Tag: oil sands

Live stream of the Alberta’s future conference in Edmonton

Liveblogging the opening panel of the Manning Centre Alberta Future conference.

Panelists:
Danielle Smith, leader of the Wildrose Alliance Party
Kyle Fawcett, PC Party of Alberta MLA Calgary North-Hill

Q: technological factors in Alberta’s future

Smith: we need to figure out what our policy on CO2 is. We don’t have a coherant policy. Smith explains that science of climate change is still under debate. Smith says rest of Canada doesn’t undrstand the value of oil sands for economy and energy security. Oil sands reputation repair needs to be job #1 according to the WAP leader. Smith asks audience to consider jobs created by oilsands development. “We should be celebrating the success of the oilsands”. Smith suggests we should also be investigating green energy alternatives. New producers and energy types are jockeying for position in the new electricity grid. Smith says there is no conflict with being a hydrocarbon producer and a green energy leader.

Q: if you could write the next chapter of Alberta’s future. What would it be?

Smith: we will find maturity as a province. We assert rightful jurisdiction in confederation. Now we are refered to as part of the west or as prairie province. We must be recognized as a grown up province. Perhaps we should be looking for our own provincial pension plan. We should have our own police force. We should take control over our own immigration like Quebec. We need to lead health care reform. Quebec leads it now, Alberta leads it now. WAP is not another “west want in” movement. WAP is about restoring Alberta’s leadership in Canada.

Q: what are the most important things we need to do today for Alberta’s future

Smith: we need a natural gas strategy. Change consumer behaviour. Gas prices are low, this gives us opportunity to develop this sector vs. coal. Our job in government is to establish free market to encourage entrepreneurship. We need most competitive tax structure in Canada and even North America. On democratic reform, the current government intimidates people that meet with me. Premier’s office seems to be writing down names of people getting involved with WAP. This reflects an erosion of our democracy.

Q: Alberta’s role on the national stage. Re: fed govt’s deficit, how should we deal with the feds?

Fawcett: we’re not immune to global economic trends. When the PM meets with other heads of state he must fulfill our commitments. I know that our fed ministers are treating everyone fairly including Albertans.

Smith: 65% of Alberta’s self-identify as right of centre. Best way we can influence federal decisions is to be a good role model. Lately, our provincial government has not been one. Why are we issueing Alberta bonds and going back in debt. We must balance our budget and get our spending in control first before addressing the federal government.

Fawcett: we are not running an operational deficit. We are spending money from when times were good. We don’t need to cut and slash but run on longterm wise fiscal management.

Smith: Alberta bring in 32 billion but spending 36 billion. The amount of official deficit is understated by governement.

Q: how do we increase voter turnout?

Smith: All parties, not just two right-of-centre parties will have input. Social media also allows us to connect directly with voters. This will help improve the overall dialogue and this will cause more people to turn out.

Fawcett: we haven’t even scratched the surface with techology. (Fawcett echoes Smith’s comments on social media). But not everyone will follow online. There’s still a role for traditional means: mail and townhalls. Had a senior’s forum two weeks ago and only 3 people came out. Social media cannot address all needs. We must still reach out using other means.

Manning: technology is part of getting voters to the polls but it’s not the only way. If yoy look at past visions it was core values that connected with people. You must ask, what are the core valuies that fill out your policy prescriptions. Not just a technological fix, but core values must inform policy to get more people out to the polls.

Smith: people come to Alberta because of leadership in policy. Alberta Advantage was about economic growth, best delivery of services.

Q: what kind of story do you find most resonates with Albertans

Smith: my grandfather came from the Ukraine. I was surprised to see that a story of my hard working immigrant grandfather resonated more in urban areas than rural. Alberta is a place where immigrants can realize their entrepreneurial dream. We need a governement that believes in individuals to govern themselves.

Fawcett: I hear stories of people born and raised in Alberta. I hear that they’re very proud to have achieved success in the province. To persue your own vision and dreams without govt standing in the way and then helpimg your own individuals. We must have equality of opportunity for Albertans to achieve their own vision, and for those that can’t we need to give them a hand up. Story is about achieving individual success and taking that to help your community.

Smith: I think it used to be that way. Now people are looking elsewhere. People aren’t looking to PC Party to respect property rights and democracy. This is why other parties are seeing new interest from Albertans.

Fawcett: we can’t govern off of public opinion polls. We’ve earned an outstanding mandate from the people. How can it be said that we’ve lost the support of Albertans?

