John Clark
14815 – 123 Ave.,
Edmonton, AB T5L 2Y7
August 13, 2004
cyberclark@shaw.ca
Honorable Ralph Klein,
Room 307
Legislative Building,
Edmonton, AB T4K 2C6

Honorable Murray Smith
404 Legislature Building,
Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6

Re:- Priorities! Albertans standing on the lip of a conservative chasm!

Gentlemen:

It was refreshing to have the retiring Minister state the heath care premiums were coming off the senior’s bills in October “because it is the right thing to do”. To publicly acknowledge it was a rotten thing to do in the first place is refreshing!
What we need to hear is that the Health Care Premiums will stay off rather than be implemented again a year after you are elected because the retiring Minister “had it wrong” and the new Minister is the correct conservative line when the price crunch comes! With your credibility in tatters, I’m asking for a show of faith here!

Pensions are incremented by National indexes, not provincial! Albertan’s will suffer the higher cost of living directly out of their meager resource while your “corporate cost plus construction with 11% minimum profits built into them”, flourish.

Cost plus construction with a 30% error margin and 11% minimum profits guaranteed is a no win formula for Alberta population and industry! However Cost plus quotations sure take the teeth out of accountability! I won’t even touch the Swan Hills fiasco sucking back half a million a year so you don’t have to face the billions of dollars aspect of clean up after shutting it down.

Meanwhile multi billions of dollars are taken out of the resource at the lowest royalties in the world and because of tax considerations “Write off for unknown future losses” leaves these same billions with no income tax on them! Priorities! Albertans standing on the lip of a conservative chasm!

Your direction, inventive in book keeping, is putting Alberta into debt exceeding by far the 255 Billion dollar total Canada Debt! Railroads, Power Lines, Power Generation, Water Lines, are the more prominent items. You of course will shift the monies Albertans will have to pay by establishing the debt into your named corporations who are given guaranteed market controls and guaranteed profit margins. Such a deal!

These same companies are “private” and the debt, because of this will go into “Alberta’s high resource base equity”. Witness your version of “pick a card, any card”. The Government having distanced the ownership and operation of the infrastructure can claim the debt Albertan’s are asked to pay is not Government debt, it is simply high utility bills driving by US market prices! No accountability for the foul ups in the execution or drafting of the plans. It remains billions of dollars in debt Albertan’s will have to pay!

You are putting Albertans into the middle of one of the biggest cost of living increases for any province in history! You are not telling Albertans they have to pay for the lines for export power transmission; the industry won’t be picking it up! These increases will stand to be 6 times in cost when compared to what you are allowing in Health Care reductions.

It is time for you to get on the record with some hard core commitments for price control for Albertan’s, before the next election. Your commitment, so called, on power rate ceilings is not only wholly inadequate; it can be cancelled to “0” on the whim of the your government! With gas prices rising we can reasonably expect you to do this!

Pensioners will see a pension hits of hundreds of dollars a month covering billions in infrastructure costs built for export purpose and may pay for punitive damages by the US because of power shut downs attributed to Alberta’s grids.

Price control guarantees, firm and now, before an election!

John Clark