Days away from a final decision on Site C, Peace Valley landowners have launched a “Home for the Holidays” campaign featuring photographs of families who would lose their homes to the $9 billion dam and appealing to the NDP government to terminate the project.

Ken and Arlene Boon, who appear in one of the Christmas card-like photos standing on the steps of their third generation farmhouse overlooking the Peace River, said 70 valley residents are waiting “on pins and needles” to find out if the project will be cancelled, a decision Premier John Horgan said he will announce before the end of December.

“It’s tough,” Ken Boon told DeSmog Canada. “I know there are a lot of people right now who are expecting the worst but we are definitely not throwing in the towel considering what we’ve all been through.”

“We haven’t focused on Christmas,” said Arlene Boon, a grandmother of four. “It’s not important right now.”

Ken and Arlene Boon in a 'Home for the Holidays' postcard circulated on social media.

The Boon’s farmhouse, built by Arlene’s grandfather, was expropriated last December for a Site C highway relocation but the former Liberal government gave the couple permission to remain in their home until after last May’s provincial election.

The new NDP government subsequently granted the Boons what Arlene called a “stay of execution,” allowing them to live in their home while the watchdog B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC) conducted an independent review of the project and pending a final decision on Site C.

The review disclosed among many other issues that Site C is over budget, falling behind schedule, burdened by financial and legal issues with its major civil works contractor, and beset with geotechnical difficulties — only two years into a nine-year construction timeline.

“I just find it really hard to believe that the government could make any decision other than to terminate Site C,” said Ken Boon, president of the Peace Valley Landowner Association that represents 70 valley residents who would lose property to Site C’s reservoir.

“I find it frustrating that the lobbyists have come out in full force: paid lobbyists who get access to the key ministers and Horgan,” Boon said, referring to recent efforts by construction trade unions to discredit some of the findings of the BCUC report.

Caroline Beam, who appears on one of the “Home for the Holidays” social media posts with her husband and three sons, said waiting for a final decision has been extremely stressful for her family and is taking its toll on the emotions of her children, aged 7, 11 and 13. They would lose their riverside home near Hudson’s Hope to Site C.

#SiteC #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/epIeg1CJcL

— PVEA (@SavePeaceValley) December 5, 2017

“They have these little wish pyramids and I peeked in and sure enough out of all the things my kids could be wishing for at Christmas time they are wishing for Site C to be stopped,” Beam said in an interview.

“They love their home, they love the valley, they love the river…We have the most amazing home. We could not possibly ask for more. We live in paradise,” said Beam, a school teacher whose great-grandparents lost their home and ranch to the W.A.C. Bennett dam in the 1960s.

“It’s pretty fresh and raw right now. I’m pretty much just doing the best I can to hold it together…If [Site C] moves forward right now, what does that say about our system and our politicians? How do you make your child grow up not cynical?”

Farmers Colin Meek and Leslee Jardine, whose home was expropriated earlier this year for a Site C highway relocation, said the past several years have been very taxing for their family and they are “just patiently waiting” for the final decision. They were also allowed to stay in their house pending a final verdict on the project.

As with other affected landowners and First Nations, the couple expects to learn about the outcome through the media and not directly from a BC Hydro or government representative.

Meek and Jardine, like other families in the Cache Creek area, have had to contend not only with the loss of their farmland but also with disruptive clear-cut logging — in their case, of a spruce and poplar forest that fringed their property — that took place earlier this year for the new $530 million highway route.

“The worst part of it is that it’s changed how we live,” said Jardine. “We can see our house from the highway now and we can hear the traffic.”

“I’m hoping they do the right thing and cancel it. I’m trying to be positive.”

The Peace Valley Landowner Association and two Treaty 8 First Nations have repeatedly asked BC Hydro for the detailed documents about why the new highway route was chosen over a second shortlisted route. The centreline of the new route would cut through the Boon’s farmhouse, the Meek farmhouse, the Boon’s family run campground, and a First Nations cultural area.

BC Hydro has declined to release the detailed documents that outline the relative merits and costs of the two shortlisted routes, saying that the chosen route will affect less agricultural land and offer more passing opportunities for drivers.

Even if Site C is approved, the Cache Creek highway relocation will still be a matter of contention.

B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office ruled in late August that BC Hydro’s design for the new highway bridge at Cache Creek is out of compliance with its Site C environmental assessment certificate. The BCUC review highlighted the Cache Creek bridge and highway route as a potential source of additional cost overruns.

