Should we care if the rich are getting richer? Yes, but only enough to make sure they pay their taxes

So, just 62 people own as much wealth as the bottom half of all humanity put together. That number decreases every year, but it's like we're waiting for the point where it's only one person who's rich as half of humanity before we'll be impressed.

Either we're becoming jaded by constant reports of income inequality, or we're not paying attention because we're being asked to draw the wrong conclusions. Probably both.

International charity Oxfam releases a report on global wealth inequality every January. This year's report just happens to come right before the rich and powerful gather at Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Oxfam's report is giving the politicians there a gold-plated opportunity to talk about the wrong things.

It is true, the share of global wealth is concentrating in ever-greater extent, to the top percentile of people. In 2010, it took 388 people to amass as much wealth as the bottom 50 per cent of people in the the world, according to Oxfam. That dropped to 177 people in 2011, then 159 in 2012, plummeting to 92 in 2013, and in the global economic struggles beginning in 2014, a slight drop to 80. Now, it's 62.

But that's not the information that should outrage us the most, or the one that decision-makers should concentrate on. The report is just data.

What should outrage is how little this group gives back, considering their vastly disproportionate wealth.

Oxfam reports that of the fortunes of this group, about $7.6 trillion resides in the accounts of tax havens.

Are you weary of being asked to contribute, over and over again, to alleviate the worst effects of poverty in Africa? Oxfam reports almost a third of the total wealth of that continent is held offshore. Gabriel Zuchman of the University of California, Berkeley estimates that $14 billion has been lost as revenue for African countries to improve their own economies and infrastructure for education and health care.

In my view, that's more important than the data of mere inequality.

But don't think it's just Africa that offends in this way.

A sidebar to the Oxfam report tells us that five Canadians hold the equivalent wealth of the bottom 30 per cent of all Canadians.

Global News has the list posted, and it includes all the usual suspects. But smack in the middle of that list is Garrett Camp, owner of the Canadian arm of Uber and a major web developer.

Uber doesn't pay taxes, or is at least reported not to pay taxes. The drivers are expected to, but 20 per cent of every Uber ride goes to a holding company in the Netherlands, which pays another holding company in the Netherlands for the right to Uber's intellectual property, which is not taxed in that country. From there the money goes to an offshore haven owned by the top holding company in San Franscisco.

The scheme is called by Fortune Magazine “double Irish with a Dutch sandwich” and it's used by a lot of international companies whose payments occur online and which don't become real money, until they're out of reach of the tax departments of the countries where the payments were made.

In fact, Oxfam says 188 of 201 leading global companies use offshore havens to avoid helping to maintain the infrastructure of the economies that generate their wealth. Uber drivers use the road, they block the parking stalls and the bike lanes of big cities — why doesn't the parent company contribute like their licenced taxi competitors, and everyone else?

That's where the anger should be focussed. The Canadian government under the Conservatives refused to accept data offered to them, listing the biggest Canadian tax cheats, who collectively owe hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars to the nation. Canada helped build their wealth, why shouldn't they support our nation according to law?

There's plenty of criticism of Oxfam's methodology and reporting. Yes, CEO salaries increased almost a thousand per cent since 1982, while worker salaries increased a mere 10.9 per cent.

But wealth is not a finite pie. In that time, the value of S&P 500 companies increased by more than 500 per cent. That's a whole lot of new wealth, reflected in the value of millions of Canadians' RSP accounts — at least those who invested and held through the numerous up-and-down cycles over the years.

More, Oxfam's study calculates wealth as a simple assets-minus-debts equation. In that scenario, a young Canadian worker making $50,000 a year, but with a big student loan and a mortgage is listed among the world's poorest people. Apples and over-ripe bananas, as far as poverty should be considered.

I don't like seeing the egregious wealth-taking the world talks about. But what I hate more is how we ignore the ability of the super-rich to thumb their noses at tax-paying slobs like us who build the economy that makes them so rich.

Is Canada's own Donald Trump making a move into politics?

Canadian tycoon Kevin O'Leary's offer to invest a million bucks into Alberta's energy industry — but only if newly-elected premier Rachel Notley stepped down — was pure theatre. Did he really expect anyone to take this seriously? 

So what's with the cross-national bombast?

Well, it appears O'Leary has political ambitions. Talking with CBC News, the network that hired him on Dragon's Den and The Lang & O'Leary Exchange, O'Leary said he wouldn't mind taking a page or two from Donald Trump's latest bestseller: How to Make Friends, Influence People and Become the Greatest Leader, Ever.

