Note to Sun Media

Letter to the Editor, July 2008

Sir:

In your July 16th column Separate reality for the Liberals you described the National Energy Policy signed into existence by Premier Lougheed and Prime Minister Trudeau as: "...one of the most sweeping government policies ever undertaken in Canada. Under the guise of energy security, the NEP redistributed Alberta's oilpatch wealth towards the federal government and consumers in the rest of the country."

I would really appreciate an explanation of that statement. Since the NEP consumer price controls only affected Canadian consumers, minority purchasers of Alberta crude, most of the oil wealth imagined to be Alberta's would not be touched. With Alberta as a part of Canada, Albertans investing in, for example tar sands development, could avail themselves of federal grants covering up to 80% of their costs. Grants to 35% of costs were available for those preferring to invest in conventional wells. Meanwhile the NEP did nothing to remove resource control from its constitutional provincial domain, nor did it change Alberta's minimalist royalty structure.

The only ones losing wealth under the NEP would be those foreign investors who determined to remove it from Alberta in the first place.

You then go on to say: "For Albertans who lost their homes, jobs and businesses in the years that followed, 'NEP' became a rallying cry..." Admittedly you do not directly state the NEP caused what many Albertans consider an economic slump - which would be better described as the lessening of an economic boom by most of the world's standards - but the implication is still there.

The history of world oil prices for the past 60 years from WTRG Economic strongly suggests US price controls were the major influence that resulted in the world price drop from slightly over $70/bbl in 1981 to the low twenties that were reaching in the mid 1980's.

Surely even Sun Media can't believe that Ottawa or a combination of Ottawa and the Liberal Party of Canada have such power over the world price of petroleum. Or could they?

On a more editorial note, the comment "The sad reality is the politics of disunity have served the Liberals well over the years" may well be correct, but it would be more revealing to replace the word 'Liberals' with 'Sun'. Sun Media sets the gold standard when it comes to negatively focusing attention on the differences between Canadians.