Q: what would you say to someone that hasn’t wanted to get involved with either of your parties?

Fawcett: if you’re upset, get involved. Find your passion and get involved where you can make the best change.

Smith: in leadership race, I was surprised by new people who were never involved in politics, getting involved. We kept selling memberships after leadership race was over. This doesn’t usually happen. People are now seeing that we can do better. If not to replace government but to elect an effective opposition to ask uncomfortable questions to the government.

Q: oilsands. How do we improve alberta’s position ethically, economically, internationally with respect to the oilsands?

Smith: some Canadians feel that Canada’s reputation is damaged and that oilsands blight is not their fault. Ottawa wants to make oilsands reputation management a national priority. This is a mistake. Oilsands are a national jewel. Oilsands are not well understood by many Canadians. Immense amount of tech being developed to improve efficiency of oil extraction from oilsands. Why aren’t we talking about this? We should be talking about how we’re improve environmental sustainability of oilsands.

Fawcett: we hope Danielle and her caucus will support the premier when he sells the oilsands internationally. Buisiness also has a role in getting the story out. I hope Danielle is not advocating for cuts in the ministry of the environment. We can talk about natual gas all we want but we cannot put all of our eggs in one basket. Albertans should not be ashamed for taking the lead on economic development and environmental sustainability of oilsands. Technological innovation may well take us to bring our emissions on par with other extraction methods.

Smith: Carbon capture and storage will be a massive sinkhole for government spending. We don’t seem talk about reductions in CO2, we only talk about reducing rate of growth. Simple measures will bring us the furthest: consumer action on home reno, auto efficiency choices.

Q: what do we do about selling our “dirty oil” as some in the US put it?

Smith: one solution on talking about emissions with US may come from honest discussion about US decommissioning coal plants.

Q: what makes an Albertan? What makes us the same and what makes us different?

Smith: “every fiscal issue has a social dimension.” Albertans more disposed to looking to community issues to solve public policy problem. Some think that paying taxes will solve problems. We’re seeing that paying taxes do not provide services. Education and health are suffering because more people are looking to government to solve their problems.

Fawcett: agree with Danielle that solutions come from communities but definition of community has changed. Consider urban condo dweller. Is there community there as we have traditionally defined it?

Smith: we must consider outputs vs outcomes. Government focuses on outputs. We need to focus on outcomes. Found agreement with NDP activist on community involvement. Community connections are vital. Community doesn’t break down in urban environment, it is actually more important. Social media allows us to connect but we must still meet each other eye to eye.

Q: what is the role of society? What is the role of government? What does the “good life” mean?

Fawcett: the society that we want is the one that strikes the right balance. Where would we be without government involvement in the oilsands? Not that we should encourage more government encroachment, but we need to be more strategic. We need to be having more conversations like we’re having here this weekend? Where do we want Alberta to be in 20 years? We need find the vision and implementation strategy moving forward. This comes from individuals and collective society.

Smith: we must acknowledge that we’re a young province. We have every right to look at our next century as optimistically as we saw the last. You can avoid making public policy missteps by looking to the governments to increase liberty and freedom. Libertarians and social conservatives believe that governement has gotten to big for its own good. Stong families and communities are foundation of society. We cannot look to government to solve each problem. Must invest in infrastructure to increase economic growth. Our first objectives as MLAs is to “do no harm”

NDP convention — Saturday summary

Today, the NDP got down to business and discussed policy, policy and more policy. In fact, the difference with Liberal policy conventions and NDP policy conventions, is that at NDP policy conventions, policy is discussed.

I started following the day with interest as delegates debated building an oil pipeline from Alberta to Eastern Canada. The advantages — according to the delegates — would be that such a move would create hundreds if not thousands of jobs and it would maintain sovereignty over Canadian energy distribution as distribution channels now run through the US. The clear disadvantage? That would be a nod to the reality that Canadians consume oil and export oil from the oil sands — a sticky point to a party that ran on a moratorium on future oil sands development in the previous election. In the face of recognizing economic realities and lofty dreams, the party faithful sided with the latter firmly saying “no” to our own oil production and transport.

