Alberta is rich with oil, but what has it got to show for it?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tingkai
The Campbell government were elected in May 2001. The budget numbers cited were for the fiscal year 2001-02 so I believe that would mean that the budget was created by the NDP.

I was under the impression the first thing the government did was slash the existing budget?

Why would they carryout the NDP's budget for their first year in office?

[KrazyHorse]

Because budgets are compuhlicated things, contracts and spending has already started on stuff for next fiscal year, etc. You can't walk in and start a new budget right away.

[Asher]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Because budgets are compuhlicated things, contracts and spending has already started on stuff for next fiscal year, etc. You can't walk in and start a new budget right away.

Not all of the stuff is done by contracts.

Alberta frequently adjusts its budget mid-year to accommodate changes in oil revenues (higher or lower)...

[KrazyHorse]

Not all, and budget might have been modified slightly, but core of it will still be previous admin's. When was the BC election?

[Asher]

May 2001

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Asher
Where does it say that?
From everything I've read, all it says is the provinces get the right to the minerals. What they do with it is up to them.

You likely know the facts that I'm about to mention, but follow the logic.

To answer your question, we need to look back at history. The British took land from the Indians and so the Brits owned the mineral rights. In 1867 the Crown largely delegated to Canadians the power to control their lives. That power was split among the provinces and the federal government, but the Crown retained the right to say how this power was delegated. In 1982, the British Monarchy gave up its right to say how that power would be split in Canada. So it can be said that at that point, power was delegated to the federal and provincial governments by the Canadian people.

Control over mineral rights was eventually delegated to the provinces, but that control is not permanent. It only exists because Canadians have agreed to the power distribution. Control over mineral rights could be changed, provided there is enough support at the provincial and federal level. In other words, the provincial government do not own the mineral rights, these rights are owned by all Canadians and the people have deemed it fit to allow the provincial government to exercise control over these rights.

As well, all Canadians have the right to determine how any provincial government controls mineral rights. If I don't like the way Alberta controls its natural resources, all I have to do is move to Alberta and then I can exercise my voting rights or even run for MLA. By contrast, someone who is not a Canadian citizen has no rights to that untapped oil and no say over how that oil is used.

So the oil in the ground does not belong just to Albertans. It belongs to all Canadians. Any Canadian can have a say over how that untapped oil is used. The provincial government merely exercises control over the mineral rights on behalf of all Canadians. So the provincial government act on behalf of all Canadians.

[Asher]

Well, the current budget under the current government for 2002/2003 is $25.5B, which is $6375/person.
Alberta's for 2002/2003 is $6400/person (includes some hefty hikes in education and health).

That's not bad at all for BC. I think their new government may undo the damage of the old.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tingkai
So the oil in the ground does not belong just to Albertans. It belongs to all Canadians. Any Canadian can have a say over how that untapped oil is used. The provincial government merely exercises control over the mineral rights on behalf of all Canadians. So the provincial government act on behalf of all Canadians.

I fear you're entering a pretty hopeless semantic argument.

In 1930, the rights to minerals was transferred to the provinces. The provinces themselves choose how to run it.

Whether it's technically owned by Canada, or whether other Canadians can become Albertan MLAs and decide what they want to do with it from there is not exactly relevant, because it's still the province of Alberta deciding what to do with its oil reserves. And that includes collecting royalties.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Asher

I fear you're entering a pretty hopeless semantic argument.

In 1930, the rights to minerals was transferred to the provinces. The provinces themselves choose how to run it.

Whether it's technically owned by Canada, or whether other Canadians can become Albertan MLAs and decide what they want to do with it from there is not exactly relevant, because it's still the province of Alberta deciding what to do with its oil reserves. And that includes collecting royalties.

It is very relevant. The provincial governments act on behalf of all Canadians. All Canadians have the right to say how a provincial goverment should act, provided we meet the basic residency requirements. So to say that the oil belongs to Alberta is incorrect. The oil belongs to all Canadians and the Alberta provincial government has been delegated the power to manage the oil.

[Asher]

Found an article by a Professor of Economics on the matter: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/pub...rticle286.html

CANADA'S CROWN LANDS: Alberta's resources only for Albertans--thanks to 1887 edict
By Ruben Bellan

In its capacity as owner of the vast pools of oil and gas within the boundaries of Alberta, the province's legislature will collect $7-8 billion in royalties this year. The legislature is the legal owner of these resources, thanks to a unique set of historic circumstances and a fateful decision made by the federal government over 100 years ago.
According to a tradition that dates back to feudal times, the original owner of a country's land is the monarch; the term "real estate" is probably a corruption of regal estate. Any new territory acquired by his or her subjects, through discovery or conquest, belonged to the reigning king or queen. The monarch might donate or sell tracts of land, or make allocations to original inhabitants, and land so disposed of then ceased to be a royal possession and became "private" property.

Under British practice, if an effective local government came into being in a newly acquired territory, the sovereign might graciously cede to it ownership of all remaining "Crown lands."

It was through this process that the colonial governments which came together in 1867 to form the Dominion of Canada became the legal owners of the public lands within their boundaries. The British North America Act provided that these colonial governments would be transformed into provincial legislatures and continue to own their respective Crown lands.

Initially, the value of these lands was not great. The best land having generally been disposed of, the remaining Crown lands were typically unsuited for agriculture on account of poor soil, rough terrain, forest cover, isolation, or an inhospitable climate. The revenue derived from them was small--chiefly stumpage fees that were little more than, and could even be less than, the costs of regulation and administration.

