Royal Reserve?

A lot of folks have blogged about their opinion and the opinions of others, experts, panels, about Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach's final decision on the oil and gas royalty review that has been all over the news.

To name a few of these bloggers, which I read on a daily basis (and you should too!):

Ken Chapman
Daveberta
Calgary Grit

Each offer a different insight. Ken says Ed made good. Dave, not at all. Grit, pretty much the same as Dave.

So under Ed's plan, in a few years "we'll" be getting $1.4 billion more than before where the panel recommended more sooner to put us at $1.9 billion. So the panel's recommendation would have added a couple billion more to the provincial coffers. Whatever.

Already, the government isn't lagging on the intake side and what have they done with it? How's our infrastructure and roads. How is our environment doing? How are the cities, homelessness (which Ed addressed today actually, but we'll see about that). Any better? Health insurance premiums eliminated? No no no?

And on the other side, since this announcement, as Big Oil was screaming about a crisis, jobs lost, etc., the markets didn't do much, and I suspect their profits will continue to rise due to higher and higher oil prices.

But as I said, in the end, Albertans really won't see a dime. I doubt even those who

With this extra revenue, do you think our taxes or insurance premiums (read: tax) are going down? Nope. It's all going to infrastructure and health.

Well okay, but still, do you trust that this will make ANY difference to these things?

With their record to go on and already record revenues, I have no faith whatsoever.

My last post said I'd drink a double Crown Royal to the oil workers themselves. Now I'm going to switch to Royal Reserve, although a lower quality, it's a much more fitting name to this whole thing don't you think, and symbolic of how the average Albertan is really being treated.

14 thousand thousand thousand

Or you can call it $14 billion.

With the federal Conservatives paying off $14 billion in debt, there are two things I can expect:

1. My generation got really screwed by the previous generation for leaving us this massive debt to pay off with a continued high tax regime.

2. Hopefully my taxes that are paying down this debt won't be has high as my children's.

But I doubt the latter will prevail as I note the situation in Alberta, where since the debt has been paid off, there have been absolutely no tax reductions, other than seniors who don't have to pay health insurance premiums anymore. Now we find out today from the Alberta Auditor General that political staffers are getting insane bonuses, a couple MLAs got paid for no work done on a trip to Idaho, expenses are racked up, and the big whopper... that the province (read: taxpayer) has been short-changed up to $6 billion (that's 6 thousand thousand thousand) in oil and gas royalties over the past several years.

This article says it all.

I'd like to add that no social engineering or program can help a middle to low income person or family more than them simply keeping more of their OWN hard earned money other than lower taxes.

In conclusion:
WE ARE GETTING ROYALLY SCREWED BY OUR GOVERNMENTS.
THEY ARE STEALING OUR MONEY. AND IT'S GOT TO STOP.