Power purchasing change is just more hypocrisy

Energy minister Ken Hughes' announcement of changes to electricity purchasing rules, as if it were some kind of benefit to consumers, is simply another example of government saying one thing, while doing something else.

Yes, it is entirely possible that extending the forward-buying powers of power utilities for four months, instead of the current six weeks, will result in some savings in the cost of power.

But those savings will be so small that very few of us will be able to see the change on our monthly bills. Far more likely, the savings will just disappear into the bottom line of the utilities.

More, if consumers could actually realize a drop in price, I doubt a whole lot of us could find the appropriate numbers on their statements to prove how many pennies were saved over the period of a month by this announcement.

The critics are right about Alberta's foray into deregulation of electricity; the government just doesn't get it.

Nobody should need an economics degree and maintain a constantly-updated spreadsheet program to make the comparisons that will determine if they're getting a fair deal in Alberta's so-called free market in power. Buying power is not like going to the grocery store and comparing the cost per hundred grams of the various sizes of canned beans.

You can almost see Hughes throwing back his hands and rolling his eyes, when he's asked why so few Albertans lock their power rates into long term contracts with suppliers. Why do the majority of Albertans — me included — opt instead for the floating rate?

The answer is simple. We don't have any data presented in an understandable form that would show how locking in is a good idea for anyone other than the utility. The utilities simply won't provide it. Stemming from that is the perfectly understandable response of widespread consumer distrust of the utilities.

In our household, we've tried the long-term fixed rate option and the floating rate option, with three different providers over the years. In our experience, there is no difference between them. The bills only go up over time.

No matter how diligent you are in unplugging things that are not used, if you switch to more efficient lighting and run around turning things off all day long, there is no noticeable savings in the monthly bill. You may feel better about your carbon footprint for your effort, but there is no financial reward to a residential customer for conserving power.

Simply put, if everyone in Red Deer was as much a cheapskate as me, the drop in demand would have absolutely no effect on the cost of supply. And even if it did, you would notice no more money in your pocket at the end of the month for your diligence.

The cost of the power is such a small portion if your monthly bill, you would need to severely crimp your lifestyle for conservation to have a noticeable effect.

Demand — therefore presumably (laughably?) price — is driven by industrial consumers, not by people in their homes who only use their clothes dryers in the middle of the night.

That's how power deregulation in Alberta has evolved, and neither forward buying by utilities, nor university-level price comparisons of delivery options will save you the price of a cup of coffee per month.

When ranting about free markets and deregulation of power, one must also acknowledge that under Alberta's system, the total cost is more honestly expressed. It's more costly, but it is more honest.

In Saskatchewan, for instance, the whole system is owned by SaskPower. The province (that is, the taxpayers) own the generators, the power lines, the power meters and the whole billing system.

Customers there don't fully know what portion of their bill is due to costs of production, infrastructure, delivery and administration. More than likely, parts of some of these costs are contained in the general tax system. Pension costs for retired SaskPower employees comes to mind, as one small example.

Therefore, monthly bills will be lower — consumers are mostly likely paying for some of it elsewhere in the provincial budget. 

But we pay through the tax system, too. The investors in private power generators, and the private builders of power lines get significant grant and tax support from taxpayers. That, plus a guaranteed minimum rate of return, with profits built into the power rates, access fees, admin fees and every other confusing thing you see on your bill.

Tory ideology says that private industry is always better — at everything. The profit motive always makes products and services more efficient and cheaper for the consumer, than, say, the same services provided in Saskatchewan by the government.

You'll just never see it on your power bill. Ken Hughes should stop pretending otherwise — it's embarrasing. 

What's in a royalty?

Back in the last provincial election campaign, newly-chosen Progressive Conservative Party leader Alison Redford was in the fight of her party's life. A whole lot of people didn't think the Tories would actually receive its usual coronation.

That meant Redford had to spend time with the lowest of political life forms — that being newspaper editorial boards in small centres. I've been doing this job for a long time, and I can't remember a sitting (or even campaigning) premier ever wasting an hour with the likes of me.

That' s one whole hour she will never get back, and one which I will not likely forget.

