September 21, 2008
Yet another Dion doozy!
A carbon pipeline between Alberta and Saskatchewan is questionable if no one's heard of it
By NEIL WAUGH
In a week when stock markets around the world had a near-death experience - and several banks and brokerage houses never made it off the operating table - you'd think the last things Canadians needed was another dodgy bank.
But now that Liberal leader Stephane Dion has all but dropped mention of his punitive Green Shift energy tax grab from his stump speech, he hasn't got much left to talk about.
Except for his Alberta to Saskatchewan (or is it the other way round?) carbon capture and storage pipeline.
It's one of the several mega projects tacked onto his $70-billion "unprecedented" infrastructure plan sprung on suspicious Canadian taxpayers last week.
All of it will be paid for with "unanticipated" budget surpluses that will roll in.
Presumably, that's after his Green Shaft begins stripping wealth from Alberta's oilsands plants, upgraders, coal-fired power stations, gas plants, pulp mills, petrochemical facilities and just about anything else with a smoke stack.
"In these times of economic difficulties, we Liberals understand," Dion boomed.
You sure do, Stephane. Pierre Trudeau taught you well.
The tax-and-spend part is predictable, but the SaskBerta carbon line came winging right out of the ozone.
And a highly placed Alberta government official was more than a little perplexed when I broke the good news too him.
Has anyone in the Alberta or Saskatchewan governments actually asked for the cross-border CO2 connection?
The answer was a definitive "no."
There wasn't a word about it when Premier Ed Stelmach met his Saskabush counterpart Brad Wall at Lloydminister a few days ago.
NO ONE'S HEARD OF IT
A TransAlta pitch to inject emissions from the Wabamun power plants into Drayton Valley oil wells is being kicked around.
And there's another for the Industrial Heartland plus a Fort Mac to Swan Hills connection.
But, so far, nobody has heard of Dion's interprovincial big inch.
Then again, his Infrastructure Bank - where Canadians "would have the opportunity" to stash their hard-earned savings - only arrived on the scene last week.
The money would then be doled out to municipalities to provide "low-cost financing" for "green" infrastructure.
And promoters with "renewable energy infrastructure" schemes could also tap Dion's pot.
Lucky Canadians will be able to buy "tax-free Green Bonds," Dion's blurb beams.
How the Liberal leader would balance the books by providing low interest loans to cities at the same time as offering a high enough bond rate to pry mom and pop's retirement cash from banks, credit unions or mutual funds, the nutty professor doesn't say.
But I suspect the taxpayer figures in the deal somewhere.
It also appears to be lost on the prime minister wannabe that most folks already have the interest from their investments protected from the tax man because they are locked away in RRSPs.
Predictably, the Conservative war room dined out on Dion's latest failure to communicate.
They accused him of "threatening to throw Canada into deficit," noting that none of this showed up in Dion's Green Shift documents.
TRANSFER OF TAXES
Those papers see a revenue-neutral transfer of taxes on Alberta's hydrocarbon economy to voters in southern Ontario and Quebec through a myriad of tax rate tweaks.
Of course the Ottawa Liberals aren't the only politicians loading up on the debt.
The Alberta Tories were hard at it last week when Education Minister Dave Hancock released details of the $634-million deal where a Brit outfit called Babcock & Brown will build 18 schools.
That's despite the fact that former premier Ralph Klein cut up his giant "paid in full" credit card and vowed the province would never go into debt again.
There's already $664 million on the books after the PCs went the Private Public Partnership route for portions of the Edmonton and Calgary ring roads.
By 2011 that number is expected to hit $1.8 billion.
Now the Alberta Tory brainiacs have come up with a perfect solution.
Debt isn't debt if you re-brand it "Liabilities for Alternatively Financed Capital Projects." Which is almost as brilliant as Stephane Dion's Green Bank.