The EAO also ruled that BC Hydro must consult with First Nations on mitigation for a cultural area, sweat lodge and grave sites impacted by the proposed highway route. The West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations have said that the desecration of gravesites is “not acceptable” in their culture and that the only feasible mitigation is to move the highway route.

The First Nations also stated that a rerouting of the highway would not alleviate their opposition to Site C, which they say is an unjustified infringement of their constitutionally protected rights under Treaty 8. If the project goes ahead, they say they provincial government will face a $1 billion lawsuit.

The landowners said they are circulating the Christmas-themed cards on social media because some of the debate about Site C has focused on the optics of construction workers receiving “pink slips” before Christmas.

“It’s not about having a job, it’s about having a home,” said Beam. “The valley is irreplacable.”

Yesterday BC Hydro released its Site C jobs figures for October, showing that 400 workers were dismissed after it published widely-circulated figures for September.

According to the Peace River Hydro Partnership, the main civil works contractor for the project, almost 100 workers were laid off in October and early November. The layoffs of 30 people in early November were “part of a series of planned scheduled lay-offs” over the winter, according to a statement the partnership emailed to DeSmog Canada.

BC Hydro has still not stated how many days or weeks a worker must be employed to be included in monthly jobs statistics, and whether or not dismissed workers are counted in Site C employment statistics in any given month.

The October jobs tally shows 1,974 people employed by Site C. About 475 are either “engineers” or on BC Hydro’s Site C project team. Contract engineers account for an additional 210 jobs.

Image: Ken Boon at his home in the Peace Valley. Photo: Garth Lenz | DeSmog Canada

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Generations of John Morris Sr.’s family have fished the Taku River in Southeast Alaska and for decades they have watched acid mine drainage from the abandoned Tulsequah Chief mine in B.C. flow into a tributary of the Taku.

Now, with a new NDP government, running on support from the Green Party and a shared promise of reconciliation with First Nations and a commitment to the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Morris is hoping there will finally be some action on the Tulsequah Chief clean-up.

Indigenous and conservation groups in Alaska, who are ready to put pressure on B.C.’s new government, are pointing to a previous statement in the Legislature by Green Leader Andrew Weaver who said the Tulsequah Chief gives B.C. “an environmental black eye.”

“We have worked on this for so many years now, one day it’s going to fall on the right ears,” said Morris, spokesman for the Douglas Indian Association.

The area around the salmon-rich Taku River is sacred to Southeast Alaskan tribes and cleaning up the mess around the Tulsequah Chief is vitally important, especially given growing unease as larger mines open on the B.C. side of the border, according to Morris.

There are 10 advanced mining projects in the northwest corner of British Columbia.

“Hopefully something can be done. As soon as the right people are in the right places (in the new government) there will be some ears we can bend,” he said.

Premier designate John Horgan is expected to announce his new cabinet later this month. In a brief statement emailed to The Province, Jen Holmwood, caucus spokeswoman for the NDP, said cleanup of Tulsequah Chief “is a serious issue we’ll be looking into and have to say more on in the weeks ahead.”

Hopes ran high the mine would be cleaned up after former Liberal energy and mines minister Bill Bennett visited the mine site in 2015 and promised to remedy the situation. However, after leaving Alaska, where he had appeared shocked at the extent of the pollution, Bennett started backtracking and claimed there was no environmental threat.

The small zinc and copper mine has polluted the surrounding area since it was initially shut down in 1957 and a litany of clean-up promises were broken as the mine passed through a series of owners, including two companies that went bankrupt.

In September 2016 Chieftain Metals Corp., the latest owner of the mine, went into receivership, but the receiver, Grant Thornton Ltd., has posted documents on its website showing an unnamed company is interested in buying Chieftain’s stock.

However, groups in Alaska want the mine closed, not sold, especially as, by buying stock rather than the assets, the new company would be able to use Chieftain’s existing permits and would not have to consult with the Taku River Tlingit First Nation.

The Grant Thornton documents say many government permits and licences necessary for the operation “have consent rights” as a condition.

“The purchase and sale of the shares of (Chieftain) may obviate the need for any such assignments and consents,” according to the documents.

Morris is adamant that the Tulsequah Chief is not a viable mine and it’s time to clean it up and close it down for once and for all.