Details on what was said are muddled by poor memory and worse archiving of interview notes, but one detail does stand out, because I challenged her on it. She said then that Alberta was losing more than $100 million a month of potential energy revenue, due to a lack of pipeline capacity.

I was wondering if I heard her correctly, so I asked her to say it again. Redford affirmed that, yes, that was what she said, and her press secretary promised to get back to me with exact figures, if I wanted them.

Over a hundred million a month. And today, that adds up to about $6 billion annually in provincial revenue that could have been collected if Alberta's oil sands could recover that “price bubble” the premier referred to last week.

That's the discount on oil sands bitumen below the benchmark West Texas Intermediate price of oil. The final figures for 2012 have just been posted, and the WTI, averaged for all of 2012, was $95.07. The last budget was based on a 12-month average of $99.25.

The cost of the “bubble” is beyond my capacity to guess because it changes every day, but Alberta finance minister Doug Horner recently told the Calgary Chamber of Commerce it has reached as high as $47 a barrel.

The average discount is reported to have been about $10 more than what the government had budgeted for last year, which was just under a $16-per-barrel discount.

That's the difference between WTI and the real price of Alberta bitumen. The concern for the province is that we (the resource owners) only get royalties on the bitumen price. Even though nobody buys bitumen — nobody can, it won't flow through a pipe.

In fact, hardly anybody buys the diluted bitumen that is proposed to flow through the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast and then to China. Even that is too crude a product for buyers — and is considered too costly to transport profitably.

Right now, there is no such thing as a major pipeline carrying dilbit, or diluted bitumen, much less a double pipeline carrying the diluent back to the source, like Northern Gateway is supposed to be.

What the pipelines are carrying today is semi-processed West Canadian Select , a partially upgraded synthetic crude that operators like Syncrude or Alsands can almost make to order.

The differential on that is less, but Alberta still only gets royalties based on the price of raw, dry bitumen that nobody buys.

Even at that, bitumen royalties accounted for fully 10 per cent of all provincial revenue in the budget year 2010-2011. At this time last year, prognosticators were prognosticating that bitumen royalties would cover 20 per cent of all government revenues by 2014-2015.

These days, bitumen is worth about $50 a barrel, and we owners get something like 4.7 per cent of that, on projects that have not yet fully recovered their cost. At $50 a barrel, minus royalties and production costs, it takes a long time for a multi-billion-dollar mining and upgrading operation to pay for itself.

For comparison, when Peter Lougheed first created the Heritage Fund, he expected Albertans to take a royalty rate of about 35 per cent.

But don't feel too angry at those foreign owners who are still realizing good profit on roughly 1.85 million barrels a day. Considering all of Canada's big pension plan investors, chances are good that most every Canadian with an RSP portfolio has a piece of that action.

The big corporate decisions may be made by foreign boards, but most of the money still stays here, and governments in every province tax it.

So what's with the panic over the $6 billion “lost” revenue, and the hard decisions said to come in the budget? Horner and Redford have both been in government long enough to know about price cycles.

What's with the panic is that through cycle after cycle, the government has every time failed to save more than pocket change in the good times. We've eaten all the returns of the Heritage Fund, and consumed most of the money in the Sustainability Fund that replaced it.

We have nothing, other than a lack of a sales tax, to show for it — and the rich benefit from that most of all.

While we take the long view and wait for the cycle to turn yet one more time, just watch the Tories recycle old promises to be prudent with your money — and your share of the energy royalties.

'Hurry up" demographics and seniors care

You can't separate questions on the future of health care in Canada, from the reality of demographics. In the years to come, geriatric care is going to become a larger and larger portion of total spending.

Where will the money come from, to complete that portion? We'll need to decide that in a hurry.

Long-term care for seniors has become a leading wedge for increasing the level of private care in the total health care package.

And the issues involved with that are playing out pretty well as predicted.

Even though a single-payer tax-funded health care system is acknowledged to be the most efficient — and humane — method of seeing that the most people possible get the best general health care possible, universal health care can never really be universal in a public system alone.

In a free society, there will always be people who want to choose something more. As Canada's demographic bulge of baby boomers progresses into senior citizenship, a significant niche has grown, giving people the choices they want in long-term care.

