– After a bizarre year of seemingly picking fights with the Alberta Teachers’ Association, it looks like there finally might be some resolution to the long-smoldering teachers unfunded pension liability issue.
Yesterday, the Tories announced that they will be investing $6.4 billion to deal with the issue. I haven’t any details of the deal, but this is a long-standing issue that has been on the mind of a lot of Albertans for a long time. Hopefully this issue will be resolved so that the government can now deal with the other critical issues facing Alberta’s education system.
– I attended session in the Alberta Legislature yesterday afternoon and have two main observations…
1) It was a little rich of Ed Stelmach to praise Stephen Harper’s electoral redistribution that gives Alberta five more seats in the House of Commons while at the same time 2/3’s of Alberta’s population is represented by under half of the seats in the Alberta Legislature.
I also noticed that Drayton Valley-Calmar Tory MLA Tony Abbott boisterously cheered the disparity when Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft pointed out urban Alberta’s underrepresentation in his response to Stelmach.
2) The bizarre contradictions that Ed Stelmach and disgraced Energy Minister Mel Knight continue to make regarding Auditor General Fred Dunn’s allegations that the Tory Government failed to collect up to $6 Billion in royalties over the past 7 years due to mismanagement and gross incompetence.
In Question Period yesterday, it was pointed out that on November 7, Ed Stelmach told The Canadian Press that as a Minister in Ralph Klein’s cabinet, he was never made aware that reports from the Department of Energy recommended that Alberta’s royalties be increased.
Here is where the contradictions begin…
Stelmach to CP: “In the time that I was around the Cabinet table…there was nothing coming to me…”
Mel Knight in the Legislature: Knight said he couldn’t release internal documents itemized by the Auditor General in his review of royalty rates because of “legislative protection with respect to some information that’s provided to the Cabinet.“
How can a document both not exist and be secret at the same time?
I think Stelmach may need to get someone other than Tom Olsen to write his talking points.