“Two mining companies have gone bankrupt trying to re-open this mine and have left a legacy of toxic acid mine drainage into salmon habitat. B.C.’s assurances of mine clean-up seem hollow with B.C. more interested in re-opening this failed mine, rather than cleaning up its 60-year legacy of pollution,” he said.

Alaskan Hopes Pinned on New BC Gov as Sale Looms for Polluting #Mine #bcpoli https://t.co/0gp9vs8brn

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 5, 2017

Chris Zimmer, Rivers Without Borders Alaska campaign director, said the new government needs to take a new look at Tulsequah and repair some of the damage to Alaska/B.C. relations done by previous governments.

“This is a (Christy) Clark/Bennett leftover that the new incoming B.C. government should end,” Zimmer said.

“Trying to re-open the Tulsequah Chief a third time is not a clean-up plan. It is a recipe for another bankruptcy, more pollution and opening up the heart of the Taku to mining and road building,” he said.

Lack of consultation about a new buyer for the mine, despite the signing last year of a Statement of Cooperation between Alaska and B.C., is bringing rumblings of discontent and renewed calls for the two federal governments to become involved in transboundary mining problems.

“If B.C. can’t solve the pollution problem at the relatively small Tulsequah Chief, what can we expect at much larger mines, such as Red Chris and KSM, especially without federal involvement under the Boundary Waters treaty,” asked Frederick Olsen Jr., United Tribal Trans-boundary Mining Work Group chair.

The cooperation agreement is similar to relying on the Neighbourhood Watch program, when police are needed, he said.

The Mount Polley disaster weighs heavily on many Southeast Alaskans who wonder what would happen if there was a similar tailings dam breach on the border, with poison reaching one of the major salmon-bearing rivers.

“It wouldn’t just be the salmon, it would be the whole ecosystem — the bears and wolves and every other creature that depends on this,” Morris said.

“We’re all for economic development, but let’s do it safe.”

Image: Taku River. Photo: Chris Miller via Salmon Beyond Borders

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Nearly two months have passed since the polls closed in B.C. and at last British Columbians know who will get to form government.

On Thursday, upon the conclusion of a no-confidence vote that ousted former Premier Christy Clark, NDP Leader John Horgan has been offered the opportunity to lead a new B.C. government under a historic partnership between his party and the Greens.

While B.C. awaits the swearing in of a new premier, we thought we’d take the time to tally up some critical promises the NDP and their Green collaborators have made on the environment file.

So Long, Site C?

The NDP and Greens have promised to send the controversial $9 billion Site C dam in B.C.’s northeast for an expedited review by the B.C. Utilities Commission. Site C is the most expensive public infrastructure project in B.C.’s history and numerous experts  have come forward to question the need for the electricity the dam will generate.

The dam will flood 107 kilometres of Peace River valley, displacing residents and flooding valuable agricultural land and sacred indigenous sites.

The Utilities Commission review will look in detail at the cost of the project and demand for the power — something that until this point hasn’t been done.

Supporters of the dam say B.C. will eventually need Site C’s power and that the 2,000 jobs created by the project are reason enough to let the dam go forward as planned. But with less destructive and cheaper alternatives more available now than ever, the debate over Site C is a complicated one.

A preliminary report-back is expected to take about six weeks once the new government takes power.

The Kinder Morgan Pipeline Battle Levels Up

In their agreement to work together, the NDP and Greens have committed to “immediately employ every tool available” to stop the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain oilsands pipeline running from Alberta to export facilities in Burnaby.

There are a number of ways the pipeline, which has already received federal and provincial approval, can still be stopped.

The pipeline is currently being fought by local First Nations who say the project’s review process failed to meet legal guideline for consultation. The province could also implement other regulatory processes the pipeline must pass.

The pipeline is supported by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, so how Horgan and Weaver deal with the project will likely involve some sort of messy political showdown.

What BC’s New NDP Minority Gov’t Means for the Environment https://t.co/lShnokdBtX #SiteC #KinderMorgan #CarbonTax #IndigenousRights #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/dqn356cnaz

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 30, 2017

Step Up the Carbon Tax

B.C.’s famed carbon tax languished under Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberals. The former ruling party froze the tax and created exemptions for some of the province’s biggest polluters.

The NDP and Greens plan to increase the carbon tax by $5 per year starting in April 2018 in an effort to bring the price up to the federally mandated price of $50 per tonne by 2022.