Large, well-funded private care providers have convinced the governors of the public system that they hold the answer to shortfalls in capacity.

As predicted by critics for years, part of that answer involves paying workers less in the private system for the same work done in the public system.

A corporation can't ask investors for hundreds of millions of dollars to build long-term care centres across the country without those investors wanting a return. In fact, a lot of them are putting their own retirement savings into companies like Symphony, which now faces an imminent strike/lockout at Symphony Senior Living Aspen Ridge in Red Deer.

There are 154 people living at Symphony Senior Living Aspen Ridge, and it takes 130 workers in a variety of jobs, to keep them. The province currently funds 44 supportive living beds there, which includes beds for people with dementia.

In order to operate within the provincial funding program — plus make a profit — private care companies need to pay their workers less than they would get doing the same work elsewhere. Up to 25 per cent less, if you ask their union, the AUPE.

This is exactly what critics of privatized care have said would happen. The crux at Symphony is that we're no longer talking about seniors and their families making choices in a free society. The public health care system has come to depend on private care providers for long-term care for seniors.

There is no publicly-funded place for these residents to go, other than back to the costly active treatment beds at hospitals that many likely started from.

There are only four roads out of this impasse:

• Provincial taxpayers must increase the level of funding for these for-profit care facilities, sending tax dollars to pad the profits of investors;

• Symphony clients will need to pay significantly more to stay there, plus likely accept cuts to levels of service;

• Staff will need to accept wages far below what they could earn elsewhere;

• The province will eventually need to take over facilities in financial trouble, or where investors have decided to take their money out and put it into areas that provide a better return.

There is a fifth option, one proposed by the finance minister of a country whose demographic advance is somewhat farther along than Canada's.

Taro Aso, Japan's new finance minister, has been quoted around the globe advising his nation's elderly to “hurry up and die.” More, he referred to seniors who could no longer feed themselves as “tube people.”

Aso said this Monday during a meeting of a national council looking at changes to Japan's total social security program.

More than 40 per cent of Japanese households living on welfare are over 65, in the world's tenth most-populous country. Almost a quarter of all Japanese people are over 60. In Canada, it's just over 13 per cent.

Aso is 72 himself, and wealthy enough to make the kinds of choices Canada's baby boomers want to make for that time of life when they need long-term care — which can last more than a decade.

But not all Japanese seniors, and not all Alberta's baby boomers have that luxury of choice.

In Alberta right now, if you have exhausted your savings and assets, and all you have left is Canada Pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement, you can live in long-term care with a small personal allowance, and the province picks up the rest of the tab for the bed provided for you.

Should that kind of compassion rest on the willingness of caregivers to accept substandard wages, while investors make the profits they believe are their due? We need to hurry up, and decide.

Crossing Taylor is like crossing the Rubicon

No doubt city council and a fair chunk of city staff are taking a very close look at a letter from a former Alberta Transportation regional director, which says the $16 million plan for improvements to Taylor Drive is a waste of money.

Speaking as the provincial director who was partly in charge of creating the traffic mess on Taylor Drive as it passes through the downtown, Jim Bussard wrote council recently to inform them the planned fixes won't help.

In fact, he says part of the plan could make things worse.

Basically, he says new intersections that would allow pedestrians to move between the Riverlands development and the city core will “confuse, bewilder and create accident situations.”

“Sixteen million dollars will have been spent to make traffic movement worse,” he writes to council.

What I don't see in his comments as reported in the Advocate Monday is an alternative that addresses the problems of Taylor Drive in that area.

Taylor Drive was designed as an arterial road primarily to allow heavy traffic off Hwy 2 and 67^th Street, to carry goods, workers and customers from the highway and city's north side, to the multi-phased commercial sector in Southpointe.

The aim was to allow heavy vehicles to skirt the city core, and to link the southeast residential areas to the industrial areas on the northwest side, without having to route commuters through the downtown.

The route follows the abandoned rail line that was no longer needed when rail lands were taken by the city and developed into the downtown. The footbridge just upstream of the Gaetz Avenue Bridge is the last (and nicest) vestige of that line.

Taylor Drive, with its double bridge, became much busier much faster, I think, than anyone projected.

