CALGARY C Vowing not to sit back and “do nothing” as the province struggles via a prolonged recession, the Alberta government is getting ready to intervene more directly within the downstream end of the energy industry and also the petrochemical industry.
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“We possess a, very difficult economy here in Alberta as a result of a do-nothing approach previously,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley told reporters Tuesday prior to the reading of the Throne Speech.
“We are here to act like a shock absorber,” she said of the government’s role in the present downturn.
Notley announced that her government would form an Energy Diversification Advisory Committee to “look in a wide range of initiatives that may enhance value-added efforts in Alberta.”
The new committee is outside of the Premier’s Advisory Committee on the Economy, which was announced in October.
With the Energy Diversification committee, the NDP government needs advice on making more incentives for oilsands upgrading, for more petrochemical processing and for other “value added” industries in Alberta, while also signalling it’s available to various methods to “enhance the economics” of these projects.
Notley cited the province’s recent announcement of the $500 million subsidy for businesses building petrochemical projects in Alberta, as one example of the way the province could create incentives.
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At the same time, she didn’t eliminate the kind of incentives the previous Progressive Conservative government offered a refinery project that the NDP criticized during Opposition.
The previous Progressive Conservative government committed money and it is barrels of royalty bitumen to the North West Redwater Partnership’s Sturgeon Refinery. The first 50,000-barrel-per-day phase of this refinery happens to be under construction north of Edmonton at an estimated cost of $8.5 billion.
“There isn’t any questions that (the committee) will in part analyze the effectiveness and also the value-for-dollar that Albertans received for that Redwater project and that we may look at tweaking it to generate better, or perhaps the same,” Notley said.
Encouraging the introduction of more “value added” processing in the energy sector would be a key part of the NDP’s election platform last year.
In accessory for developing more incentives for that oilsands upgrading and gas petrochemical processing, the province will demand more cash in the authorities for unemployed Albertans.
“Alberta is also vigorously urging Canada’s new federal government to reconsider federal Employment Insurance rules that exclude a lot of Albertans from benefits,” Alberta’s Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell said during the government’s throne speech Tuesday afternoon.
During the speech, Mitchell said the provincial government would also pass into law its climate change policies announced late this past year and can include a $30-per-tonne carbon tax beginning in 2017, but didn’t provide additional details on what that legislation would include.
The premier confirmed throughout a press conference the Climate Leadership Implementation Act would not be passed until after the NDP introduces its budget, which is expected to include a $10.5 billion deficit.
Mitchell also said the federal government will even introduce legislation to limit the eye rates payday loan companies are allowed to charge borrowers in the province in addition to laws that will encourage the “national harmonization” of securities regulations in Canada.
gmorgan@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/geoffreymorgan