The carbon tax will also be re-jigged to deal with the major climate problem of fugitive emissions, greenhouse gasses that leak or are vented from the province’s massive gas projects and transmission lines. These emissions have been poorly measured and wildly underestimated, so bringing them more fully under a carbon tax regime is important for meaningful climate action.

Beefing Up B.C.’s Project Review Process

There have been major systemic problems with B.C.’s environmental assessment process. These problems have led to a lack of public trust in how major projects are reviewed and approved in the province.

The NDP and Greens have committed to revitalizing the environmental assessment process, which goes hand in hand with a major review and improvement of the federal process.

Respect for B.C.’s Indigenous Peoples

Whether it’s pipelines running through traditional territory, the Site C dam flooding sacred indigenous sites, or the cumulative effects of industrialization leading to species extinction, many First Nations communities are on the frontline of B.C.’s biggest environmental battles.

The NDP and Greens have stated explicitly that a foundational part of their political partnership is the two parties’ shared adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Both parties also take to heart the significance of the historic Tsilhqot’in Supreme Court Decision and what that means for untreatied First Nations in B.C.

Many First Nations are fighting off multiple mining, oil and gas and hydro projects in their traditional and treaty territories across B.C.

If the NDP and Greens take indigenous rights truly to heart, this could mean big changes for the way projects are evaluated and given the go ahead.

Funding for Transit!

For all those daily grind commuters near big cities, this should be an exciting one.

In their agreement, the NDP and Greens promised to “act immediately to improve transit and transportation infrastructure” to “reduce emissions, create jobs and get people home faster.”

Shifting into a New Economy

Renewable energy hasn’t gotten the foothold it has needed in B.C. and there are ways to make the transition to a clean, 21st century economy easier. That’s what the new “Emerging Economy Task Force” is designed to do.

This task force will look at the changing nature of business in B.C. over the next 10 to 25 years.

One way the NDP and Greens want to prepare for the changes ahead is by shifting from a measure of GDP ( gross domestic product) to the use of a new metric: the Genuine Progress Indicator or GPI.

Under old GDP rules, anything that is of profit to society is considered of benefit. But analysis has shown that while disasters like oil spills may be a short-lived boon to the economy, they can degrade other measures of social wellbeing like health, safety and a clean environment.

The GPI measure will help B.C. understand, measure and prioritize those opportunities that represent a truer benefit to British Columbians.

Electoral and Campaign Finance Reform

The current political system is set up to advantage the wealthy and powerful. But with changes to how campaigns are financed and run that could help put power back into the hands of the people.

The Green party in particular would benefit from the two parties’ shared commitment to electoral reform. In the fall of 2018 a referendum will be held to ask British Columbians if they want to switch to a proportional representation system.

The NDP and Greens have also promised to ban big money in politics at the first available opportunity. The new rules will place an outright ban on corporate, union and out-of-province donations to political parties and also limit the amount individuals in B.C. can give.

As a bonus, the NDP/Green agreement also lays out a plan for revising lobbying rules that prevent politicians from becoming lobbyists for several years after leaving office.

These promises signal a big change in B.C., where fossil fuel and mining interests are some of the most powerful lobbyists and political donors.

Image: NDP Leader John Horgan and Green Leader Andrew Weaver sign a coalition agreement, May 30, 2017. Photo: B.C. NDP via Flickr

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The recommendation of an Alberta review panel not to raise royalty rates paid by oil and gas companies to the province is an economic disaster and represents a capitulation to Big Oil and its financial backers, say a variety of critics.

Released last Friday, a five-month review into the royalty system argued that low global oil prices had placed Alberta in an existential quandary and that no increases should be considered in royalty rates.

Royalty rates are not costs or taxes, but a price a company must pay to the owner for the right to develop the resource.

For 35 years, the former Tory government of Alberta consistently lowered royalty rates to among the lowest in the world. At the same time it saved almost nothing for future generations.

But the long-delayed review, commissioned by the new NDP government in 2015 as the result of an election promise, concluded that the “current share of value Albertans receive from our resources is generally appropriate.”

The review added that Albertans should stop focusing “on questions of ‘are the rates right,'” and look more “on what changes need to be made to our royalty framework to position Alberta and our energy industry to address the challenges of a very different environment and outlook for the future.”

