Paul Coffin gets off easy...

So, a judge appointed to the bench by the Liberal government lets a Liberal party hack (who has plead guilty to defrauding the taxpayers) off with a conditional sentence and thus he will have to spend zero days in prison.

Sacre-bleu!!!!

I am appalled. The man is a crook. He should spend a good period of time in prison to ensure as a warning to those who might try this again. But instead he gets a slap on the wrist and the party insiders know they can try it all again once the dust settles and the Liberals have a majority again.

And I fear the sheep of the electorate will give them that sooner than later.

What is wrong with Calgarians?

How is it that the people of Calgary as a generic whole vote in Conservative members both federally and provincially, yet elect tax and spend Liberals to run the city???

Mayor Dave Bronconnier wasted $67,000 of taxpayers money this last week sending out a pamplet to every household in the city, and airing radio commercials of him sending a message. The message?

That the federal government collects 67% of the taxes from the city of Calgary, the province collects 29%, and the city collects only 5% to pay for all the city's services. And that because of this the city should get more money from the other levels of government....

OK - first lie laid bare: The city may only collect 5% of the total tax revenue, but the city receives vast portion of the budget from the province in grants, and large infusions from both provincial and federal governments for infrastructure funding.

Second - certain services in the city, such as education and health care are not paid for AT ALL by the municipal government.

Third - Bronco claims the city needs more money. Yet they've raised property taxes 5% this year, and promise to raise them 14% over the next 3 years.

Fourth - During the last 10 years that Edmonton and Ottawa were tightening belts, the City of Calgary did not ONCE reduce expenditure in any department or reducing staffing.

So Dave: The message to you is to find ways to spend LESS money, not demand more.

Recommendation to Ralph Klein, re: Fiscal Policy

Ralph,

Obviously, Alberta has a lot of money flowing in right now, and with projections that oil prices will stay in the $40+ range for years to come, will likely be flowing in for a good long time.

Unfortunately, your government doesn't have a clue what to do with the money... here are my recommendations:

1. Reduce corporate taxes to <7%.>
2. Increase the personal tax exemption from ~$20,000 to $50,000. This way many lower income Albertans would not have to pay income taxes to the province at all.
3. Alternatively, abolish both corporate and personal income taxes. Create a provincial sales tax of 3% and harmonize it with the GST. This would give a net 10% sales tax (still lower than other provinces), and would replace income tax revenues.
4. Eliminate health care premiums. These are minor and sadly regressive tax on the poor.
5. Twin the highway to Fort McMurray and upgrade the rail infrastructure to make it easier to construct the future oil sands projects. We need more and better ways to get material from outside Alberta to the oil sands. In particular the railway should make it possible to bring heavy loads from both the Saskatchewan border and the Montana border.
6. Take a chance on more private medical provision, and allow private medical insurance for non-emergency services. It is sad to me that I can spend my money to get surgery in India or Thailand but I would have to wait in line in Alberta.
7. Put surplus money into the Heritage Fund and invest it. Create an investment board similar to the CPPIB so that we can grow the fund outside of just putting government revenues in.
8. Do NOT send out cheques to the public. This is a waste of money and is inflationary because people will just spend it.
9. Increase or remove the threshold for "rebates" on energy bills. Albertan's should not get a significant price reduction over what other people in North America pay. We already get the benefit of the oil industry through low taxes.

The Technical Bard

What Alberta should do!

Danielle Smith has written and excellent column that I didn't catch when it appeared on 3 September. Thanks to Adam Daifallah for flagging it!

Her column is good, but Link Byfield's group has a very good proposal for what should happen to try to fix this country once and for all.

I'm all for it.

Sharia (Islam) and Western Civilization

So McGuinty has rejected calls for sharia law to be used in family arbitration in Ontario, and is going further to ban all religious arbitrations.

Good.

First of all, the separation of church/mosque/synagogue and state is a very important premise of free and democratic societies. We should not have religious rules restricting the freedom of individuals. Paine, Hobbes, Locke and Montesqieu would be rolling in their graves had McGuinty not made this correct decision.

(I can't believe I'm congratulating a Liberal - but in this instance he is behaving like a classical liberal).

Now I'm going to go on a little diatribe about the conflict between Islam and Western Civilization and why I believe the conflixt exists and why there is no easy answer.

Western civilization, which has evolved from a Christian underpinning, went through a period consisting of the Reformation and the Enlightenment a few hundred years ago. The Reformation first broke the control of the Catholic Church on society, and the Enlightenment continued that path by providing an alternative to Christian thought, by birthing the idea of secular society.

Freedom and true representative democracy (such as exists in western civilization), could not exist if not for these changes. Religious control of a society limits it's ability to move forwards, because religions are fixed in the past and are clearly threatened by change. In western civilization religious freedom is allowed (you can believe whatever you want), but religious beliefs and cultural practices are not forced on individuals.

The Muslim world has not had an enlightenment. Yes, during the Arab caliphates that existed from 632 until 1259 there was scientific and cultural advancedment, but there was no freedom for the general public from the rules of the faith. In most Islamic societies today, even where the sharia is not strictly applied, there are still rules in society that are imposed by imams, families and the state that limit the freedom of individuals.

Women for instance have little freedom in Muslim society, and Muslim society has little understanding of secular freedoms and the idea that someone can choose not to be a believer. And in the Islamic world, there is no strict concept of the separation of mosque and the state. They are one in the same, and have been since the time of the first caliphs in Damascus.

Until the Islamic world learns the teachings of the Enlightenment, or has one of their own, the conflict between Islam and the West will continue.

Nationalize??

So the latest polling shows that half of Canadians want the oil industry to be nationalized... because of high gas prices.

This is an example (a very good one) of why Preston Manning (great guy) was wrong. Populism is no way to run a country because it can lead to very bad decisions by a very uneducated public. If we had referenda to change laws, we just might nationalize the oil industry and run it into the ground.

Silliness from Paul Martin re: Oil

OK... yesterday I'm driving around town and I hear on the news that our illustrious Prime Minister is "ordering" an increase in oil production to help the American's out after the disaster on the Gulf Coast.

Most of the public will hear this and assume that the government has some sort of control over oil production and that we had significant excess capacity being held back due to the actions of government.

Except that it's a lie. The Government of Canada has no capability whatsoever to control rates of oil production. At US$68/bbl, oil production was already at maximum because who would be stupid enough to hold back profits???

Yes, the government may ask oil companies to hold off on planned maintenance that would curtail production, but I suspect that at current prices shutdowns are being avoided anyway...

Today I read that we are going to increase production by 91,000 bbl/day. I suspect that is production Alberta is going to add through the lifting of conservation regulations. And it's a drop in the bucket compared to the total national production of 2,400,000 bbl/day.

Oh - and for you folks who think that the conservation regulations might be about conserving resources (ie. environmental-type conservation) - you'd be wrong. Conservation in this context means conserving the integrity of the resource to maximum recovery over the life of the reservoir.