Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
Published: Thursday, October 04, 2007Excerpts:
The dishonesty here runs fast and loose. At one point, the panel cautions that royalty issues are so complicated that even a "thoughtful person" who expended a reasonable effort "simply could not reach a reasoned judgement" as to whether Alberta's royalty regime was fair. But that didn't stop the panel from flirting with poll results and implying public opinion favoured higher royalty rates. And now opinion polls of the ignorant, fuelled by the panel report, are sweeping Alberta politics.
The panel claimed to have lofty economic logic on its side, as opposed to lowly public opinion. It rummaged around the globe to come up with hundreds of pages of analysis, reports and appendices to allegedly prove that Alberta's royalty and tax system has been falling behind the rest of the world. These analyses are shoddily presented, to the point where the report doesn't even bother to prove its case. It essentially just makes the assertion: "Alberta's total take has fallen over the years." If you don't believe it, figure it out for yourself -- but we know you can't!
The argument is that other countries have been increasing their oil and gas royalty and tax revenues, but Alberta hasn't. Probably true. Argentina, Mozambique, Equador, Nigeria, Angola, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Algeria, Venezuela and Libya appear to have increased their share of resource revenue over the last few years. Libya went from 80% to 95%, but rampant nationalization in Libya hardly serves as a rational case for raising royalty rates in Alberta.
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