Yeah - Warming in Calgary - not Global

Warm air comes to Calgary after deep freeze. A former co-worker of mine has his own weather station and website www.wx.ca. The below image shows the temperature trend in the last few hours. Woo woo - put away the parka!

Question for Ed "#asked"

Premier Stelmach has asked Albertans to "ask Ed": on twitter using #asked questions. I had inquired about potential hydrocarbon exploration incentives in September of this year. I will reissue my question to the Premier using this new media referring to this blog page. Below is my email to AlbertaConnects@gov.ab.ca, Premier Ed Stelmach (http://www.premier.alberta.ca/contact/contact.cfm) and my MLA Alana Delong (Calgary.Bow@assembly.ab.ca):

Ms. Delong,

I see that the provincial government is extending energy incentive programs:
http://www.theenergynews.com/news/article.php?storyid=4607&newstype=gov

This is all fine and good, but there is another sector of the energy industry that is not targeted -new exploration.

New oil and gas exploration employs many more people than existing exploitation and leads to extraction jobs as well. Seismic jughounds, surveyors, geophysicists, geologists, accountants, landmen, regulators, natives, seismic processors, and more are hurting just the same if not more than the actual producers.

I believe that there should be an exploration incentive, not just an exploitation and drilling incentive. This would open up new areas for production in Alberta and also be forward-looking into the future for further energy provincial supplies.

Is the government considering any incentive plans for new exploration?
If not, I believe that when the upturn finally happens, there will be a lack of qualified personnel for real hydrocarbon exploration in Alberta due to companies shutting down operations.

Cheers,
John

Note: Employment numbers may not be accurate, but my point was that there are many related downstream jobs created from exploration.

I received a quick (automatic?) email response from my MLA and AlbertaConnects. AlbertaConnects forwarded my letter to the Department of Energy, from which I have received no response. Sadly, only Ms. Delong responded directly. She left a phone message at my house and followed up with another email requesting my mailing address to which she sent the following letter (opens in a new window or tab):


Clearly, Ms. Delong and/or her staff did not understand that in order to have "rig crews and drills in the ground", exploration must occur. She missed the whole point of my communication. You cannot willy nilly get a rig and drill and pump in random locations in Alberta (and pay royalties)! In order to have future reserves - even oil sands reserves - there needs to be some form of new exploration. Unfortunately, this economic downturn has had devastating impact on the exploration side of the business. In many service companies, over 50% of staff have been let go. Entire G&G (Geology and Geophysics) departments of oil and gas companies have been disbanded.

The tone of Ms. Delong`s mail implied that the government is only interested in current cash flow and not future cash flow. For Alberta to be successful there needs to be new reserves on the horizon, not just depleting current reserves. My thoughts were for government to provide companies with forward looking ideas for finding Alberta`s new reserves, incentives to reach those goals, just as they are providing the companies that have already been down that route and are now drilling or pumping.

Questions for the Alberta Tories

"Who in the PC party could do any worse than Ed?"or "Who wants to be head of government in a recession?" or "Who in the PC party will admit they made mistakes with: oil and gas royalties, raises for cabinet, H1N1 roll out, Bill 50 - transmission lines down our throats (and lousy media ads too!), wasting money for re-branding the province “Freedom to Create. Spirit to Achieve” - BLAH & LAME, etc. etc.

Update:
Mike Blanchard of AM770 CHQR read my email on air this afternoon (09Nov2009). Basically paraphrasing the above comments.

Balloonboy/Liberal Editorial Cartoon from "Metro"

Balloonboy/Liberal Editorial Cartoon from "Metro" October 19, 2009. Maybe not such a bad idea for Iggy and the Libs?

Premier takes pay cut of 15%, but he increased his pay by 34%?

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach announced today a personal pay cut of 15% http://tinyurl.com/stelmpaycut. However, he failed to mention that in May 2008, his personal salary was increased by 34% http://tinyurl.com/stelmraise. Additionally, earlier in 2008 all politicians received an increase of 4.7%.

Salary $152140 pre-March 2008.

Salary with 4.7% increase $159,291 March 2008 ("mandatory....")

Salary with 34% increase $213,450 May 30th, 2008.

Salary with 15% decrease $181,432 October 2009.

So the 15% gesture is just that.... a gesture.

This does not take into account all the tax-free portions......

I had to take a real 20% decrease in my salary due to the recession.

Actually more now that commission has been reduced by half....

See the premier's speech here.... http://www.premier.alberta.ca/speeches/2009_Premiers_Address.cfm

Former Winnipegger near top of poll to replace Diane Sawyer - VOTE HERE

Taken from www.charlesadler.com:

A former Winnipegger, Ashleigh Banfield, is one of the top two contenders in an online poll conducted by TVNewser.com asking who should replace Diane Sawyer on ABC's Good Morning America.

Banfield is best known for her coverage from New York during the 2001 terrorist attacks.

VOTE FOR ASHLEIGH here.

