Western Standard - November 04, 2023


Alberta Pension Plan ‘Giving a voice to constituents’

Topics
gasoline relief and utility market stabilization Alberta pension plan
Mentioned
Nathan Newdorf Nigel
UCP 2023 AGM Update UCP AGM Day 2

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

170.79

Word count

1,032

Sentence count

60

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Learn English with Minister of Affordability and Utilities, Nathan Neudorf. In this episode, he talks about the challenges facing Alberta's electricity grid, the need to stabilize electricity prices, and the need for an Alberta Pension Plan.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 With me now is Nathan Neudorf, Minister of Affordability and of Utilities.
00:00:06.160 Lord knows we care about utilities at the moment. 0.98
00:00:09.760 Mr. Neudorf, how are things going at the conference today?
00:00:13.540 Things are going really well.
00:00:14.940 It's great to see so many people here, how engaged they are,
00:00:17.760 and the topics being discussed and voted on.
00:00:21.360 It is great to see the level of engagement.
00:00:23.140 It definitely gives us courage that people really do care about the government of Alberta.
00:00:31.640 I'm going to ask you, it's been announced several times already,
00:00:35.000 but I bet you would like to tell us again, how long is the gasoline relief lasting to now?
00:00:42.380 It's going to the end of the year, and we're looking at the legislation to make that more permanent
00:00:47.000 and review that.
00:00:49.080 That's going through the process right now.
00:00:50.860 When you travel to BC, you certainly appreciate coming back to Alberta.
00:00:57.500 Utilities, how much trouble are we in?
00:01:01.840 I don't think we're in trouble, but I do believe that the market was not responding appropriately.
00:01:08.040 So if you know anything about renewables, we have more renewables being built in Alberta than ever before,
00:01:14.800 and they typically bid into the market at $0 per megawatt.
00:01:17.960 But then we had the highest prices that we've ever had in the history of Alberta.
00:01:23.020 Why is that?
00:01:24.060 To me, that says that the market wasn't working.
00:01:27.120 So we need to make sure that we correct that market.
00:01:30.120 We make sure that we reduce volatility in pricing so we can get the lowest affordable price for all Albertans.
00:01:37.260 So how does that integrate with more natural gas generators, or perhaps nuclear or run of the river?
00:01:45.660 What have we got to do to make sure that the lights stay on and the heat stays on when it's cold and dark?
00:01:51.700 That's right.
00:01:52.180 So basically, we have to create stability.
00:01:53.860 Those generators have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into their assets.
00:01:59.160 And if they have a very volatile pricing schedule that often is very, very low,
00:02:03.560 then when they do turn it on, they need prices to be very, very high to recover those capital costs.
00:02:08.160 If we can stabilize that so they have certainty that they're going to recover their capital investment,
00:02:13.800 and this is true for renewables as well,
00:02:15.860 then we'll see a stabilization in the market to make sure that we have an effective and competitive market
00:02:21.760 with some certainty for those investments that they're going to recover those costs over a long period of time.
00:02:27.460 And for Alberta, what is the problem with getting that done? 0.86
00:02:30.120 Well, right now, we're facing a very hostile federal government wanting to bring in clean electricity regulations
00:02:36.980 in a very accelerated time frame, which threatens that capital investment
00:02:41.180 and is demanding significant further investment just to green our generation,
00:02:47.280 which is in the magnitude for Alberta, somewhere between $200 and $400 billion.
00:02:52.380 If you divide that by the number of customers in Alberta and put it over 12 years or less,
00:02:57.220 it's going to make electricity prices very, very high and often unobtainable for those in Alberta.
00:03:03.320 That's why we're doing the hard work to stand up for Albertans
00:03:05.900 and make sure that we make this transition smartly and affordably.
00:03:10.880 I'd like to turn the subject now to the Alberta pension plan.
00:03:17.080 I noticed that the Premier didn't mention it during the keynote speech this afternoon,
00:03:25.080 but I did notice that you pulled a minor splash the other day.
00:03:30.760 Where do you stand on the Alberta pension plan, and what does it mean for your constituents?
00:03:37.380 Thanks for the question.
00:03:38.220 Yeah, I'm very supportive of an Alberta pension plan,
00:03:41.520 but right now, the reason why I believe the Premier didn't mention it is we're consulting with Albertans.
00:03:46.080 This is their choice, and while it would be, I believe, a very positive development for Albertans,
00:03:54.040 I have many constituents who are proud to be Albertan,
00:03:57.800 don't like how the federal government has treated them, but they're also proud Canadians.
00:04:01.780 And while this move could be very, very beneficial for Albertans,
00:04:05.460 it may cause undue financial stress for other Canadians, and we're proud to be Canadians.
00:04:10.640 So that's the conundrum, that's what many of my constituents have said to me,
00:04:14.860 and that's my job as an elected official, to represent them.
00:04:18.400 This isn't just about my personal opinion, this is about the people that I was elected to represent.
00:04:23.520 That seems very 19th century of you.
00:04:28.380 So what would they have?
00:04:31.500 I mean, the idea of an Alberta pension plan seems very logical when you listen to the Premier explain it.
00:04:41.020 On the other hand, what your constituents are telling you seems very logical when you listen to them explain it.
00:04:48.240 So how do you actually put these two together and come up with something that's going to work?
00:04:53.320 Sure, and I think it is about listening, and it's about finding information and sharing that.
00:04:57.480 And I believe the Minister of Finance and the team that's going around Alberta right now are helping to share all those findings.
00:05:04.080 There are some who question those findings, and we have the federal government being one.
00:05:08.240 So we've asked them, well, then you show us the work of what you think that calculation should be.
00:05:12.520 And the Premier has committed that we need to have that final number before, if and when, we were ever to proceed to a referendum.
00:05:19.740 So we want Albertans to have as much information as possible so that they can make the decision,
00:05:24.520 a, whether to even proceed to a referendum, and b, if they were to go to a referendum, what their choice would be.
00:05:32.220 When is the committee reporting back with its recommendations, the Jim Denning Committee?
00:05:37.620 I believe that they have a six-month period of time which they'll be doing that work,
00:05:42.720 and then they'll bring their findings back to government.
00:05:45.620 We look forward to that discussion.
00:05:47.100 Thank you very much, Nathan.
00:05:49.040 Nathan Newdorf, Minister of Affordability and of Utilities,
00:05:54.220 two supremely important ministries at this time in this province.
00:05:59.000 Hold on.
00:05:59.760 Thanks for stopping by.
00:06:01.140 Thanks so much, Nigel.
00:06:01.800 Really appreciate it.