He's toying with the idea of running for the federal Conservative Party leadership. “I thought at some point, someone is going to say to me, if you can be such a critic, why don't you do better? Why don't you try it?” he told CBC. “I thought to myself, hmmm, maybe I should.”

Note that he didn't claim — as politicians often do — that there's a groundswell of demand that he lead the Conservative Party. But you have to start somewhere; maybe the support will follow the idea, as it has in the U.S. for Mr. Trump.

Attacking a popular premier only recently-elected is a strange way to build a national consensus, but the Trump/O'Leary way seems up to the challenge.

Canada's previous Tory leader, Stephen Harper was known for his cool relationships with provincial leaders. Danny Williams of Newfoundland and Labrador, Kathleen Wynne in Ontario come to mind. Things did not begin well with Harper's relationship with Notley, either, but that didn't have time to mature.

All in all, how did that work for him?

But never mind, O'Leary is new to politics, a place where you can't buy every agreement, and where simply walking away when you can't isn't an option.

Everyone knows it's difficult to govern — all the more so when one has inherited a financial crisis. Moving forward requires compromises to build consensus for decisions that will require sacrifice.

Bombast, disrespect and blame do not build consensus.

O'Leary says in Alberta he would “put his cards on the table” with the current review on provincial royalties. Considering that industry is being closely consulted during the review process, that promises are clear not to make any sudden changes, and that an Alberta perspective on what's fair (including acknowledging current problems within the energy industry) ought to be transparent enough, until the final report is made public.

O'Leary said he would cut corporate taxes in Alberta, not raise them to rough parity to the tax regimes of other provinces. He would “cut a deal” with business companies to maintain jobs (are we talking tax-subsidized wages in the oil patch here?) and he would run deficit budgets to do it.

A perception of government getting too friendly with business is partly what got the NDP elected in the first place.

But governments do steal opposition ideas, though some make more sense than others.

The Wildrose claims authorship of this week's wage freeze for about 7,000 non-unionized government workers (including highly-paid trade representatives, board chairs and deputy ministers). They were due to get a 2.5-per-cent wage hike in April on salaries that range between $110,000 and $287,000 a year. Grid advancement will also be banned, saving taxpayers about $57 million over two years, according to an article in the Calgary Herald.

But that idea came long before the birth of Wildrose, with former PC governments freezing wages, unfreezing them months later, then promising to re-freeze them, claiming strong leadership each time, in each direction.

Like our current recession, this freeze will also thaw. In the meantime, we need to gather people together, not pull them apart. Canada doesn't need a Donald Trump, or any would-be politician that seeks to create enemies.

We need a healthy debate on what comes next, and that will include some passionate argument. But Canada has three brand-new governments in it now, with two more — Saskatchewan and Manitoba — to come in 2016.

We need to respect democracy enough to give them a chance to bring their consensus into practice. In our current business cycle, that's going to require some sacrifices.

O'Leary says Rachel Notley isn't qualified to “manage Canada's Number One resource.” If he meant the energy industry, managing that isn't her job. Besides, we're always being told our Number One resource is our people, not our tight gas and bitumen reserves.

One can't be sure, yet, if O'Leary is really serious, or just enjoying causing a little trouble along with a few headlines. As a businessman, he can stand or fall on his own. But as an aspiring political leader, he's short of the mark.

Power to the people: how we can have our electricity cake, and eat it, too

We've been waiting for some months now for details on how Alberta's new carbon tax and greenhouse gas reduction policies will affect our monthly bills. We'll still need to wait until after the government presents its first full-year budget to get them.

But that doesn't mean we can't speculate on outcomes, and hope to affect how the decisions are made.

Speculation: all this is going to cost us more, if we make no changes to how we live. Hope: that individual efforts to conserve and to invest in green energy will produce an appreciable payback.

We can reasonably assume that introducing a provincial carbon tax is going to affect the unit price of all the forms of energy we use. That's the point of the whole exercise: paying closer to the full cost of our energy use — including the cost to the environment. But that should also mean that reducing consumption and/or switching to green renewables should have a real payback.

With electricity in Alberta, that's not exactly the case right now.

I've been keeping a file of my old power bills for a couple of years now. In fact, that's become quite easy, as my utility keeps them for me with the switch to online billing. Here's what I've noticed.

