They're all lining up to heap praise upon old Ralph now that he's dead. They sure didn't seem to be so reverential to him while he lived.
Yes, Ralph Klein did balance the provincial government's books. Yes, Ralph Klein did pay off the provincial government's debts. Yes those were both wonderful achievements.
So what happened? Why is Alberta in such a mess today? Are Ralph's fingerprints also on what went wrong?
Was it not under Ralph Klein that the Alberta government allowed itself to become dependent on fickle oil royalties to pad its operation budget? Was it not Ralph Klein who scoffed at Peter Lougheed's warning against reckless expansion of the oil fields that could overheat the economy and evaporate its wealth? It seems to me that Ralph did those things too and, in the process, put Alberta on the path to an unstable, boom and bust economy, a path followed by his successors.
Oh well, Alberta always was a place where they like their myths super-sized and very well polished.
17 comments:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/09/13/edmonton-alberta-lougheed-oilsands-keystone.html
Peter Lougheed wanted a complete oil industry: extraction, refinement, pipeline shipments to the rest of Canada, and the US and abroad.
A few days ago, Suncor killed their plans for an upgrader. Probably that broke Lougheed's heart. And that is bad news. It means only DilBit is going to ever be shipped out of Alberta. They will have no industry to speak of, save extraction.
Little about his vision for the province has come to pass.
Yeah, Chris, dilbit it is, run across BC wilderness and through our coast.
Now newly-Chinese Nexen has served notice that it's looking for world labour prices in Athabasca which can only mean Chinese guest workers displacing their expensive Canadian counterparts.
Political leadership with the judgment of back alley junkies.
At budget time, Ralph consistently lowballed the expected price of oil. What this meant was usually there was a budet surplus. The current provincial government used a ridiculously high forecast with the resuly we now see, deficit budgets.
Just wait till Mulroney dies.
He will be the greatest PM the country ever had.
It's the nature of the news media in this country.
All they know how to do is suck ass.
Low rent crap always gets great MSM accolades.
When Harper dies, you will puke when you read what the bought and paid for press says about his sorry ass.
Somebody has to create some propaganda to cover up for the fact Norway is so rich and
Alberta is so poor. It's what happens when your leaders love, love, love the oil companies more than they love you.
Albertans, for all their bombastic airs and empty superiority, truly have botched their handling of their energy revenue. Oil and gas, sure, but bitumen, with its high-extraction and processing costs and high-carbon, ought to have been treated warily, the revenues set aside, untouched, in recognition that it was a volatile resource that could plunge the province into boom and bust cycles.
In Alison Redford's bleating "fireside chat" to the province, she conceded that they had been hit by a "bitumen bubble" which was astonishing coming from her mouth. They had, in fact, been hit by the bursting of that bitumen bubble, an inevitability for which they had done utterly nothing to prepare. They had gorged the provincial treasury from that bubble before it collapsed and it was the loss of revenues afterwards that sent them reeling.
And Redford's prescription for the future? Let's take a bad bet and double down on it.
Rex Murphy said..öne did not need to lie about Peter Lougheed¨ But it is obvious we will be doing just that regarding Ralph Klein. I met the twurp at a volunteer event several times and he was of the opinion anyone ought to run and get what ever he needed now. Anyong
Anon 5:53 you are absolutly correct. They have 350 billion at the moment held in trust for the future. And..they told ExxonMobile what they would do...not the other way round. When do you think Canadians will begin to grow some backbone. Anyong
"When Harper dies, you will puke when you read what the bought and paid for press says about his sorry ass."
If I'm fortunate enough to outlive his sorry ass, I'll be too happy to puke and might not ever even puke again.
Speaking of death, check out Robin Mathews latest at PowellRiverPersuader about the "cancer epidemic" raging among Latin American leaders that don't kiss ass to Amerika and wonders who really killed Pierre Laporte and more recently Jack Layton. It's a wonder Fidel has survived as long as he has, not for lack of attempts on his life by the CIA and their allies.
Hey MoS, do you have a link about Nexen asking for world labour prices in the oil patch? I have been trying to get my scaffolding brethren to wise up about what's going on in the oil industry.
I will always remember Ralph for offering one way bus tickets to BC to Alberta's welfare recipients. I have always thought he was a nasty little man.
Hi Karen:
"Joe Bradford, vice-president of joint ventures with CNOOC, the Chinese-based oil giant that recently bought Nexen Energy and their Long Lake oilsands plant, said while the purchase was a vote of confidence in Canada, operations here must compete with others in CNOOC's worldwide portfolio for future funding."
http://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.ca/2013/03/and-thats-code-for-more-chinese-guest.html
http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Oilsands+leaders+blast+lazy+contractors/8088200/story.html
Around the world, whenever the Chinese take over a resource company they quickly bring in a Chinese work force. It's their standard operating procedure.
Ralph was the perfect shill for the oil and gas industry.
He exulted that he did not have a degree and the media here lapped it up.
The greatest travesty from any who actually have been in the "patch" can attest was his claim that during his stint as environment minister, the fact that there were no prosecutions proved that the industry was "CLEAN".
What it actually proved was his incompetence or the outright corruption of the laws by the minister himself.
His reward in either case was to become the spokesperson for the Harsh new reality known as Ralph's world, where a drunk can use his platform to hurl insults at a homeless drunk. Proof positive that the only crime is poverty.
Alberta got exactly what they deserved when they voted for this guy. All the current crying about the state of affairs is irrelevant, until the electorate can learn that the oil patch is not the province. Especially when you give it away.
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