John Clark
14815 - 123 Ave
Edmonton, AB
T5L 2Y7
cyberclark@shaw.ca
February 9, 2005
Honorable Ralph Klein,
Room 307
Legislative Building,
Edmonton, AB T4K 2C6
premier@gov.ab.ca

Dear Premier:

You are to be congratulated on the slick, well produced centennial address shown on TV Tuesday the 8th.

Without a doubt you have a firm handle on exactly what great damages you have done to this province. Sufficiently so to frighten the population of this province into some kind of major action against the conservatives. I find it necessary to rain on your parade.

Alberta is debt free. The only thing that is free is your loose use of the truth. I have a letter from the Minister of Finance, Ralph Goodale who tells me Alberta is in debt to the Canada Pension Fund to the extent of 3.5 billions of dollars. The vehicle being bonds which Alberta has bought but has not redeemed and continues to pay interest on. Alberta has the option of paying off this debt or, rolling it over for one additional 20-year term at the same rate of interest they should pay on their other market borrowings (un named).

Can you provide me with a list of “Market Borrowings”?

When you “privatized” the electricity transmission you told Albertan’s the money received from PPAs would pay for new power lines. All of these equities were moved into the “Powerpool” as outlined in last weeks ‘Journal.. The power pool has the board and the chair all appointed by the Minister of Transport, Alberta.

Then, your next slippery step was to turn the Powerpool into a private company the “Powerpool Corp.”. Away went the rest of Albertan’s equities into something that could be described as the Conservative’s personal corporation. Another give away! Definitely and strictly not owned or controlled by the taxpayers! As a kicker, you now tell Albertans that they will have to pay for all the power transmission lines. Your honesty, at a low ebb prior to the election would not allow you to put this plan straight forward to the electorate! http://ets.powerpool.ab/ and http://www.balancingpool.ca/contact.html (copy and past into your search engine)

The Alberta Electrical Service Operator (AESO) http://www.aeso.ca/ as pointed out by the Journal, buys it’s power from the Powerpool. When Genesee shuts down for 3 days the Powerpool Corp re-directects the AESO to use Cloverbar’s power.

The difference is in price in this electricity! It more than doubled! From .06 kwh to .16 per kwh; the latter being greater than what would be paid in a third world country!

My research indicates there was cheaper power available from both BC and from Saskatchewan at this time. Considering it takes 10 hours to put Cloverbar on line, I have to ask why was not the cheaper less expensive power used? There were no surprises here! Was the exercise to run some more cash into Cloverbar? Could this be still another Billions a day operation reminiscent of ENRON?

It is important to know that both plants generation is owned by the Powerpool. Are you creating the financial environment to have Albertan’s further subsidize these organizations through their power bills? All this, while the ministers stand and say “these are private companies we can’t do anything about it; market values and all that good stuff”. Trying to distance your self from the problems and rage?

You speak of freezing the tuition at secondary institutions. You choose to ignore that these same secondary institutions were allowed to move their entrance demands higher (higher marks for entrance) in order to curtail Alberta registration so these institutions could take advantage of the higher revenue offered up by foreign and Ontario students who couldn’t find a place because Ontario graduated 2 years in 1?

On this subject what consideration have you given as to how you will get the people from rural Alberta involved? Pay their transportation; their room and board? You do appreciate only 400.00 a month of living expenses can presently be deducted from taxes in this regard?

I say to you sir, if you cared anything at all for the well being or the lack of it for the citizens of this province you would have intervened and stopped this from happening rather than encourage the practice. You would have enacted a tax deductible for books which has been long missing.

Good things in store for seniors? In your world it probably means a free bus ticket out of the province the same way we are treating other costly undesirables or perhaps the “Conservative Centennial Cook Book for Cat Food” would be more in tune with your policy; a far stretch from your media address. You stripped away senior’s support for eye glasses and limit their disposable cash to 265.00 per month, encourage divorce and legal separation for seniors as a means to get marginally better help from your Government. You answer complaints on this by saying “some people think we have a lot more money than what we have”.

I have heard nothing about indexing old age pensions the Alberta cost of living?

You promise more years of the glorious conservative plan; who can survive it?

John Clark.