Royalty rates top Alberta premier's agenda as sitting begins
Last Updated: Monday, October 13, 2008 | 3:51 PM ET
The Canadian Press
Most Canadians will be waiting for federal election results as Alberta politicians file into the legislature Tuesday for what Premier Ed Stelmach expects will be a relatively ho-hum sitting.
"We'll be looking at issues tied to bringing in the new royalty framework," Stelmach said last week. "I don't think anything really contentious."
The premier gave no hint that the debate might rekindle the acrimony the energy industry expressed a year ago when a 20 per cent increase in royalties was announced.
But Liberal Leader Kevin Taft said "this may be the most dangerous issue this government faces in the next year or two" as plummeting oil prices and the stock market meltdown raise the stakes.
Taft suggested that with Alberta's economy possibly being side-swiped by a global recession, "it's a very tricky time for this government to be trying to bring in a new royalty regime."
Political analyst Peter McCormick said he suspects the governing Progressive Conservatives are feeling pressure to back away from royalty increases until the energy sector stabilizes.
"Suddenly, our oil sector is not looking like that great a thing to have nailed your future plans to," said McCormick, a political science professor at the University of Lethbridge.
"It's a completely different world we're in now, and Stelmach would be completely justified in saying, 'We need to wait and think about it.' "
Health-care costs a likely target
Other pointed debate during the fall sitting will probably focus on the government's latest attempts to overhaul Alberta's $13-billion-a-year health-care system.
Health Minister Ron Liepert has already scrapped the nine health regions that ran hospitals and health delivery, sacking most of the high-paid CEOs and merging operations under a new superboard.
Liepert said he'll release plans before the end of the year to overhaul provincial drug plans and long-term care strategies. He also said there will be early glimpses of a long-term plan to help control health-care costs while improving delivery.
"The scaremongers and the bogeymen guys are going to have a hard time challenging what we're doing because everything is going to be around the patient," Liepert said.
"It's going to be all about better access and better value for dollars — and that's what Albertans want."
He wouldn't discuss specifics, but said he has hired consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to look at "service optimization." Its report is expected soon.
"In layman's terms, that would be ensuring we're doing the right things in the right places at the right cost, because that's what future sustainability will be all about."
Alberta spends more than $1.2 billion a year on drugs, one of the government's largest health operating costs. Liepert said various universal drug plans need to be revisited to ensure they're up to date.
"We've also had some concern expressed about taking too long to get new drugs on our drug approval list, so we're going to take a look at that."
NDP Leader Brian Mason said that unlike past attempts by Alberta's Conservatives to reform health care, this time the public is getting very little information.
"They're quietly implementing their plan one piece at a time without public discussion and without the public knowing where they're going," he said. "And this is completely wrong."
Critics expected to question climate change plans
Stelmach's Tories will also face a barrage of questions about Alberta's much-heralded climate change plan, which aims to reduce emissions over four decades by focusing on carbon capture and storage.
A recent auditor general's report was highly critical of the plan for relying too heavily on unproven or undeveloped technology.
It concluded that the province could spend a lot of money and not achieve its emissions targets, or the targets could end up being met at an unreasonable cost.
"They need to prove their case to the people of Alberta that the billions of dollars that they're pouring into this is actually going to have some results," Taft said.
The government agenda includes 50 pieces of legislation, including more than one dozen bills carried over from the spring.
The sitting is expected to last until early December.