As successful as it has been at carrying traffic flow, it also cuts 35 acres of potential prime development land off from the rest of the city.

At some point, somebody looked at the map and concluded the Riverlands and Cronquist areas were too valuable to the city's future to allow them to remain an island bordered by a river on one side, and six lanes of heavy traffic on the other.

The picture became further complicated when newly-formed ReThink Red Deer rightfully pointed out that there is virtually no access onto the island, other than by car.

When Taylor Drive was built, it's fair to say no one had foreseen that the city would grow as fast as it did, for as long as it did, and that eventually the only movie house within the city limits would be on the island.

As ReThink Red Deer warned, pedestrians did what pedestrians do: they walked by the hundreds from the downtown area to see a movie. Despite the barrier fences the city installed, people who don't drive (typically youths) still make the unsafe dash across Taylor Drive.

It's a testament to Red Deer's safety-minded drivers that we haven't seen tragedies as a result of this.

The residential and business potential of the Riverlands area cannot be ignored, or sneered at as pie-in-the-sky, as Bussard seems to have done in his letter.

For a city like Red Deer, that area is as much a major part of our future, as Edmonton's municipal airport lands will be to them. Both will have the effect of nearly doubling the city's core, in an era when planners worldwide are hailing “infill development” as a good idea.

But you've got to be able to get there. Edmonton has the luxury of their island being surrounded by arterial roads, a downtown college campus and rapid transit.

In Red Deer, we have a bus system residents in the Cronquist area don't want, and a whole lot of pickup trucks. That's fine, that's our city — but the future calls for walkability. The living experience of hundreds of other centres shows that vibrant cities draw more and more people who don't always travel by car.

That growth requires infrastructure, in the same way as the city's growth until now needs Taylor Drive.

Bussard has a lot of expertise as a transportation planner, but I wouldn't trust him to plan the future of the city.

Maybe he's right, though. Maybe all we need at Taylor and 43^rd is a roundabout, not a hugely-expensive, confusing intersection.

Maybe the pedestrian access points need to be somewhere else. I'd suggest we look first at the places where people are already walking (or would walk, if the area wasn't fenced off).

I'll bet council and planners are already looking at that. But we don't abandon the city's future just because a former traffic planner doesn't like the way we want to cross the street.

How is your resolution coming along?

How is the progress on your New year's resolution to pay more attention to fitness? Have you gotten that gym membership (and actually used it)? Are you getting a minimum 20-minute brisk walk in every day?

If you have done these things, or other activities like them, then by mid-January you've already cleared the first major barrier against a change in lifestyle. Congratulations, stick with your plans for 90 days, and you will join that small majority of Albertans who get enough activity to maintain general health.

If you are over 65 and can claim an active lifestyle, you're actually in a rather elite minority.

In one of those quickie surveys the media uses to generate news copy,

1,000 Americans over 18 were asked about their New Years resolutions. The top two areas of personal improvement, by far, concerned personal fitness and personal finance.

I am quite unqualified to speak to issues of personal finance, but I do have an interest in keeping fit and active. So this survey gathered by Yahoo News got my attention.

Though promises of a more active lifestyle topped the list of resolutions, in less than a week more than a third of respondents admitted they had lied to themselves and abandoned their plans.

In just a few days, they quit on their exercise classes or failed to get that membership at a gym they had planned to pick up. The wealth of long-term study in the area of fitness shows that when people make these plans, the drop-off in participation is highest in the first two weeks.

If you don't make it to that magic 90-day mark, your chances of making a lasting change in lifestyle get really, really slim.

Last week, the Alberta Centre for Active Living released a rather more scientific study of Alberta adults. The research and advocacy group has been doing this survey, every couple years, since 2000.

It showed that physical activity peaked in 2007, when 62 per cent of Albertans reported they got enough exercise to achieve health benefits. This year, it's 59 per cent.

Remember, this is a generalized number; it doesn't allow for age, education, income or disability. Adults under 35 are the most active. Full breakdowns are available in their report.

But the generalization does create an understandable picture of Albertans' health prospects. Fully 94 per cent of people surveyed (considering the margins of error reported, you may as well say everyone but a few cranks) believe that physical activity will reduce their chances of getting a serious health problem.