Our monthly power usage varies widely over a year, but our household runs quite nicely on less than 500 Kw of power per month, averaged. As every householder knows, there are variable costs and fixed costs within each monthly bill.

I found it a bit ironic that in the months in which we conserve best, the delivery costs are higher than the energy costs. In other words, try as we might, we can't conserve our way to appreciably lower power bills. Add to this the new costs of a carbon tax, plus the downloaded costs of the new power lines being built (which we won't use, but are widely expected to serve export opportunities), it all means that saving money on our power bills through conservation alone is just about impossible for Alberta householders.

You may as well just leave all the lights on, for all the difference it makes to your monthly bill.

That anomaly can't help the province's plan to reduce our carbon footprint.

So incentives to conserve, and to invest in green power alternatives must become part of the plan. I want to suggest a way for Alberta consumers to get a break — to have their electrically-produced cake and eat it, too.

Alberta needs a healthy dose of home power generation. Solar panels on our rooftops already make long-term sense today — there are about 1,000 solar-powered homes already connected to the grid. More than half of those were added to the grid in the past two years and we should see many thousands more of them after carbon taxes are introduced, and if the province removes some administrative barriers.

One Alberta site I have found, Solar Hero, suggests a 6-Kw solar array on my house or garage would have a payback of 16-19 years, under current billing conditions, and assuming annual 3.5 per cent inflation of regular grid costs through 25 years.

We all know that in the past 13 years, our electrical power bills have gone up by just over eight per cent per year, compounded, since deregulation. With the addition of the carbon tax, plus having Alberta power customers pay for two huge new power lines, power generators and distributors together will not likely keep power bill inflation to less than 3.5 per cent.

Solar Hero reports the cost of one watt of solar power installed on a home was about $9 in 2007. In 2014, you could have that for as low as $2.50 per watt, and the price continues to drop as efficiencies increase. After an initial investment of $13,000-$17,000 (Solar Hero's figures) for a 6-Kw array, you would wait for 16 years or so to get your money back, and then make a slight profit.

I want a better deal.

My next car is going to be a plug-in hybrid, meaning I will park it in the garage and recharge it on free solar power, which I will use exclusively for more than 80 per cent of my car trips. I'll run my dishwasher and do laundry during the day, when the sun is shining. I'll sell the power I don't use at the going rate, and just eat the monthly fixed costs of being connected to the grid.

I want my cake, and I want it free for the estimated minimum 25 years of a solar array's working lifetime on my property.

I want the government to make achieving that easier for me, and for all other consumers.

If we agree that we need a carbon tax, then we have to agree to remove barriers that hinder making conservation and investment pay.

I'm waiting, like you, for the details in the next provincial budget.

It may be messy, but Canada is doing the right thing for Syrian refugees

Back in 1999, Kosovo was not a great place to be. The whole Balkan region was breaking up — violently — into various new states based on ethnic origins that did not like or trust each other.

Local militias got access to police and military arms as governance broke down and entire regions were “cleansed” of families who no longer belonged there, being of the “wrong” ethnic origin for whoever locally claimed to be in charge.

Canada intervened by evacuating about 5,000 people from areas where terror, rape, arson and murder had become the norm, and resettled about 2,000 refugees into Canada — all within a period of months.

Gerry Van Kessel was a senior bureaucrat in the Canadian government at the time. He had a title with a lengthy name: Director General, Refugees Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Over his career he was also the the co-ordinator of intergovernmental consultations on asylum, refugees and migration policy in Geneva.

So he knows a thing or two about how bureaucracies work to implement government policy around determining who is or is not a refugee. That's important, because as a signing nation of accords on refugees, Canada is obliged to take them in.

Well, that was then and this is now. Taking in 2,000 refugees from a European region with Western-standard notions of justice and rule of law would be but a short introduction to the refugee crisis in Africa and the Middle East that Canada faces today.

In the intervening time, we elected a Conservative government that left more than a third of positions on the Citizenship and Immigration board empty, while abroad, thugs and terrorists got much more efficient at creating refugees. Canada's backlog of refugee claims became an embarrassment, and the government tried to fix it by putting an eight-day limit on processing claims, as well as designating “safe countries of origin” from which a faster claims process could proceed.

Now, even that has turned out to be just a short introduction to the refugee problem that Canada faces to day.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that even as professional a group as Canada's civil service would slip a few gears while attempting to process 25,000 refugee claims from Syria in just a few months.

Van Kessel, a long champion of our civil servants as non-partisan professionals, doesn't like how the process is going. So, over the new year he gave an interview on the matter.

