Re: Alberta's economic diversification plan wins praise from industry
Trust the CBC to put a positive spin on deficit spending and corporate bailouts. So when the dippers give money to industry it is no longer a subsidy but an economic plan.
Even the NatPost/Sun has begrudgingly accepted this plan as overdue, although they are crediting the CONs for it and dissing Lougheed in the process.....
This is nothing less than a revolution planned and directed from the legislature. For sheer scope and ambition, it far outstrips anything done by the surprising NDP role model, the late PC premier Peter Lougheed.
The revolution spreads across climate change, carbon tax, pipelines, green incentives, energy royalties, personal taxes, debt accumulation and, as of Monday, direct incentives to petrochemical companies.
Premier Rachel Notley is determined to fashion a complex new “progressive” economy that cannot be readily dismantled by some stray conservative government of the future.
“It’s a genuine industrial strategy,” Mount Royal University political scientist Keith Brownsey said admiringly after the royalty review was released Friday, “and it’s brilliant.”
It is fascinating to see how the NDP, which is supposed to be inexperienced and incompetent, has pushed this agenda along so quickly that even the opposition parties are forced to keep catching up. They were surprisingly muted Monday.
In his first two years, Lougheed reviewed and raised oil and gas royalties, bought Pacific Western Airlines, and withheld shipping permits from TransCanada (imagine that!) on grounds that prices were too low.
Lougheed was widely condemned as a socialist. People wondered how they could have elected such a foolish novice. But he became a hero after the policies gelled and Alberta began to prosper.
Braid: Notley’s changes add up to an Alberta revolution | Calgary Herald