Instead of serious, we should say costly. The report lists the diseases medical studies show where regular exercise can help in prevention: pre-mature mortality, cardiovascular disease, stroke, hypertension, colon cancer, breast cancer and type 2 diabetes.

How much of our health-care budget is used in treating these ailments? How many person-years of productivity, how much personal suffering can be allayed, if 94 per cent of Albertans did what they already believed to be the right thing?

Exercise is not a magic pill. It only reduces a statistical risk of any individual per 100,000 people for getting one of these diseases.

But if you're one for whom the program works, it surely acts that way.

Other scientifically-recorded benefits of exercising in improving mental health, depression, fewer lost days at work, and general well-being are not even counted here.

Nor are studies showing regular vigourous exercise helps the brain build new neural connections involved with memory, and slows the progress of neural degenerative disease like Parkinson's.

But it seems that getting started, paying attention and sticking with a plan to get more active are the hardest parts.

To alleviate that, the Red Deer Primary Care Network has just begun its annual Trek program to get you to that magic 90-day mark. Go to rdpcn.com, click the Trek link, and register for a 90-day virtual walk around the Hawaiian Islands. You can do this solo, or you can form a team. Teams work best.

Get yourself a pedometer and make yourself walk 10,000 steps a day. You can do the equivalent in other activity, through a calculator on your online Trek map. Even doing housework counts (a benefit for me).

Log in regularly to record your progress. That's important. Daily is best.

In 90 days, you will have “travelled” 900 km — maybe even more. And you will have cleared all the major hurdles that keep you from a real change in lifestyle.

Measure the benefits yourself.

Red Deer — the next 100 years

It was a pleasure reading columnist Jim Sutherland's list in the Advocate of 100 reasons why Red Deer was such a great city for him growing up. In my 36-plus-a-bit years here, I've seen and been to many of the locations Sutherland mentioned, and have been fortunate to have met quite a few of the personalities he listed who made their mark on our city.

The small histories and landmarks of this city add up to a big portion of Red Deer's current character, so it's important that we use our Centennial to remind ourselves of the people and places that shaped who we are.

Back in 1976, when I arrived here to live, Red Deer was just over 30,000 in population. There was a distinct connection even then to the city's history, expressed mostly in the heritage of the families whose names appear today in city subdivisions, on street signs and landmarks.

We need to thank Sutherland and other lifetime residents like fellow columnist Harley Hay and longtime contributor Michael Dawe, that their stories of early life here are recorded.

Simply because of our growth just over this past generation, these stories are the only connection most Red Deerians have to the way Red Deer became in the words of former mayor Bob McGhee “the valley of contentment between two mountains of conceit” on Alberta's Hwy 2.

But celebrations like a Centennial are also about looking forward.

So, as a relative newcomer to Red Deer, who never got to see a movie at either of our two drive-in theatres, here's a list of things I believe will make Red Deer a great place in the years to come. (They are, like Sutherland's list, offered in no particular order.)