He sees — rightly — that when the force of political policy hits the wall of practical reality, something has to give. A newly-elected government cannot undo the policy and practice of a 10-year government that had a completely different ideology concerning refugees and immigration, all in a matter of months. Much less while taking in 25,000 new permanent residents from abroad.

What irked Van Kessel was the constant changing of targets. From the policy introduction last March, to the swearing-in of the new government in November to now, targets got serially readjusted such that the 25,000 Syrian refugees would be identified by the end of 2015, and resettled by the end of 2016.

For a lot of governments that's “immediately” as things can get for a project that large, involving that many thousands of vulnerable individuals.

Van Kessel just doesn't like the messiness of it all. Which is strange, because he says he immediately saw the mess arriving when the Liberal refugee policy was announced. Because he'd been there before, and he knows how things work (or not work).

Very well, complain that it's a mess, and that politics is being played in public while the professionals work in the background. How, exactly, is that a change, except in scale?

So far, Red Deer has 26 new permanent Canadian residents from Syria. The expectation is that we may receive as many as 60. Non-profits like Catholic Social Services and a long list of others, plus many volunteers and donors are putting in long hours getting them housed, settled, with medical attention and kids in school — the whole list of connections that families have with a city.

To use Western terms, this isn't our first rodeo. We've done this before.

Bottom line, when people become aware of need, they step up to help. That was proven over the Christmas season when local charities feared they might not reach their annual fundraising goals. Last-minute, they got there, and then some.

Nationally, setting the politics — the goal — was important. Without that, there'd likely be no new arrivals in Red Deer. That politicians will change the specifics of the goal when policy runs up against practice, is just something that happens.

Meanwhile, people keep on doing the right thing with the situation and resources in front of them. That's the Canada I like to see.

Bill 6: a lesson in the art of what's possible

My grandfather died in a farming accident. A great aunt lost an arm in an auger. A boy I rode the school bus with stopped a country church service one autumn to cry that his brother had just been crushed to death in a combine.

In the last few months, four children have died in farming mishaps in the region around Red Deer alone.

In no other industry would such a poor safety record be allowed to stand unchallenged.

But in Alberta, it's just statistics — and poorly reported at that.

Alberta's non-profit Farm Safety Centre lists agriculture as Canada's third most dangerous industry. Other stats-gathering groups like FinancesOnline rank agriculture at nine in the top 10 most dangerous ways to earn a living, behind logging, fishing, flying, roofing, steel work, garbage collecting, power line work and truck driving. Police and firefighting didn't even make the list.

The difference between all these other dangerous careers and farming is that only in farming do we think it's normal to make our children do it. In Alberta, the farming community and the opposition in our legislature don't think labour laws regarding safety or mandatory insurance should apply to farm work. And that's unique in all of Canada — farms everywhere else operate just fine with those laws.

Extending occupational health and safety laws to the farming industry has been part of the Alberta NDP platform for years. Actually, it's been part of the Progressive Conservative platform for some time as well — former premiers Jim Prentice and Alison Redford both said they would consider such laws, according to Farmworkers Union of Alberta president Eric Musekamp.

And the NDP advocated this for so long that nobody thought bringing Alberta up to speed on farm safety should be so difficult.

But that's the problem: nobody thought.

So the introduction of Bill 6 became the first lesson to a rookie provincial government about the art of the possible. It had to happen sooner or later to this government, and sooner is probably better.

It's not that Prentice, Redford and other premiers before them didn't care about the safety of farmers or their children (not quite one in five farm deaths in Canada involve children 14 and younger). It's that a veteran government with a complex agenda didn't want to face the wrath of people who don't want change, even if their families would benefit most from change.

So the Conservatives let things slide, ignored the deaths and injuries, and allowed reporting of incidents to be incomplete.

Alberta's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported that there were 25 farm deaths in Alberta in 2014. The report and breakdown of all the grisly ways there are to die young on the farm included a note that due to poor reporting, the numbers are likely low.

On Monday, labour activists plan to gather in Edmonton to lay down 112 pairs of work gloves representing the lives lost on Alberta farms since 2009. Those gloves only represent the deaths we know of.

Will they lay down fingers of gloves for all those who have lost limbs or been otherwise seriously injured? It's unlikely, since those stats aren't kept.

How many of those lives could have been saved if safety regulations were in place? If farm workers with few rights had not worked overlong hours, had been properly trained regarding heavy equipment and dangerous chemicals, or been allowed to refuse work that just isn't safe?

