Tony Hladun

These conversations, as normal, wander all over the place. To me the main point is Canada is going backwards in just about every area. In our obsession to make everyone equal with programs like Equalization we are moving to the lowest common denominator. If we made everyone in the world equal then we would all be poor.

Calgary Herald; This is a glimpse at their respective ratios of health-care bureaucrats to populations: Canada has one healthcare administrator for every 1,415 citizens. Germany: one healthcare administrator for every 15,545. There's the problem and what's going on now will only make it worse. This applies to other government functions as well. The Feds and every Province have to get an oar in. Want to get something done...make it the responsibility of one person. Want nothing done...make a committee.

The Alberta Sovereignty Act tries to address these problems. In Canada "too many cooks spoil the soup".

When oil flows in the line and tankers sail out into the Pacific, then it will be reality .

I have faith in the people of BC and the Federal Liberals. We'll see.

I'm afraid they might have bought it to kill it. When tankers start sailing through Vancouver there will be enough outcry that I'm afraid the whole thing might just get shut down. (Yes, there's a lateral to the US but that's just selling more to the US.) And don't worry about the money, this is a guy who's thrown away hundreds of billions so what's another 20.

You make undecipherable quips that say nothing to a reader. Try writing a sentence.

I was the Canadian CEO of a tech company and we did business in every Province (well not PEI). To be able to sell to Quebec we had to prove we were spending as much in Quebec as was our revenue. We put our Ottawa office in Hull to meet that hurdle. My wife pointed out that what Quebec was doing was currency control (money could not leave the Province). So let's talk about dirty!

I feel very sorry for all police officers that are killed in the line of duty, but we need to look at what's happening here. The justice system is an industry. Defense and prosecution lawyers get paid good money to argue with each other. Judges dress up funny, sit on raised platforms, call the court theirs and they get paid a lot of money. The whole justice system gets well paid. So what do they need as an input for this industry to prosper...they need criminals committing crimes. In reality any reduction in crime is a loss of business to the justice industry and so it goes. Sadly the police get caught in the literal crossfire. To fix this governments need to pass laws with teeth and little room for interpretation. Unfortunately, governments are seeded with lawyers and are too gutless to pass anything. Governments have abdicated their responsibilities and the legal industry has used it to its benefit. Again, my condolences.

OK, I am afraid and angry because you're spending all your time vilifying fossil fuels and Alberta by association but you don't have an alternative. I challenge you to come up with something better now, not hopes and dreams of some magic battery that will appear in the future or Trudeau's hydrogen when the Germans need natural gas now. I know you'll come back with all the things that might, could, possibly, someday happen but that's just not good enough. What you're offering is poverty and pain. Here's something I wrote a while ago. The Persians invented the windmill in about 600 AD. Then for about 1,000 years, until the dawn of the industrial revolution, the earth used green wind and wood energy; no fossil fuels. On the evolutionary scale humans were just as intelligent then as they are today so they could have invented many things. Yet at the end of that period the earth could support a population of only about 600 million people mostly struggling to survive. The economy was agricultural with most of the labour energy supplied by serfdom and slavery. Not a glowing achievement for the green economy.

Oil is part of our identity and now I've told you why. What's the spin now?

CTV News "Non-renewable resource revenue is forecast at $28.1 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year. That's a record-setting number, far surpassing the previous high of $16.2 billion in 2021-22. It comes on the heels of oil prices in the US$100-a-barrel range during the first quarter update." That's nearly half of the Provincial Budget. That's why oil is important to us. You're clutching at straws, come up with something better.

Ah...hopes and dreams...hopes and dreams. I'm talking about what we've done already. Let's just talk about something that's available today...small scale nuclear. It's been used since the 1950's to power large warships and submarines; as I recall about 170. So far though it's all talk as if it was something new but no action.

blackbird, Just a comment on something more specific, the CBC article you quote is out of date and the figures are therefore wrong for today. What it does show if you look at today's numbers is that while everyone talks Alberta has actually done something. Those damn Alberta rednecks, they keep doing things.

"What? Where did you get those figures? I think you need to check into that further." You need to read my posts carefully, understand the difference between capacity and demand and you need to look at the AESO website. You'll then see what I say is true and why it's actually a problem.

To the reader. I think that this thread has sufficiently demonstrated that with some people there is no interest in working with Alberta and there is a high level of hate. They have reaffirmed that they're interested in knifing Alberta in the back as I said at the start. That is why we need the ASA. Let's just watch Europe this winter because it will show what happens when you substitute dreams for facts. Enough said on my part.