(1) The continued growth of our trails network, eventually to expand links north-south from Innisfail to Wetaskiwin, and east-west from Drumheller to Rocky Mountain House, with many pleasant stops in between; (2) the completion of our downtown renewal project, with increased residential spaces, parks and green spaces and an active business centre; (3) a revival of our Ghost project — with more historical figures represented, and maybe even a fountain or two; (4) a major theatre and concert performance centre; (5) a greater inclusion of the city's north side into the main stream of cultural and recreational life in the city; (6) an airport with regular service links to other Western cities, so older folks like us can visit friends and family without needing a six-hour drive; (7) what the heck — high-speed rail links north and south, with a downtown terminal (8) more major green building projects, like the Berry Architecture building (formerly a popular bowling alley — surely just an oversight on the esteemed Sutherland list); (9) full university status for Red Deer College; (10) a new courthouse; (11) more space for City Hall, without eating up one more square foot of City Hall Park; (12) an Olympic-sized swimming pool, perhaps linked to (13) the return of YMCA to Red Deer; (14) a municipal police force (as great as the RCMP have been for Red Deer, we're large enough and diverse enough in population now to create a city-designated police force); (15) a museum and archives capable of serving a city of over 100,000, and a region of over 300,000; (16) an art gallery with a permanent (and rotating) collection, plus another wing dedicated to staging shows (and sales) by local artists (17) a good number of runs at the Memorial Cup for the Red Deer Rebels; (18) an indoor soccer stadium with at least four fields, so that Red Deer can host provincial-level championships, plus (19) completion of plans for the outdoor sports fields and amenities at Great Chief Park, so that provincial football and soccer championships can be settled here in style; (20) speaking regionally, a long-term commitment to a conservationist-first approach to development along Hwy 11 west of Rocky Mountain House (it's our last approach to the mountains that is still relatively free of commercial development); (21) a long-term settlement of water access issues on an unpolluted Red Deer River, so that the most basic requirement of life — fresh, clean water — can be preserved as we grow; (22) a major legacy for Red Deer hosting the Alberta Winter Games; (23) moderate, predictable and manageable city growth that does not overwhelm our ability to plan for it and manage infrastructure; (24) people willing to use their talents and abilities as public servants, who will come forward with their own vision for a better future in the same way that many of the people Sutherland mentioned on his historical list did in the past; (25) greater commuter access and safe passage in the city for people who choose to walk and bike on their daily errands. (You didn't think I'd leave that off, did you?)

There, that's 25 items, only a quarter size of the list Sutherland could compose. But he's had a lifetime to look back to find it.

There are lots of people in Red Deer right now, and no lack of people in our future who can make their mark on the city, and who need support to make a great future happen. We're still the City of Volunteers, you know.

We need to decide what it is that makes this city great, but we also need to step forward to accomplish those goals we believe are important. Great Red Deer residents made things happen in the past; the future is up to us to achieve.

That's a pretty good start for a Centennial party, don't you think?

More gained than lost, in court ruling on native rights

Canada's four western provinces are home to roughly 60 per cent of all First Nations people, according the previous Canadian census. In Alberta, that's just under six per cent of the total population.

The national proportion of native peoples is reported at just under four per cent.

We can expect that proportion to rise, though, given a Federal Court ruling that First Nations people living off-reserve and card-carrying Métis people have status to rights under the Indian Act.

We can't know right now what that ruling really means to individual people, or what it might cost general society in financial terms.

But it is reasonable to surmise for the present that the ruling is as much spiritual as economic, and that it probably means more to many people's sense of personal identity than it does to the general pocketbook.

When news reports tell us rather obliquely that the question of what “native rights” entails is complicated — and not much more than that — the reporters aren't simply being lazy.

The truth is, the broad definitions of native rights is open to interpretation, especially when we begin to talk about what this means to individual livelihoods, and what off-reserve native people and Métis stand to gain under the court ruling.

The first right generally mentioned is a right to land. But as recently as 1977, Canadian courts would not rule that native bands have actual title to lands they claim as theirs. 

Native peoples have a right to resources and subsistence from these lands, and the courts have upheld that the federal government does indeed have a legal obligation to consult (and compensate) bands when development projects cross their borders, for instance.

But there's no actual ownership. So what does “land rights” really mean, and what have off-reserve and Métis people really gained here?

Native peoples have the right to self-government, and the right to their own culture, language, tribal laws and traditions. But these rights do not supersede the Criminal Code or human rights laws. Again, what have non-reserve native peoples and Métis gained here?

Nor does the right of self-government absolve band leaders from obligations to obey rules for transparency and accounting for federal funds received.

Not even tax law changes for off-reserve native people and Métis. Money earned on reserves is earned tax-free. Goods purchased on reserves are GST-exempt, as a goods bought off-reserve and transferred in.

All else is fully taxed. Same old, same old.

In fact, some leaders have argued that the very fact native peoples are going to Canadian courts for redress undermines their claim of being a sovereign people. Why go to a foreign court to verify what is yours by birth?

There may accrue some new housing and services benefits to native people off-reserve, but that's hardly the onerous tax burden that people are trying to make us afraid of.

So what does this momentous court ruling really mean?