Within two years of coming into being, the national government of the new country purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company the vast North-West Territories claimed by the company on the basis of its charter of 1670. The federal government promptly announced two paramount objectives: 1) to people the western plains with farmers, and 2) to build a transcontinental railway that would bind together the country's widely scattered regions.

The government used its ownership of the land to achieve both objectives. Following the example of the United States, it gave 160-acre tracts of land as "homesteads" to individuals qualified to be farmers, and gave large grants of land to railway builders which they could sell to obtain cash.

In 1905, after local populations grew sufficiently to warrant self-government, the federal government carved the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta out of the North-West Territories, each to have its own legislature. However, in order to continue giving donations of land to achieve its primary objectives, Ottawa retained ownership of the Crown lands of the two new provinces for another 25 years, only relinquishing it to the provincial legislatures in 1930, when it deemed "the purposes of the Dominion" to have been achieved.

Early in the settlement process, it became evident that, randomly scattered under the prairie soil, lay valuable deposits of coal and other minerals. Taking the view that the benefits of such gifts of nature ought to be shared by the whole country and not be the personal property of those under whose soil they happened to be found, the federal government, in 1887, issued an Order-in-Council decreeing that henceforth, west of the third meridian, homesteaders would be given title only to the surface of their land. Underground deposits of valuable natural resources would remain the property of the Crown, as represented by the respective provincial legislatures. (About half of the prairie is west of the third meridian, and, since most of the homesteaders came from the east, the territory to which this Order-in Council applied had as yet very few homesteaders. Most of the territory was therefore homesteaded later under the 1887 edict that reserved ownership of all subterranean resources to the Crown.)

For many years, the possibility of finding valuable minerals underground was taken very lightly, and in many cases farmers sold their underground mineral rights for a pittance. These rights were taken much more seriously after 1947, the year in which a major oil pool was discovered at Leduc, Alberta. Since then, many additional reserves of oil and natural gas have been discovered, and, what with the great increase in output and the escalation of market prices, the royalties paid each year to the government of Alberta have swelled from millions of dollars to billions.

Ironically, the effect of the 1887 Order-in-Council has been pretty well the opposite of what was intended. If the Order had not been issued, the private individuals under whose property oil and gas pools were discovered would have received the royalties payable to the legal owners of these resources. Being subject to federal income tax, they would have been obliged to hand over a considerable portion of those revenues to the federal government, and those contributions would have been used for the benefit of all Canadians.

But a provincial government is not subject to federal income tax. So the government of Alberta, having been decreed by the 1887 Order as the Crown owner of the resources within its boundaries, is not obliged to share any portion of the resource royalties it collects with the federal government. It is free to spend those billions of dollars in ways that benefit only the citizens of Alberta.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Asher
That's not bad at all for BC. I think their new government may undo the damage of the old.

I doubt it. Campbell is carrying on the tradition set by the Socreds and the NDP.

From the Globe and Mail (written by a former Socred minister)

"A year ago today, immediately after being sworn in as Premier, Gordon Campbell promised to reverse British Columbia's two decades of economic decline. With a tear in his eye, he also pledged to restore the public's trust in government.

"Twelve months later, here's what it's come to: The province is heading to a record deficit, and will have the slowest growth in Canada. Most British Columbians think their Premier is untrustworthy, has been reckless and mean, and doesn't give a fig about them."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/common/FullStory.html&cf=tgam/common/FullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&date=20020605&dateOffset=&hub=headdex&title=Headlines&cache_key=headdexComment&current_row=2&start_row=2&num_rows=1

[Asher]

At least the government's giving "Liberal" a bad name.

[Asher]

So where's Ottawa's "thank you" for Alberta giving away 70% of its royalty revenue to help the rest of Canada in equalization, if we're not obligated to do anything with it at all?

Was the "thank you" the deliberate smear campaign that the Liberals ran against Alberta and its Bill 11?

[markusf]

Originally posted by Tingkai


I doubt it. Campbell is carrying on the tradition set by the Socreds and the NDP.

From the Globe and Mail (written by a former Socred minister)

"A year ago today, immediately after being sworn in as Premier, Gordon Campbell promised to reverse British Columbia's two decades of economic decline. With a tear in his eye, he also pledged to restore the public's trust in government.

"Twelve months later, here's what it's come to: The province is heading to a record deficit, and will have the slowest growth in Canada. Most British Columbians think their Premier is untrustworthy, has been reckless and mean, and doesn't give a fig about them."

Some idiot wrote that article. From what i remember the doctors caved in and signed pretty much exactly the same deal they had originally agreed to in march. I can't understand why the public is so stupid and supports doctors salaries. I mean isn't 200+ grand a year enough? why should our bc medical payments double so that we can give doctors a extra 60+ grand a year? The other crap in the article is even dumber.. The lumber dispute, bc has little to no power to solve it and each time in the past its gone before a trade panel. As for the deficits etc there is no one to blame for those but the NDP.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Asher
Found an article by a Professor of Economics on the matter: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/pub...rticle286.html

That doesn't conflict with what I have said. Ownership of mineral rights were retained by the Crown which, as the article says, was represented by the respective provincial legislatures. In the 1982 consitution the crown effectively gave its ownership to the Canadian people.

The provincial governments have been delegated sole control over mineral rights and do not have to share the control with the federal government. The provincial government can spend the mineral royalties as it sees fit, but who is the provincial government. It is the voice of all those who can vote. Since any Canadian can vote in a provincial election, provided they move to the province, which they are free to do, then the provincial governments are acting on behalf off all Canadians.