The review then recommended maintaining current royalty rates for wells drilled before 2017 and setting a generic rate — five per cent — for all new oil and gas wells drilled after 2017, a policy equivalent to grading and selling all cuts of beef as hamburger.

Such a policy, if adopted, would lower Alberta’s royalties by another billion dollars a year, estimated Jim Roy, an Edmonton-based royalty consultant and a former senior advisor on royalty policy for Alberta Energy.

The new generic rate will reduce the current 30 per cent royalty rates for high-valued products such as propane and butane to five per cent.

Alberta’s total royalty revenues from hydrocarbons in fiscal year 2015/16 were approximately $2.8 billion — a mammoth decrease from modest highs of $10 billion or more during the boom years.

Investor, not owner friendly: expert

Roy said the government’s review is completely off base and doesn’t address the real issues.

“We have low prices now. Why encourage more production and more investment which will only bring oil prices lower?” asked Roy.

Given that the global oil glut has largely been caused by overproduction by Canadian bitumen miners and U.S. oil shale frackers, Alberta should increase royalties to decrease production and thereby eliminate inefficient and high-cost energy extractors, Roy said.

Since 1998, oil sands production has soared from nearly 800,000 barrels a day to more than 2.3 million barrels a day, largely due to cheap credit, low royalties and other government incentives and subsidies.

Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in the province has also been driven by a three-year royalty moratorium imposed in 2009. That royalty holiday guarantees companies high returns up front and little for the owner of the resource until the well is exhausted.

Fracked wells typically experience 60 to 80 per cent depletion rates after three years of operation.

The review takes the perspective of an investor, not the perspective of an owner, charged Roy. “In order to optimize returns to Albertans, the government needs to think like an owner,” added the royalty expert.

Two of the review panel’s key members — Dave Mowat, president of the Alberta Treasury Branch and Peter Tertzakian, managing director of Arc Financial Corp — both work for firms that invest billions in the oil patch.

The panel’s analysis, according to Roy, “ignores the effect of increased production of Alberta bitumen on either the local price of bitumen or the world price of oil. The plan appears to be to increase Alberta production at the maximum possible rate despite low prices… This strategy may help American consumers, but does not help Alberta owners.”

Roy’s analysis, reported in The Tyee last year, found that the province’s last royalty review in 2007 actually shorted the province more than $12 billion in royalties during a time of high oil prices.

Former premier Ed Stelmach promised Albertans that the new formulas for calculating royalties would increase Alberta’s “fair share” of hydrocarbon profits by $2 billion a year, beginning in 2009.

But that didn’t happen. Instead of increasing royalties by $2 billion a year, Alberta’s “fair share” plummeted due to bad forecasting and major flaws in how the province collects natural gas and bitumen royalties, Roy said.

As a result the province, which has recorded annual deficits of billions, has failed to collect $12 billion in royalties over the last five years, he said. The new review failed to correct those problems, Roy added.

In 2010, an industry-drafted, behind-closed-doors “Competitiveness Review” further eviscerated recommended increases and made rates lower than they were before the 2007 during a period of high oil prices.

‘Shockingly bad,’ says researcher

Regan Boychuk, an independent researcher who sat on one of the review’s advisory expert panels, called the review’s conclusions “shockingly bad.”

“The review simply rearranges the chairs on the deck of the Titanic and locks in all the bad decisions and Tory giveaways of the past,” he said.

One critic interviewed by The Tyee also said that raising royalties wouldn’t affect economic activity because the worldwide average government take is already about 60 per cent.

In Alberta, the share has plummeted from a 40 per cent high during the Peter Lougheed years to less than four per cent today.

Increasing very low royalties in fiscal systems that have a low overall government take will not have any significant impact on the competitive position of such resources, said analysts.

Low royalties ‘a foot on the accelerator’

Barry Rodgers, a former high-ranking Alberta civil servant in the Department of Energy and a fiscal systems expert, noted the review barely mentions that the former Tory government consistently failed to save revenue (except under Lougheed), collect its fair share as mandated by the government policy, or report to citizens in a transparent and open manner on royalty issues.

Instead the Tories consistently lowered royalties during periods of price volatility, resulting in a downward trend for royalties over the last 35 years.

These low prices, which guaranteed companies easy returns regardless of their performance, actively contributed to over production, reduced competitiveness and encouraged little or no innovation. Low royalties also overheated the economy.

