Is Cold Lake going to get its Cash?

The City of Cold Lake is waiting sometimes not so patiently to see if they are going to get some relief from their estimated $150 million dollar operational, infrastructure debt. The Province's Lloyd Snelgrove and crew are looking at all the options to reroute tax revenue from the Air Weapons Range drilling and oil sands operations into the coffers of the City.

For the past several years, these monies have been pouring into the bank account of Lac La Biche county which only a slight geographical connection to the "Range" in that it is next door to the west. While LLB county receives this money it does little if anything, to help service the "Range" with things like roads, hospitals, or people for that matter. The bulk of that load rests with the MD of Bonnyville, the City of Cold Lake and the Town of Bonnyville. There's also involvement by the Canadian Department of National Defence (4 Wing Cold Lake - Air Base) who operates training sessions on the "Range".

The story began many years ago prior to the finding of all that black stuff buried beneath the surface and when the province  chopped up some crown land and turned it into wilderness parks and green spaces. Adjacent counties were offered the spaces to look after and since most of it was spruce and pine trees, some nice lakes and abundant wild life most administrators thought that it would just stay that way and let whoever wanted to do the paper work annex it to their existing land base.

Then, Imperial Oil, the grand pubbah of oil companies started a pilot plant to see if the black stuff could be extracted. It was expensive at the time because the sand had to be extracted from the oil and technology to do so hadn't been invented yet so Imperial parked their pilot plant and waited for science to catch up. (I'm sure they weren't waiting but had their own scientists working on the technology to make it profitable for them and their shareholders).

Fast forward 25 years and Imperial has just pulled their Billionth Barrel (yes, with a B - billion) and they have been joined by all the major oil field players like Husky, CNRL, Cenovus, Devon, Shell and a few smaller players who are all working diligently to harvest the black goo from the sand formations some 800 to 1500 feet underground.

Bonnyville from the Southwest

It must be worth something because each of those companies have invest 100s of Millions in structures, Leases, drilling, hauling and processing equipment and personnel. All those people must live somewhere and they have chosen Bonnyville and Cold Lake to live in with their families. The centres are located to the south and south-east of all this action and in order to get to the sites, roads are required and that's where the MD comes in. They are responsible for most of the roads leading to the plants and lease sites except for the major highways which the province is responsible for. The city of Cold Lake  and the town of Bonnyville are responsible for providing schools, fire halls, hospitals, roadways, recreation and all the infrastructure neccessary to support the people who work at these oil facilities.

Unfortunately, local taxes aren't often sufficient to pay for all this so when an alternate revenue source appears on the northern horizon its only natural to lay claim to some of the tax revenue that issues from that resource.  There in lies the dilemma.

While the MD receives a pretty tidy sum of the revenue from oil related activity outside of the range and they share some of it with the communities within the MD boundaries there still doesn't seem to be enough to go around. Meanwhile the tax revenue from the "Range" goes to Lac La Biche county which provides no support to this area.

When the Province redirects that money from Lac La Biche County they'll have to find a solution to replace that money and it will likely stir up another storm because there is oil development between Lac La Biche and Fort McMurray it's northern neighbor.  The revenue from that area currently flows to Ft. Mac and the regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo who has all the tax revenue from the huge plants that exist north of that community. With reserves as large or larger than Saudi Arabia I'm thinking there's more than enough to go around.

I'm hearing this morning that an agreement is about to be signed next week to redistribute this revenue by next Tuesday. I can only hope that when the dust settles everyone has what they deem is their fair share.  Stay tuned folks this ain't over yet.

Editor's note: The opinions and story line are mine alone and represent an amalgam of information gleaned from discussions, readings and information available at the time of publication.  Enjoy.

Who's Going to be the New Premier?

If you've been following the media lately there are six people who are jockeying to become the next Premier of Alberta - at least for a little while.  Yes, for a little while for a couple of reasons. First off, there is a a four year election cycle set up in Alberta and that would put us around the middle of March for the next provincial election. Secondly its up to the new Prem when to call and election and whoever gets in might want to fast track it to catch other parties off their game.

By off their game, I mean they may or may not have a leader in place i.e: the Alberta Libs, they might not have enough candidates nominated in each constituency and their war chest might be a little light in coin of the realm.  We'll have to wait and see who emerges as the winner and its likely going to take two ballots.

Here's the card for this month's race (alphabetically by last name so there's no favouritism) Doug Griffiths, Doug Horner, Gary Mar, Ted Morton, Rick Orman and Allison Redford. I have met the first two and have known one of them for a number of years.  The balance of candidates I've seen in forums, previous occupations and of course news programs.

Each of these folks have been beating the bush for supporters since Premier Ed turned them loose and Its still a crap shoot as to who has the leading edge. If you listen to the social media specialists who follow each camp its their candidate who is the sharpest, wittiest, greatest responder and breather and sigher and any little thing to get them trending. I'm sure that several of them took lessons from Mayor Nenshi in Calgary who appeared out of nowhere on Facebook and became the number one bureaucrat in Cowtown. Who'd a thunk.

Well, I've listened to a lot of folks lately who keep telling me. I don't do Facebook, I don't do Twitter and I have dial up so I can't watch the forums online. How the heck am I going to get to know these people and determine if I want to hire them to handle my tax dollars in an efficient way. Yes I know there are or were eight forums lined up in strategic cities or towns but it wasn't always convenient for people to make the trek. (I said were because there's only a couple left in Edmonton & Calgary). A couple of the candidates have made it up here to Northeastern Alberta (Doug Horner & Rick Orman) but the others have stayed away or just been too busy I guess.

Its really too bad because its turning off quite a few supporters and that's making it difficult on the local committee who will be running these polls. Over the next little while we've got four full days where we'll take time from our jobs and our families to staff the advance poll on September the 13, the first regular election day on September 17 then the next advance poll on September 27 and then the final election day on October 1st.  Our volunteers are going to be spread pretty thin if we don't get a few more for our two locations. If you're interested. Just send me an email. My contact info is on my profile.  Oh, and there are two polls, one in Bonnyville at 5211 - 47 street (the New Ag Society office and former MD Service Office) and one in Cold Lake at the Tri-City Mall. Hours of the polls are from 9 am to 7pm with a couple of hours tacked on to the 17th for counting votes.

We will survive I'm sure and we will get a new leader and that person will be the new Premier at least for a while.