From there, delegates went onto women in “peace-building” (is this the same as Conservative “peacemaking” — or closer to Liberal “peacekeeping”?) The resolution carried as no controversy could be found in a feel good resolution for everyone. Then foreign aid came up and Libby Davies took the microphone to describe the conditions of the people in the Gaza strip after she had returned from… the West Bank. No mention of Israel, though one delegate found the Canada-Israel Committee’s presence at the conference “interesting”. There was some other drama as some delegates debated the highly generalized language of the foreign aid resolution which described aid to “countries”. One delegate moved to discuss aid on a case-by-case bilateral basis. There were also some procedural debates. One French-language resolution was discussed which may well have been lifted by the Bloc Quebecois mandating the use of the French-language by all Quebeckers. Further, a policy resolution on EI firmed up the party’s position closer to the 360 hour mark similarly being proposed by the Liberals.

Leo Gerard was one of the showcase speakers of the day. The president of the United Steelworkers certainly gave the best crowd-pleasing speech of the day but appealed to the worst elements of partisanship as he, at different times, called both Harper and Ignatieff “the prince of darkness” and called ideological opponents in the US healthcare debate “redneck jerkoffs”. Frankly, if the NDP is to ever be taken seriously, this sort of language is unacceptable from a showcase speaker during the convention of a mainstream political party. In fact, to emphasize the fact that the NDP is still not taken seriously, there will be little to no critical coverage of this language in the MSM tomorrow, as there would have been screaming headlines if this had occurred at a Conservative or Liberal convention.

Next, the results of the party executive elections were announced. Peggy Nash replaces Anne McGrath as president of the NDP while Rebecca Blaikie was elected treasurer. A motion was made to destroy recycle the ballots. Nash served as an MP for the NDP in the 39th parliament and then most recently as an adviser to the CAW. Blaikie is daughter of the former NDP MP and Dean of the House of Commons Bill Blaikie.

Next, Marshall Ganz — a Harvard lecturer and labour organizer — spoke to the crowd about his experience as a community organizer and as a campaign organizer for the Obama campaign. Ganz gave the most informative speech of day for assembled delegates. Though Ganz spoke about the “politics of hope”, the NDP would be better served going negative against Michael Ignatieff as the Liberal leader has left them a lot of room to maneuver on the centre-left. To stake out their place there, the NDP will have to define Ignatieff more aggressively than recent Conservative efforts did with the now famous Just Visiting ads. Particularly notable moments of culture shock were apparent from Obama speakers in their use of biblical parables to illustrate “teachable moments” at this convention. The party of prairie preacher Tommy Douglas has taken a long road eschewing social justice drawn from religious inclination to one taken from a more atheistic worldview and Obama campaigners seemed to be out-of-place making religious analogies to a largely secular party.

After Ganz, the party went back to policy debate and discussed a state-focused nuclear disarmament resolution in a “hey, remember the 80s/something happened on 9/11?” moment. As conflict has moved from cold-war area politics to one with asymmetrical non-state actors post 9/11, the NDP still seems bent on having the same “world without (US) nukes” policy discussion instead of addressing the real and present danger of global terrorism. Another striking moment came during the international policy discussion portion when NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre) suggested that Tamil actions in blocking traffic in Ottawa and occupying a highway in Toronto were legitimate methods for Tamils to get the attention of the Canadian government.

The keynote of the day was Betsy Myers, the COO for the Obama campaign. According to her agency website, Myers banks between $15-20k per speaking arrangement. Myers talk was relatively light and uninspiring for delegates, but involved a Q&A session hosted by NDP national campaign manager Brian Topp. During Myers speech to party faithful, union delegates were notably absent from the speech. While union organizers make up an important part of the NDP field operation, they may have been upset by the party brass importing some expensive American talent to tell delegates about the shiniest new campaign techniques.


Union delegates absent from Myers speech and Q&A

After the Myers segment, Dippers poured out to hospitality events including a Keith’s brewery tour hosted by the NDP Nova Scotia Provincial caucus, that despite just forming government in that province, only managed to bring out five MLAs to the reception. Another big event of the evening was the Charlie Angus-sponsored Canadian Private Copying Collective gathering at the Delta. Of the federal caucus, only Angus and Bruce Hyer were present (a reader writes to inform that Claude Gravelle, Carol Hughes, Malcom Allen, Glen Thibault, Brian Masse, John Rafferty, Andrea Horwath, Ken Neuman, Leo Gerrard, and Andrew Cash also showed up during the event). They were joined by Canadian artists Eva Avila of Idol fame, Chris Cummings, Teresa Ennis, and Marie Denise Pelletier. The other free event was the NDP “tweetup” on Argyle street attended by Paul Dewar, Niki Ashton, Megan Leslie and Brian Masse. The VIPs, not at the brewery tour, copyright party or tweetup, must have been gathered at the Delta for a closed-door $300 “winner’s circle” meet-and-greet with Betsy Myers where MP Olivia Chow reported that Myers said that the NDP “[gives] voice to the voiceless”. Indeed.