We export heavy oil to the US because they have refineries that were originally set up for Venezuelan heavy oil so they want it. Alberta can export light light as well. So you're wrong on that account. This Financial Post article contradicts your indegenous claim. https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/we-are-very-disappointed-loss-of-northern-gateway-devastating-for-many-first-nations-chiefs-say Indigenous peoples are beginning to realise that real local development is better than what they're getting from Victoria. Canada was/is a very easy target for anti-fossil fuel lobbies. If they tried that stunt with the other big oil producers the US, Russia or Saudi Arabia they wouldn't get very far. If there were payoffs we should look at the anti-pipeline money first. The pipeline route follows a highway and rail track and is not "virgin territory". You may have a different opinion but you play very loose with the facts.

I've been involved in designing and building pipelines most of my life. I did projects in NS, NB, QC, MB, SK, AB and BC so I have some experience. TMX will be a disaster waiting to happen. Shipping that much oil through Vancouver harbour and the Strait of Juan de Fuca is not wise. It was a political decision made by a drama teacher and his friends. Once TMX starts up (if it does and that's still a big if) public outcry and real safety concerns will shut it down and that's just what Ottawa wants, but Vancouver might pay a heavy price with a major spill. Throwing away $20 billion on TMX is nothing compared to $576 billion on COVID so that doesn't concern Trudeau. The Northern Gateway line (but to Prince Rupert) is the one that made engineering and environmental sense. That one would have worked and BC could have benefited by developing a second major export port, taking the pressure off the lower mainland and the inside passage and having tankers safely go directly to the open ocean. Sadly BC might get what they want but at a huge cost. If BC had thought about it they could have benefited economically and environmentally by supporting NG but they fell for Ottawa's trick.

It doesn't. You're right.

If you actually read what I said it is that we all have priorities...yours being salmon. I also said that if we worked together salmon could benefit as well. Mick Jagger said it best "if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need". Blind hate serves no one.

I'm being facetious. Does this happen? Almost certainly not...but it can. Hypothetically on the right day and with wind/solar having preference then theoretically half of Alberta's load could be wind/solar. I'm trying to point out that much of alternate energy is dreams and hopes. That would be fine, but in the meantime they're doing harm without benefit. There's a saying that in theory there's no difference between theory and practise, but in practise there is. This is a perfect example. To put some numbers to from the dashboard the 30 day average wholesale price is 21.7 cents per kWh. Several years ago I signed a 5 year contract at 7 cents per kWh. So prices have tripled. Moonbox, haven't your prices shot up as well?

Infidel Dog, Thanks for looking and your question. The maximum capacity of the Alberta grid is 18 GW whereas the net generation (Provincial load) averages around 10 GW. That's where my 50% comes from. The figure you show on the right is the maximum capacity (18 GW). So why do we need 8 GW over the average load. Well first we need 5 GW to cover off wind/solar when they're not producing. When I was on an AESO Board the wind/solar came on line first (not sure about now) so everything else had to accommodate it. The remaining 3 GW are partially necessary to provide security in case of shutdowns/failure in the system and also to handle peak demand. The electrical system needs to work 100% of the time. Also if you look at the dashboard you can see how wildly the Pool Price swings. This presents operational strategies because if you can run your plant for a few hours a day at a very high price you can make a good buck. Don't blame the players because that's the way the game is set. Now if you look at Total Net Generation on your figure on the left you see how little wind/solar actually contributes. I'd say money spent on gross overcapacity with little positive and probably negative effects. But hey, when wind/solar are at max generation we're at 50%.

Alberta now has about 4.7 GW of wind and solar generation capacity and our normal Provincial load is about 10 GW. Yippee, we're at 50% so isn't that wonderful. Trudeau and his entourage should be here for wind-cutting ceremonies. Well no, half the day the sun doesn't shine and a lot of the time the wind doesn't blow hard enough so the actual generation is way below the capacity. Well that's no problem, let's just build more capacity. That's were the problem gets even worse because to give wind and solar preferred access to the grid causes supply and demand to go unstable. AESO is now issuing load warnings. You can't start conventional generating plants fast enough and you can't match the changes in wind speed. We normally used to pay 5 to 10 cents per wholesale KwH but now the price varies and can go up to $1 per KwH (https://www.aeso.ca/)...yikes. The same thing has happened in Germany with their headlong rush to alternate energy. Let's line up the innocent consumers because they're going to pay. P.S. You might say this isn't a Federal issue and the hell with Alberta, but it's the Federal Government that's pushing us headlong into this so that's why I posted it here.

A rant and a lecture, the weekend two for one special. Look at it from the perspective of Ontario and Quebec...if they got rid of us they'd meet their 2030 emissions targets and the world would love them. Who wouldn't want that? They should be showing us the door.

Queenmandy85, It's always politics. I was trying to just state a few facts. If Alberta's energy resources have no future value in the new magic world would it not make sense to exploit them now? If we're looking for practical solutions, what are yours? In the 1970's I worked on the design of the control systems for the Bruce and Darlington nuclear reactors. Nuclear power was (is) a large part of a good solution. We should all remember that the Ontario reactors were largely financed by Ottawa and not Ontario. But if you really want to hear whining, mention nuclear power.