According to recent polling released by the Pembina Institute, 84% of Albertans think the Provincial government isn’t collecting enough royalties from our non-renewable resources.
Yesterday, Alberta PC leadership hopeful Dave Hancock joined the ever-growing chorus of Alberta political leaders calling for a review of Alberta’s oil royalties. Among those Hancock is joining are Alberta Liberal MLA Hugh MacDonald and NDP leader Brian Mason, who have been calling on the province to review it’s share of oil royalties and the structure under which they are collected for some time.
In July, Energy Minister Greg Melchin announced that the government had conducted and A-OKed the current royalty structure through a secret non-public internal review. This came as quite a surprise to almost everyone in Alberta, including Tory MLA’s and PC leadership candidates Ed Stelmach and Ted Morton, who remember the review being shelved… … Mark Norris wants the royalties reviewed… Jim Dinning was vague, but wants royalty information to be made more public…
Was there actually a review of Alberta’s oil royalty structure?
And on another bizarre note, Premier Klein doesn’t think that Alberta needs a long-term oil sands strategy, something that his government announced it would do back in October of 2005… only about 33 years after original Syncrude oil sands site was built…
Are Albertans going to have an oil sands development strategy?
Maybe they should hire Ian Urquhart and Larry Pratt to do it…
