| --Canada, once again providing leadership in the world, fighting above its weight class and showing moral authority to the rest of the world. That's what Canada's known for. |
And Harper is calling for an "assertive" foreign policy, by boosting the strength of the military, as well as continuing reconstruction and the fight against terror in Afghanistan. Harper says his government will table a comprehensive report in Parliament summarizing Canada's role in Afghanistan and announcing the next steps in its participation there.
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Alberta's highly touted free trade agreement with B.C. is "a wolf in sheep's clothing," says the head of the Alberta Federation of Labour. Gil McGowan is warning other provinces that the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement, dubbed TILMA, "is not all sweetness and light."
But McGowan says union lawyers fear the deal will give companies the right to sue municipal and provincial governments and school boards that try to bring privatized services under the public umbrella.
He's also concerned the deal will result in a "dumbing down" of Alberta rules for trades training.
Liberal critic Bill Bonko says the deal should have been debated in the legislature if it was so good, rather than being negotiated behind closed doors.
But Jason Clemens of the Fraser Institute raves about the deal, saying the Yukon, Saskatchewan, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces are keen on it.
"This really could be a domino effect across the country to remove or dramatically reduce trade barriers," he said.
Also see: Legal advice on TILMA
The $10-billion plan to help manufacturing compete globallyAnd let's not forget who Harper put in charge as Minister of Human Resources.
Expand the temporary foreign worker program to make it easier to hire non-Canadians when there are no domestic citizens available.Although governments can only influence manufacturers' success to a certain degree, the industry believes Ottawa could be doing much more to help.
The sector's wish list includes lower corporate income taxes, the elimination of provincial trade barriers, more investment in skills, and broader tax credits for industrial training and corporate research.
Low bids stymie Petrocan oil sands auction
But with the price of oil down more than 20 per cent from a peak in 2006, passion for the oil sands has lessened, in part because of the high cost of developing projects in northeastern Alberta.
Interest in the oil sands can vary from week to week. On Jan. 10, the Alberta government said exploration rights for about 200,000 hectares of oil sands territory generated $134-million. Two weeks later, oil sands rights raised only $500,000 for less than 6,000 hectares. Another sale will be announced Wednesday, which is expected to attract more interest, as are more sales in March.
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StelmachThe session, Ed Stelmach's first as premier, was originally slated to begin in the last week of February. But the date is now being pushed back to March 7 to give the government more time to prepare. The delay comes less than three weeks after finance minister Lyle Oberg admitted the 2007 budget would not be ready until April, rather than March, as is the norm.Apparently the session will be delayed because he is counting all the billions on his fingers and toes.
The May 2006 report Fiscal Surplus, Democratic Deficit by the University of Alberta's Parkland Institute, not only correctly predicts this year's actual surplus, it also points out that the Alberta government has been wrong in its revenue projections for at least the last thirteen years.For more on Alberta's democratic deficit see Daveberta's review of Kevin Tafts new book democracy derailed.
More specifically, the report calculates that in each of the last six years, the government has underestimated revenues by an average of $4.3 billion per year.
This attitude was confirmed by Mr. Klein last fall when he told the media that the unbudgeted surplus was none of the legislature's business. Given Alberta's track record in budgeting, what the premier was saying was that the legislature should have no say in how to spend 20 to 25 per cent of the province's revenue.