After learning a hard lesson in the art of governance, the NDP introduced amendments to Bill 6, exempting family members from these safety regulations. Jobs Minister Lori Sigurdson said this was the plan all along, that farms kids were always to be allowed to drive without a licence, operate heavy equipment, handle large animals and work whatever hours would be required to keep the farm going – without labour protection.

I wish she hadn't said that but I'm not the one taking all the angry calls, standing in front of enraged crowds and being called all sorts of unmentionable names.

I also wish the Opposition Wildrose didn't see fit to make such political hay over the broken bodies and shattered families on Alberta farms. There are better ways to oppose and present alternatives.

But in our province, the government and the opposition are both very new to their roles. One side is still learning how far ahead of the crowd you can be and still lead – the other is discovering how far behind you can be of what would be the right thing to do, if one had the courage.

Charity vs taxes: Which side will the Alberta and federal governments choose?

There was a time in my life when I felt I was rich. My wife and I had paid off the mortgage, we had no car or credit card debt, our children had graduated and left home, and we were both still working full-time.

Good years. One can feel rich without actually being rich ― and it's a whole lot easier to achieve.

Along the way, there was always one tax break that in relative terms advantaged us more in our modest income bracket than ever advantaged the truly rich: the non-refundable tax credits for charitable donations over $200 a year.

Philanthropic foundation Imagine Canada sent out a warning recently that unless the federal government tweaks the tables for calculating that non-refundable credit, it may cost rich people more to give generously. In fact, they ran numbers saying top-level income earners will be taxed more harshly if they give significantly to charity, than if they simply keep the money.

As for the rest of us? Generosity will always pay. Here's how.

The feds set up the tax system to encourage charitable giving. Money given to charities would not be taxed as income. But instead of simply allowing you to deduct your donations off your income, they created a system of non-refundable tax points (“non-refundable” means they never disappear; they're yours until you claim them.)

The tax points count against your taxes, not your income ― and for almost all of us, that's a bonus. A subsidy, really.

The points count thus: On the first $200 of charitable receipts you enclose with your tax return, claim 15 per cent (that happens to be the lowest income tax rate, and the rate the vast majority of us pay on the majority of our income). On receipts above $200, claim 29 per cent (also the highest current income tax rate, which only the top income-earners in Canada pay).

Prime minister Justin Trudeau promised in his election campaign to add a new tax bracket: 33 per cent for taxable income over $200,000.

Until I read the warning from Imagine Canada, I felt I could pretty well ignore that promise; it will never, ever affect me. But I'm paying attention now.

Could it be possible that my donations over $200 might get me 33 percent in points off my taxes, even though my income is only taxed at 15 per cent? That's not a refund, that's a subsidy, and I'll gladly take it. Especially considering that the Alberta government tops that refund to half of my donations.

So, $1,000 in charitable donation receipts gets me $210 off my provincial taxes (refund at 21 per cent). That's the equivalent of what I would have paid on $2,100 of taxable income at my low rate of 10 per cent in Alberta.

That's on top of the $264 I get back from the feds, which represents just over $1,700 of federally-taxable income at my low tax bracket of 15 per cent.

But for rich guys, like our prime minister, it's a different story. If the top refund rate does not match the top income tax rate, the wealthy get “double-taxed” on the difference. They pay income tax on money they never got to keep.

That's a problem for Imagine Canada, and the big, industrial-scale charities that raise big bucks from wealthy donors.

In Alberta (as with all of Canada), the rich really do the heavy lifting when it comes to charitable giving. According to Imagine Canada, half of Alberta donors give less than $160 a year― not enough to trigger the big tax savings. But our average donation rate is high for the nation: $812. That means we have a good population of high rollers who happen to be generous.

What happens if they begin to find their generosity is not recognized the way it used to be?

Remember, Alberta is also adding new income tax brackets. Without going into detail, the rate is slated to slide up from the current 10 per cent everyone pays, to 15 per cent on taxable incomes over $300,000.

The higher the tax rate, the greater the disincentive for the rich to make big donations ― if the tax credits for being generous are not also recalculated.

December is “harvest time” for charities. About 60 per cent of Canadians will give a total of $5 billion to charity this month, which is about 40 per cent of the entire year's total.

