Smith deploying every trick possible
There will be a provincial election this spring in Alberta and the premier, Danielle Smith, is deploying every trick she can find to secure a victory.
Before she was sworn in as premier, Ms. Smith announced her first priority would be the passage of the Alberta Sovereignty Act which she characterized as being designed to defend
Alberta against an overly intrusive Ottawa. Once in office, she instructed her Ministers to draw up lists of federal policies that could be remedied by the Act.
Critics castigated her on the sweeping powers her draft Act originally conferred on Cabinet, and she eventually withdrew them before it was passed. But Indigenous leaders are still adamant in their opposition saying the Premier obviously does not understand existing treaty rights nor does she respect them. But she has yet to deploy the Act into battle (in the courts), apparently keeping it as some sort of reserve weapon to threaten the federal government.
Ms. Smith’s pledge to use the Human Rights Act to protect those she called “the most discriminated-against group, the unvaccinated against COVID-19 individuals” was put on hold. She maintained that her proposed approach was “incomplete” and will likely be delayed. There is now no indication when a Bill will be brought forward.
Ms. Smith plans on helping those struggling with the rising costs of living with a combination of rebates, tax breaks and cheques for families, seniors and those with disabilities.
The estimated cost is $2.4 billion. It was interesting that, in announcing the plan, she blamed Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau for causing recent price inflation. She did not explain how he accomplished this.
Criticism of these profligate measures focused on the possibility that the plan was simply an attempt to buy votes in the upcoming election, using taxpayers’ dollars and borrowed funds to achieve her objective.
It seems that, from the day that Ms. Smith assumed the office of Premier, she has been trying to compete with her predecessor, Jason Kenney, in shooting herself in the foot.
The latest ploy of Ms. Smith’s government is to provide an enormous windfall to the petroleum and gas industries – which have been enjoying record profits of late. In essence, her proposal is to subsidize oil and gas companies to clean up abandoned wells, notwithstanding that they all agreed to do so when applying to the Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Agency for their drilling licenses.
The Site Liability Incentives
Program, was first proposed back in 2021 when Ms. Smith was a lobbyist for the Alberta Enterprise Group. The details as how the system will work and who would be eligible to participate have yet to be finalized, but she expects Alberta will spend $100 million over three years. Critics say that the full program will likely cost $20 billion, a number Ms. Smith herself used when first suggesting this boondoggle two years ago.
In case you are wondering if the potential liability for cleaning up abandoned wells is really that big, the answer is “yes.” There are approximately 460,000 wells of which some 170,000 wells are already abandoned but have not yet been reclaimed (meaning cleaned up and the land around them restored to its natural state).
An additional 75,786 are sitting inactive i.e., not producing either oil or gas. Of these, some 26 per cent are non-compliant with regulations.
More than 7,000 of these inactive wells lack a solvent owner to pay for the cleanup. The President of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta said he has learned “that the cheapest way to get out of reclamation is going bankrupt.”
Th critics of Ms. Smith’s proposal said it was contrary to the “polluter pay” principle of the province’s royalty regime.
The NDP opposition characterized the plan as a giveaway to her former employer and one academic called is “a free lunch” in which, instead of the polluter paying for the clean up, the public would pay the polluter.”
Ms. Smith certainly knows how to attract public attention but apparently does not understand that effective planning and implementation are also necessary to be an effective Premier.