This is especially ambiguous for Métis people. In 1982, The Supreme Court outlined three broad factors to identify Métis rights-holders: self-identification as a Métis individual; ancestral connection to an historic Métis community; and acceptance by a Métis community.

Pretty vague standards, it seems, and unlikely to produce a Métis population boom in light of this court ruling. As in most things, we'll see.

Hunting and fishing rights for natives and Métis have already been defined by the courts, and Canada already has the legal ability to limit those rights for conservation purposes.

If this court ruling leads native people to demand better leadership for themselves, and more equitable use of resources that are theirs by right, then we've really got a victory here.

If off-reserve native people and Métis can persuade the broader native population that they will lose no status when they take greater control of their own lives, that's a step forward.

When stewardship of land and resources is more than just asking for money, but becomes a true partnership between band members and their leaders, between leaders and Canada as sovereign peoples, then something big is accomplished.

Nor should anyone have to give up their birthright when they cross a line on a map.

So what changed this week? Who knows? But more appears to have been gained than lost, for all of Canada.

All sports bets made on faith

I'm sooo elated the NHL and its players association have come to a tentative agreement, so they can get to work on a season of exciting pro hockey again. I can hardly wait to rush out and buy tickets . . . to the official Alberta KENO pro hockey lottery game.

Or not.

Being a retired person on a limited income, I might be able to afford a pair of tickets to perhaps one NHL game a year, or one oversized jersey that would look ridiculous two days after the player named on the back was traded to a team in a city that never sees snow.

Or I could spend the same dough and have two days with my wife cross-country skiing in the mountains. No contest. The mountains win.

But I still like to consider myself a fan of the Oilers, much in the same way I like to consider myself a social drinker. You know, a personal indulgence that's not considered unacceptable behaviour.

So I might be persuaded to attend a sports bar once a year, hoist a brew, have a burger, watch a game with friends — and put five bucks or so into a KENO game, hoping to recover my investment.

The Wildrose Party might have a winner with its idea of promoting a KENO lottery game, with the bulk of the profits from the first five years of operation going toward funding shortfalls for new arenas for both the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames.

But a number of assumptions have to pan out before we can be assured NHL hockey can survive in this province — and that players with multi-million-dollar contracts can have the designated benefits pension package they so desperately need.

First, the government needs to accept that the Wildrose proposal has merit. All that's required there is goodwill, and an insider's agreement with the numbers.

As the proposal has been presented, rolling out the KENO game into sports bars and lottery kiosks shouldn't be too difficult or expensive.

After that, an increase in consumer spending of $196 million a year on lotteries would need to be realized, and sustained for at least five years.

If you believe that NHL hockey has a long-term future in Alberta without requiring provincial tax subsidies for the infrastructure needed to host the teams (beyond what the cities themselves are willing to spend), you need to believe in all of the above.

For true fans, that shouldn't be difficult. But for the rest of us?

Credit needs to be given in this space to Jason Gregor, TV host, play-by-play announcer and curator of the Oilersnation web site. His work saved commentators (like me) the time needed to dig up the relevant numbers, to get a perspective on the potential of a KENO lottery for Alberta. Check his site, and read the comments on his interview with Wildrose leader Danielle Smith; both are illuminating.

We already knew that Albertans spend way more than the national average on lotteries. Per capita, lottery spending is highest in the three prairie provinces, making gaming a major revenue source for our respective governments.

Profits on the $737 Albertans spend on gambling per year go toward a host of non-profit societies province-wide, as well as into general government revenues. Neither pot can afford a decrease right now.

It's ironic, but Alberta's unique policy of dedicating gambling profits toward community non-profits rather than keeping all the money in general revenues, keeps thousands of dedicated volunteers and paid staff addicted to VLT revenues. Without that money, fundraising would become a lot more desperate around here.

So if a KENO game were instituted and actually made the $196 million a year projected, it's asking a lot of Alberta's gamblers not to let that figure be a decrease in other lottery profits. Or a whole lot more people with bad personal problems might eventually become homeless.

Here's how the KENO money is proposed to be divided. Of total sales, $137 million is paid in prizes. Five million goes to admin (a low figure, in my estimation). Another $5 million is divided between the Oilers and Flames foundation charities (it's hard not to be jealous of that). And $20 million a year for five years goes to the teams to subsidize new arenas.