Update: Ashleigh Banfield Wins the GMA Co-Anchor-Off

Kanye West Likes Fish Sticks

Kanye West Likes Fish Sticks. I guess that makes him a gay fish! And hates successful teenage white female singers:




Kanye West Storms the VMAs Stage During Taylor Swift's Acceptance Speech

His "apology" on Jay Leno's new talkshow was less than humble and believable.
Excerpt from msn online report below:

West took a long pause when Leno asked what his mother would have said about the incident. West was very close to his mother, Donda, who died in November 2007. He said yes when Leno asked whether his mother would have given him a lecture.

Stelmach Doesn't Congratulate Hinman

Paul Hinman of the Wildrose Alliance wins the Calgary Glenmore byelection.
Premier Ed Stelmach's official news release does not give congratulations.

Ezra Levant tweeted that:

Classless Stelmach doesn't congratulate Hinman in byelection news release. The sore loseritis begins. http://bit.ly/bEpas #calgaryglenmore

The Official Statement from the Premier (which may have changed from the screen capture above taken at ~10:35pm) is pretty classless.

City of Calgary to Install Pedestrian Cameras

The City of Calgary along with the Calgary Police Service have announced today a new program to install pedestrian monitoring cameras at locations where the current intersection safety "speed on green" cameras exist. The Intersection Safety Camera program now consists of 45 intersections monitored by 36 cameras throughout the City of Calgary. The new pedestrian monitoring camera system with be linked by a wireless network to a centralized computing centre where a high-powered supercomputer cluster will run cutting edge facial recognition software. The system will be linked to motor vehicle branches, local police, RCMP, and INTERPOL databases to access face photographs. In addition to monitoring for criminal activity, the system will automatically detect jaywalking, loitering, and panhandling. A positive facial match when a criminal or civil act is in action will result in photos and video recorded for prosecution. For civil charges a ticket will be sent out in the mail.


Should you require any further clarification please contact Sergeant Clive Marsh of the Traffic Section, at 403-567-4000. Please do not contact him for media inquiries, especially on or after April 1st!

Canadian Bank Lending Rates

Measures need to be taken to ensure that banks pass on savings when prime interest rates are lowered. It is my understanding that the Bank of Canada lowers the prime interest rate in part to encourage lending and make borrowing less expensive for consumers and businesses. The prime rate is now at an historic low of 0.5%! In my experience, the banks are changing the relationships between mortgage products and their own internal rates to get around the lowering interest rates.

As an example, my bank has a prime rate of 2.5% - a value that is 2.0% higher than the Bank of Canada rate. My variable rate mortgage is up for renewal next month. Currently, I am paying a rate of 3.25%. This is all well and good, but the new mortgage products that are available now do not match that rate, even though the Bank of Canada prime rate has been reduced! The new mortgage plans all have a +0.8%, or +1.0%, or higher adjustments to the bank's internal prime rate. I was told by my banking officer that all banks are performing the same adjustments. This is not fair. The lowest variable rate I can now obtain is 3.3% or 3.5%. Why should my rates go up at all when the prime rate drops? I realise that many may say that it is only a difference of 0.05% or 0.25%, but with house prices still at many times an average income, it can have a large effect on post-mortgage expendable income.

If all the banks are acting together with changes to their mortgage products, it is collusion and they are effectively a banking cartel instead of doing business in a free market economy. I hope this kind of practice is not one of the reasons why the Canadian banking industry is the healthiest in the world. To me, it just seems like a profit-grab, kind of like the Canadian banking fees, except this is more blatant.

If you consider this important, please email the prime minister (pm@pm.gc.ca, HarpeS@parl.gc.ca), the minister of finance (FlaheJ@parl.gc.ca), and your member of parliament (do searches of the government directory at the government of Canada website.).

Change Americans Can Believe In?

UPDATE: 04Feb2009
I guess change is good. President Obama seems to be leaning to ease the "buy American" protectionist measures in his stimulus package. Leaders from around the world have been putting pressure on the American government to avoid trade and tariff restrictions akin to the 1930s.

Michael Ignatieff message to Liberals

A possible speech from Michael Ignatieff:

I declare that the Liberal party will support the Conservative government's proposed budget. I am instructing all Liberal Members of Parliament to vote in favour of the budget.
Except in Newfound and Labrador, where they can vote any which backward way they wish, as long as they vote one-half hour after the rest of their Liberal caucus.

Do the Liberals Know how to Spell Their Leader's Last Name?

On the day that the Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff informed the public that his party will monitor the effects of the Conservative budget, but basically approve it, I decided to check out the ( Liberal website ). I clicked for the leader information and noted that no-where in the bio is Michael's last name in the text. His wife's full name is listed: Zsuzsanna Zsohar - whose name is even harder to spell.... But I cannot find Ignatieff. It is mentioned in the Latest Headlines link section though.....

Here is the direct link:
Information on the Liberal Leader at http://www.liberal.ca/leader_e.aspx

Just in case, they decide to update their site find below a screen capture as of January 28, 2009, 13:14 MST.