According to Rodgers, the current royalty review got off to a bad start by assuming that Alberta’s royalty system worked well and just needed some fine-tuning.

But the province’s royalty system is broken, he argued, and has been causing serious damage by subsidizing uneconomic activity. The report even notes that 27 oil sands projects, which inefficiently inject steam into the ground to melt bitumen, may never reach payout “due to excessive cost overruns.”

The new review also repeats mistakes of past royalty reviews, which repeatedly responded to earlier price collapses by lowering royalties, Rodgers said.

These low royalties, in turn, stabilized economic activity but became dismal failures when commodity prices began to rise again. Oil remains the world’s most volatile commodity.

“The lower royalties then acted like a foot on the accelerator,” explained Rodgers, “at a time when prices were already high enough to attract the levels of investment needed.”

In the process, low royalties served as a hyper growth policy that aggressively pushed into existence large, long-lived projects “that are difficult to stop and start in response to commodity price fluctuations.”

The province’s chronic low royalties also caused another problem, he said: as a declining royalty share became significant enough, it caused the public to “distrust in the resource management system.”

In other words, low royalties made it impossible for the government to earn extra revenue when prices were high and deprived the owners of the resource their fair share.

The only way for Alberta to break this disastrous royalty pattern is to slow down development, said Rodgers, as well as curtail extreme projects that need royalty relief by increasing royalties in a system that saves wealth in trust for future generations.

Alberta’s royalty policy, said Rodgers, is not consistent with the fundamental resource and environmental management notion of “In-Trust.”

That notion, long abandoned by the Tory party, reflects the principle “that current generations have a moral obligation to not leave future generations worse off.”

Missing comparisons

Although the review claimed that Alberta’s royalty rates are comparable to other jurisdictions, it failed to compare Alberta to the jurisdictions that matter most such as Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. The review, for example, makes but one mention of Norway.

Boychuk also said that the review failed to provide true comparisons that took a critical look at real government pricing around the world.

To gauge the appropriateness of bitumen royalty rates, for example, the review hired Wood Mackenzie, a firm that advises oil and gas companies.

It based its conclusions that current rates were adequate on the imaginary performance of a 35,000-barrel-a-day steam plant operation that might extract bitumen by 2022, Boychuk said.

“That’s not a comparison to real rates that are currently employed by other countries. Wood Mackenzie offered no meaningful comparison with other countries such as Venezuela or Saudi Arabia,” said Boychuk.

According to research by Rodgers, for example, Norway charges resource developers 78 per cent of the net income from oil and gas production while Alberta charges 50 per cent for conventional oil and 37 per cent for natural gas.

The report, however, avoided such comparisons other than noting that British Columbia has the lowest royalties for natural gas and that Saskatchewan managed its hydrocarbons to generate economic activity as opposed to wealth for the resource owners.

Gil McGowan, leader of the Alberta Federation of Labour and a long-time champion of royalty reform, rebuked the NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley for supporting the review.

“Some people say the NDP have come face to face with reality. I say what happened can best be described as the government being captured by industry,” McGowan told Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell.

“I honestly think the government has made a profound political mistake,” he said. “We don’t believe progressive governments have to become conservative to deal effectively with economic issues or to succeed politically. That’s a fallacy.”

In its submission to the royalty review panel, the Fort McMurray First Nation called for modestly higher bitumen royalties and warned the Notley government not to listen to advice offered by financial institutions such as those represented by some members of the review panel.

“The financial institutions that constitute the capital markets obtain their revenues by providing services to savers and borrowers. Large projects such as in the oil sands, and the companies that invest in them, are valuable revenue sources and attractive clients to these institutions. The inclinations of these institutions will always be to want to see more attractive investment opportunities, from which they will benefit by providing them with financial services. They are not likely to provide unbiased, objective views on matters such as royalties.”

In another submission, the economist Mark Anielski reported how the province would have benefited if it had kept Lougheed’s approach to a robust and healthy royalty regime.

“Had Alberta maintained a 30 per cent royalty rate on the share of the value of the oil and gas produced between 1971 to 2014, Albertans would have generated $471.4 billion in oil and gas royalties. Had 50 per cent of these royalties been invested in the Alberta Heritage Savings and Trust Fund with annual average return of five per cent per annum we would now have an investment account worth over $481 billion.”

The current savings fund holds less than $20 billion.

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