Despite an initial setback after the party banned one of their leading activists, the eNDProhibition movement is making its voice heard at the NDP convention and is reportedly being more shrewd than the members of the Socialist caucus who are bluntly and clumsily pushing to nationalize everything. Dana Larsen, the NDP candidate who was fired during the last campaign for being pro-drug, was similarly barred from attending the NDP convention. The advocates for marijuana are looking for any small victory for their cause such as having the resolution on psychoactive substances debated on the floor. The eNDProhibition activists were seen lobbying GLBT delegates making the argument that they too once faced discrimination within their own party (Tommy Douglas’ views on homosexuality).


Some eNDProhibition buttons seen at the convention

Tomorrow will be an interesting day as the convention closes and the NDP debates their convention-headlining moment: the possible rebranding of the party. Observers will note a blue colour has washed over the NDP website and former party communications guru Ian Capstick noted to me that orange is simply terrible on camera. During the keynote, Myers spoke against a blue backdrop complete with “Jack Layton” in large letters overtop a barely visible “NDP-NPD” sitting next to large Obama logo. The party of Layton seems dedicated to embracing the success of the new American president who is for everything from the death penalty, to nukes, to civil unions over same-sex marriage, to two-tier healthcare, to increased troop presence in Afghanistan, to free trade with Colombia, to keeping Omar Khadr locked up. Layton may be embracing the blue colour in a nod to the US Democrats who turned red states into blue states for Obama in the 2008 election. The NDP slogan “it can be done” is somewhat similar to “yes we can” but seems to be more “convincing a disbeliever” in tone rather than a collective and affirmative call to action.

If Marshall Ganz could have given one lesson to delegates it would have been that without a personal story from each and every person about why they believe in your candidate enough to work on your team, the slickest political package and most sophisticated social media operation will never win a campaign. You can fly in the top-paid political talent, but without a strong field team you’ll be spending more time convincing people that “it can be done” rather than everyone believing that “yes, we can”. This weekend, the NDP may yet illustrate that it will fail at its own expensive imported lesson.

UDPATE: The NDP will not change its name. But not for a lack of trying. The delegates were only given an hour to debate an omnibus resolution on party constitution matters. No time was left to discuss the name change. As James Moore says, “everything old is new again”.

CTV’s Canada AM makes a poor edit

Last week, I was watching Canada AM and would have spit out my coffee if I had been drinking some at the time.

I had just seen the program’s Seamus O’Regan interview Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion about climate change, the oil sands, the terror threat against the oil sands and then finally a potential election. It was a standard four minute interview which ended with some rhetoric from Stephane Dion, saying that Harper wants to make the country right-wing, Republican, far right, evil, etc… par for the course and standard fare for Dion. The Liberals have recently been pushing that very message in every QP breath they take.

At the top of the hour, they replayed a clip of the Dion interview which described the Liberals as a moderate alternative to Harper’s “far right” party. Again, inaccurate, but expected. Immediately following this clip, the anchor goes to the next news story to describe “far right” nutjob Ernst Zundel being convicted in Germany. It’s almost as if Dion teed up the ball and CTV drove it 350 yards.

Take a look (Youtube video):

In CTV’s defense, the same “far right” descriptor was used to describe Zundel in the previous top-of-the-hour news update (before Dion had given his interview – Dion went live at 7:40am EST). However, who cuts a clip of Dion describing Harper as “far right” and then gives the anchor text on Zundel describing the Holocaust denier as “far right”?

Also, what’s with the kid gloves Seamus? If Dion uses language to describe Canadian conservatives that CTV reserves for Holocaust denial, aren’t you supposed to call him on that? The proper response would have been “now wait one second there, Mr. Dion…”

For the record, this is editing on live television. I don’t think that there was any malice intended on the part of CTV… the result was just unfortunate. If this had been a pre-packaged broadcast, I’d be quite upset. With that said, I do believe that lessons above (and in the video) regarding language and kid gloves should be considered by CTV.

UPDATE: Should we instead be disappointed with Dion for twisting the misnomer (on all fronts) for his own agenda? Haven’t we heard Dion describe Harper as a ‘far right climate change denier‘?