After five years? Danielle Smith suggests profits might go to municipalities for recreation infrastructure. But I can't see CFL teams, soccer teams, pro lacrosse or baseball teams failing to reasonably ask for a slice of the pie.

For true believers, anything can be made to look possible. The question is: how much are casual fans like me (and there are lots of us, I think) prepared to believe?

New act, new owners, for native lands

Attawaspikat band chief Theresa Spence is in the fourth week of her hunger strike protesting the terrible living conditions on her reserve.

Meanwhile, the Idle No More movement is growing among people tired of the bureaucratic stalemate of governance on reserves. That process looks a lot like way the Occupy movement grew.

Chief Spence wants a face-to-face meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to begin a wider conversation about conditions on Canada's 625 reserves.

There's no meeting yet, but that doesn't mean Harper's government has been idle on the native affairs portfolio. Beyond the foolishness of lumping his total program into one omnibus bill (which impacts industrial development on waterways on — and off — reserves) legislation has been waiting in the wings that could break the cycle of poverty for First Nations people. If they chose to make use of it.

It's called the First Nations Property Ownership Act, and it's been a years-long project of former Kamloops band chief Manny Jules.

A recent article in Forbes magazine deploring poverty on American reserves mentions Jules and the act as a potential saviour for natives in the U.S. That article suggested the act could have been passed here by the end of 2012.

Well, 2012 has come and gone and the First Nations Property Ownership Act has still to make it to the order paper. But that doesn't mean discussion hasn't already been taking place.

Briefly described, the act would transfer ownership of reserve land to the band councils on those reserves where members express a desire to gain land titles. Currently, the Crown is the title-holder of all reserve lands.

The issue of ownership became the first agent of the grief that has grown on our reserves since the Indian Act was passed way back in 1876.

Culturally and historically, native property is collectively owned. Except for a few exceptions, individual band members cannot buy, mortgage, improve or sell property on the reserves without permission.

Collective ownership worked fine when all of Canada was native land, but as soon as settlers arrived with laws and papers delineating who owns what, that system could not survive.

Now, it turns out that when everyone owns the reserve, nobody does. And people with no property rights have a difficult time moving out of extreme poverty.

As Jules told reporters: “Because of the Indian Act, we've been legislated out of the economy.”

Under the act he's promoting, participating bands would have a hybrid of powers most us us associate with municipalities, provinces and the federal government.

It's about self-determination; the new act would give bands the power over schools, hospitals — and most importantly — zoning regulations. If someone wants to develop land for housing or build an industry based on the reserve's resources, they would no longer have to have everything cleared by bureaucrats in Ottawa who (as title owners) are more concerned with liability issues than progress.

There are fears that if individuals owned reserve property, they could sell it to people off reserve, and eventually the last bastions of native land would be cut away piecemeal.

But white people already own 100 per cent of the reserves.

These owners — the Crown — has allowed the sale of billions of dollars worth of Canadian property to foreigners. But we are still sovereign Canada, and foreign owners must act in accordance with Canadian law.

Under the new act, reserve land would always be reserve land, and whoever owned it would be under the laws governing that reserve.

Right now, we are told that 85,000 new houses are needed on Canada's reserves. The federal budget only allows for the building of 2,200 per year. There is no hope for a housing solution for the current population, much less for growth.

In my experience, I worked darn hard to make sure I never missed a mortgage payment, through good times and bad. I looked at the annual statements every year to see how much my equity grew, and how much was still held by the bank.

I borrowed money I did not have to improve my house, and did whatever it took to pay that back, too, because I knew that some day the house would be mine, together with the equity it represented.

The right to own property put me on the path to contributing membership in my community, someone with a stake in its future. It made me a full citizen. A taxpayer.

I cannot imagine a life of communal ownership, where I could not even buy a working toilet for a house I could not own.

There is a lot of apprehension, fear of change, among native people and their leaders over anything that looks like the First Nations Property Ownership Act.

But it's got to be part of the conversation, should Stephen Harper ever meet with Chief Theresa Spence. For her sake, and for all native people in Canada, I hope the conversation begins soon.