{"id":1528,"date":"2007-10-01T21:42:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T01:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1528"},"modified":"2007-10-01T21:42:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-02T01:42:00","slug":"billion-dollar-boondoggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1528","title":{"rendered":"Billion Dollar Boondoggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alberta’s Auditor General brought down a scathing report <\/a>today that contained almost half a dozen scandals inside of it. If you closed your eyes and imagined yourself in federal politics, or any other province, you’d have to see this as a fatal blow…because this is right up there with the worst reports Sheila Fraser has delivered. Kevin Taft has already called for an election <\/a>and this report will certainly shift the focus away from Stelmach’s<\/span> impending decision on the royalty review. Because the question is no long whether or not Stelmach<\/span> will implement the full report – we all know he’ll make major changes. That’s a no brainer<\/span> at this point. And I don’t mean “no brainer<\/span>” in the sense of “it’s a no brainer<\/span> for anyone but Ed Stelmach<\/span><\/em>” – even Ed <\/em>will pull this one off. He’ll try to spin it as standing up to the oil industry but, by this point, there isn’t a politician alive who wouldn’t make major oil royalties changes in Alberta. It’s not really “leadership” when any brain dead primate would make the same decision.<\/p>\n

The real question Stelmach<\/span> needs to answer is why a government he was a Cabinet Minister in failed<\/span> to act. He needs to explain why Ralph Klein and Greg Melchin<\/span> repeatedly said government studies showed Alberta was getting its fair share<\/a>, when the opposite was true<\/a>. You want a billion dollar boondoggle? How about this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Alberta government knew as far back as three years ago that Albertans could collect at least another $1 billion a year from the oil industry, provincial Auditor General Fred Dunn said in his annual report.<\/p>\n

The report, released Monday, paints a damning picture of lax accounting and accountability in the province\u2019s energy ministry<\/strong>, years before the release of a royalty review panel report last month that concluded Albertans are not getting their \u201cfair share\u201d from oil and gas development, and should be collecting another $2 billion annually in royalties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe principles of transparency and accountability, I believe, were not followed<\/strong>,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cI\u2019m not impressed<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunn said the province has had all the information it needed to harvest another $1 billion in royalties for years without harming the oil industry, but kept that information to itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither this information nor the reasons why changes have not taken place have been made public,\u201d his report said.<\/span> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite this, Stelmach is still backing Greg Melchin<\/a>. Now, by itself, lying to Albertans to cheat them out of several billion dollars is bad. But there’s more:<\/p>\n

1. Remember the fuss over golf balls at the federal level? Well, Tory MLAs<\/span> have been spending up to $50,000<\/a> a year on gifts including “including golf balls, fridge magnets, books and watches.” One wonders if Santa’s gift budget is that high…<\/p>\n

2. MLAs<\/span> have been claiming exorbitant<\/span> bonuses<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Some MLAs<\/span> have collected surprisingly high monthly living allowances, or have given huge bonuses to their constituency staff, Auditor General Fred Dunn said today in his annual report.<\/p>\n

In one case, a part-time constituency aide earned $18,000 a year, but received a bonus of $21,500. Three other MLAs<\/span> doled out bonuses of more than $15,000 a year.<\/p>\n

“The current guidelines that allow for unrestricted lump-sum payments to be made to employees are counter to the goal of equity and put the integrity of the system as a whole at risk<\/strong>,” Dunn writes in the report.<\/p>\n

Out-of-town MLAs<\/span> are using “needlessly complex” rules to simultaneously tap several different pools of cash for their living expenses in Edmonton.<\/p>\n

In March 2007 alone, one MLA<\/span> claimed $5,425 and three others claimed $5,075 for a month for which a monthly capital residence allowance was $1,750.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3. A Mark Norris aide spent $50,000 <\/a>on the government tab over three years without submitting<\/span> any receipts. Norris himself racked up $10,000 in undocumented expenses on his own.<\/p>\n

All this coming after what amounted to nearly weekly patronage<\/a> and<\/a> spending<\/a> scandals<\/a> throughout<\/a> September<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Considering how loudly right wing Alberta screamed against the federal Liberals for similar transgressions, one wonders how much longer they’ll put up with this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alberta’s Auditor General brought down a scathing report today that contained almost half a dozen scandals inside of it. If you closed your eyes and imagined yourself in federal politics, or any other province, you’d have to see this as a fatal blow…because this is right up there with the worst reports Sheila Fraser has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,49,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2008-alberta-election","category-alberta-politics","category-scandals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}