But our charities' need is higher during this fiscal slowdown as well. Charities report higher traffic at food banks, soup kitchens, shelters, Christmas Bureaus, mental health supports and more. Canada can hardly afford to de-incentivize the rich from making large donations right now.

But the incentives are still there for the vast majority of us who should merely feel rich. If you look at the plight of refugees and the poor around the world, and consider a cold winter ahead for the newly-unemployed here at home, it's not hard to feel rich.

Find a charitable cause that inspires you, and see what it feels like to be a high roller.

Complaining won't soften the rock and hard place of the need for a reduced-carbon future for Alberta

You can understand that mayors and councils of towns that rely on coal mining for economic activity are concerned about the province's recently-announced program of carbon taxes and the 15-year phase-out of coal fired electricity. That's their job, their duty, to advocate for the interests of their communities.

But it's something else for groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to declare the planned phase-out a “war on coal” and the carbon tax as an attack on Alberta families.

That's far too narrow a view. In the big picture, the plans are meant to save the oilsands industry by making it politically possible for new pipelines to be built to carry our bitumen to new markets. Oh, and to reduce the province's carbon footprint in the face of science declaring it would be advisable to do so.

Communities whose economic lives revolve around coal mining and coal power generation recently sent a joint letter to the province outlining their concerns for their towns' future.

They have every reason to do so. There are many towns in Canada that in our history have withered and died when the local mine closed, or the local industry was shut down. It's not a pretty picture. One day, you're a vibrant community, the next, the jobs disappear, people leave, homes get shuttered and local businesses close, one by one.

But if you believe that Alberta needs to do its part in reducing greenhouse gas pollution — and to be seen by the world as doing its part — something's got to give.

It's totally ironic; according to government figures, there is twice as much energy in Alberta's coal reserves than there is in all our other non-renewable energy sources. As fossil fuels go, coal is energy in it's densest form. You have to burn a whole lot more “clean” natural gas to get the same energy release as you get get from burning coal.

More, we know exactly where all the reserves are located. Getting the coal out and turning it into electricity results in cheaper power than you can get from pretty much any other power source. In Alberta, anyway.

Until you put a price on the pollution it causes.

By 2018, the current Alberta plan will price carbon dioxide equivalents at $30 a tonne. That's on all the carbon we consume — natural gas, auto fuels, electricity, everything. What does that mean to us?

Well, groups like the CTF warn that's going to be $900 a year on average for Alberta families by 2030, when the last coal-fired plant is to be shut down.

The government puts the figure at just under $500, to be reduced by rebates from the $3 billion per year the government expects to receive from carbon taxes.

What's that mean in a city like Red Deer?

Currently, the city is in the process of creating its own greenhouse gas reduction plan. I was pleased to be invited to help with the creation of that plan, representing that part of Red Deer interested in more sustainable and active transportation. A wide variety of representatives from government, business, power regulators, and citizen groups are at the table.

Here's a bit of what we know so far. Every person in Red Deer is responsible for about 17.5 tonnes of CO2-equivalent gas emissions per year. In 2010, the start-point for the plan, that came to 1.77 mega-tonnes of CO2 equivalent every year, most of which will remain in the atmosphere for many decades.

The goal, as set by the International Protocol on Climate Change, is to reduce that number to 30 per cent below what it was in 1990, which is the global goal required to avoid temperatures rising by more than the “tipping point” of two degrees.

How can we possibly get there? By everyone ditching their cars and biking or walking to work? Nope, not even close.

The largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Alberta cities is not from our cars, but from our buildings. That's because they're 55-per-cent powered by coal, and almost all heated by natural gas.

There will be no approaching our share of the GHG reductions, without switching away from coal-fired electricity. In British Columbia, where there is so much hydro power, the balance is much different. In Norway, where almost all electricity is hydro, the government wants the entire country to eventually run all its automobiles on electricity.

But Alberta needs a giant technology switch from coal to renewables for electricity, or we will forever be known as a “dirty” producer of energy, which will hurt growth in our most valuable resource industry, the oilsands. 

That's both the rock and the hard place the province is in.

Robin Campbell a former Alberta energy minister and former environment minister, is now president of the Coal Association of Canada.

He says a significant portion of that $3 billion in carbon taxes should be directed toward technologies to reduce the emissions from burning coal. Good luck with that.

In a province that has always done the easy thing when it comes to everything from energy production to urban planning, the easiest thing is a technology switch to renewables.

You can't get there without charging a price for carbon emissions from everyone that creates them. Whining about the short-term cost doesn't help, either.