accounting loopholes in order to avoid taxes. Business as usual.

Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM) will search for a new chairman of its board after CEO Jim Balsillie stepped down from the job Monday, taking blame for his role in a stock-option scam that will cost the company US$250 million in restated earnings.

RIM, which makes the BlackBerry smartphone, will restate its annual earnings statements for fiscal years 2004, 2005 and 2006, and its statement for the first quarter of 2007. The changes could also affect its second and third quarter statements for 2007, which are not yet filed, since RIM's internal audit is not complete.

See

CEO

Stock Options

Corporate Crime

White Collar Crime

Criminal Capitalism

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Troops Out Poll

Should Canada be continuing to contribute troops to NATO's mission in Afghanistan?
YES	50%
NO	50%

Please note that these survey results are of website visitors who voluntarily take the survey. These results are not necessarily representative of the larger population.



Afghanistan






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Privatization The Real Walter Reed Scandal

The mantra of the neo-cons for the past two decades has been that privatization is better at delivering services than the public sector. This is another example of the real life failure of privatization.

The Army Times reports the committee wants to question Weightman about the impact of the Army's decision to award a five year, 120 million dollar contract to IAP World Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, former COO of Halliburton's KBR, and David Swindle (that's really his name), also formerly of KBR. The decision to bring in private contractors at Walter Reed led to a virtual mass exodus of experienced career staffers.

Waxman notes that IAP "is led by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official who testified before our Committee in July 2004 in defense of Halliburton's exorbitant charges for fuel delivery and troop support in Iraq."

Before the contract, over 300 federal employees provided facilities management services at Walter Reed, according to the memorandum, but that number dropped to less than 60 the day before IAP took over.

KWAME HOLMAN: And Kiley acknowledged some patient care problems were exacerbated when the Army contracted out much of Walter Reed's facilities management and non-medical care to private companies.

DEL. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (D), District of Columbia: Would it have been the better side of wisdom not to privatize everything here, except the clinical and medical workforce, and therefore add to the stability or the instability that inevitably comes with WRAMC?

LT. GEN. KEVIN KILEY: It did increase the instability.

This is a result of Americas first contracted out privatized war,which was the core policy of the neo-cons plan for the invasion of Iraq. To prove that a combined force of private mercenaries and regular armed forces could reduce war costs. Like the Iraq mission and its reconstruction this too is a failure.

In a largely invisible cost of the war in Iraq, nearly 800 civilians working under contract to the Pentagon have been killed and more than 3,300 hurt doing jobs normally handled by the U.S. military, according to figures gathered by The Associated Press.

Exactly how many of these employees doing the Pentagon's work are Americans is uncertain. But the casualty figures make it clear that the Defense Department's count of more than 3,100 U.S. military dead does not tell the whole story. "It's another unseen expense of the war," said Thomas Houle, a retired Air Force reservist whose brother-in-law died while driving a truck in Iraq. "It's almost disrespectful that it doesn't get the kind of publicity or respect that a soldier would."

Employees of defense contractors such as Halliburton, Blackwater and Wackenhut cook meals, do laundry, repair infrastruture, translate documents, analyze intelligence, guard prisoners, protect military convoys, deliver water in the heavily fortified Green Zone and stand sentry at buildings — often highly dangerous duties almost identical to those performed by many U.S. troops.

The U.S. has outsourced so many war and reconstruction duties that there are almost as many contractors (120,000) as U.S. troops (135,000) in the war zone.

The AP doesn't say if the private companies also provide high level workers' compensation and disability coverage for their workers -- even with high pay that's not a given -- but I wouldn't be surprised to find that contractors who've suffered traumatic brain injuries and multiple amputations are getting better care than the wounded soldiers being treated at Walter Reed.

See:

Iraq Inspector General

Another Privatization Failure

Conservative Nanny State

Another Privatization Myth Busted

Halliburton

Privatization of War

Privatization


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