Where the Sun Don’t Shine： Rural Alberta rises up against solar farms
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Summary
In this episode of the Business Standard, we take a look at some of the big breaking news stories in the business world, and how they affect us here in the Business Capital of Western Canada, Calgary, Alberta.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to the second edition of the Business Standard. My name is Sean Poolzer and
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we're here to take a look at some of the big breaking news stories in the business world and
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how they affect us here in the business capital of western canada calgary alberta first out of
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the gate we've got a lot to talk about in terms of market volatility there's an old saying in
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stock markets that volatility is your friend and the caretop in the white house there is nobody
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more volatile you'd think that mr trump would be welcomed by the markets but as we've seen
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that's not entirely the case with the main indexes firmly in the bear market territory
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going back to where they were before even Biden was president, or even the pandemic,
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coincidentally when Mr. Trump was in power. Now today they're up a little bit, but you know the
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the downward trend is down as far as it goes with tariffs and trade wars and trying to take over
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Canada as the 51st state, and Greenland is, I don't know what we're going to call Greenland,
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but it's ironic that Trump used the stock markets as a proxy for his success or failures of his
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economic policies in the first administration, which he has seemingly totally avowed in the
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midst of the latest market girations as the markets have swung back and forth from red
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to black territory, you know, especially as it happened last week, you know, he's got very good
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reason to, to be doing what he's doing, getting that every time he changes his mind, you know,
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the issue of tariffs, the market goes either way up or up or down. So just doing a little bit of
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thing, because we're going to talk a little bit about markets on this show. And, you know, I have
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had a look at him I tend to agree with people that the you know the markets
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aren't the be-all to end all it's it's not proxy for the economy as much as
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anybody would like to think it is or or however or comment on on Trump's
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economic policies in general or even for that matter the policies of the
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liberal government in Ottawa as we go through this federal election campaign
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but you know the almost daily fluctuations in the market even though
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they might not be good for your retirement portfolio or maybe the long-term health of the
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country. They're awesome for speculators, you know, because it's long-term investors know that
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it's almost impossible to pick the tops and the bottoms of the market, but speculators know that
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it's always about, say, you know, the roller coaster ride, shorting it and going long back
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in when it seems to suit you as it did last week. And, you know, it helps when the insider trader
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in chief tweets out his own personal stock ticker gjt and and urges people to buy out on twitter
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you know which is coincidentally owned by his uh good buddy the you know the doge hunter uh elon
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musk you know and two later hours later he's announcing a pause on tariffs after you know
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this very elaborate ceremony on the white house lawn you know barely a week ago uh proclaiming
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them on all of the world and you know including the penguins in antarctica right and uh you know
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it helps that his own personal company has about $450 million in market cap, you know, after losing
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$400 million last year, you know, when people buying into his big token and everything, you
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know, which is all to say Trump didn't become a millionaire for nothing. And so, well, it's a
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stretch to think that he's capable of single-handedly fixing the market. You know, that would be like
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fixing the New York state lottery or the 649, you know, which we all know is pretty much impossible
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to do you know it's certainly possible that some of his friends and associates you know
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the donald as he likes to refer to himself and the third person included could have made out with
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some really well-timed stock tips um martha stewart went to jail for less you know just keep that in
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mind and all of us here in the western standard are big martha stewart fans you know we we follow
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her gardening tips and everything religiously so martha went to jail remember um anyway so uh that
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said we're going to talk a lot on the show today about uh not just tariffs but uh we've got um
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jeff calloway from enrl um energized natural resources is going to come in and we're going
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to talk about uh some utility corridors through the hudson bay in addition to maybe a little bit
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about uh orphan wells uh jeff's company uh operates some well obviously they're not orphan wells but
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they're they're marginal wells are the kind that the alberta government wants to keep going until
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the end of their useful economic life and we're also going to talk with uh russell barnett of
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the rural alberta concerned citizens group who are opposed to uh solar farms out in
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in uh caroline and since it's come to light it turns out that there are literally dozens
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of communities all across alberta that are fighting with uh similar issues with the alberta
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utilities commission and some of the regulators on how to stop these things but uh in the meantime
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we're going to take a look at uh some of our stocks here that we follow at the western standard
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i've got a little bit of an index going here so in addition to the usual oil companies we've
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I wanted to put WestJet on it, but WestJet apparently is privately owned these days,
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so I had to put in Air Canada so that we could top it off with our vacation index,
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which is a look at some of the currencies and how the Canadian dollar is performing
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against our popular destinations like the American dollar and the peso.
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We're also going to take a look at some of the big broader markets,
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which, like I said, are up today, but I've got this nice little article here from
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themarxist.com. So just in case you didn't think that communists were
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business people, it turns out they are. And we've got a defense of Trump's trade policies here
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from themarxist.com, from a fellow named Nikolai Abilin-Sevinson. And in it, he says, quote,
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the fact that the nation state puts a limit on the development of the productive forces has been
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explained time and time again by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. So there you go. If that's
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not an endorsement of Trump's economic policies I don't know it is so and I'd
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just like to know what I know that a lot of Western Standard readers are Trump
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fans but he's not my president I didn't vote for him it's not my problem and so
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far as it affects the price of oil and in that regard the price was going down
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which is bad for our government here in Alberta because I know talking to
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uh premier smith and some of our finance ministers that every dollar up or down in the price of oil
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is worth about it's it's a ridiculous number it's about 750 million dollars to the provincial treasury
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and uh it's only become steeper in the last few years as more and more of these oil sense
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projects uh pay out and uh start paying royalties back to the government uh so
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take it with a grain of salt. I filled up my huge beast. It's got a hundred liter tank.
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The carbon tax came off and I was able to fill it up for, I think it was $1.47,
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whereas about two weeks ago, it was over $1.80. So I'm saving 30, 40 bucks on the tank gas,
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which is to say that, you know, Marx and Lenin would be proud of some of the things that Trump
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is doing and fighting against you know like currency manipulation intellectual property theft
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and then trading practices down with the bourgeois you know trump is merely fighting fire with fire
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and we'll have to see how it all plays out um but if you're the canadian government well you're just
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gonna have to get and bear it because nobody really knows what's gonna happen next which is
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by design and we're gonna have to take it one day at a time one thing that we can say is that we are
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going to be able to keep our nation for better or for worse and for richer or poorer because
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donald trump has done us all a favor when it comes to national unity he has done the one thing
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that governments for a hundred years in this country have not been able to do and so this
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notion of removing inter-provincial tarried barriers and becoming self-sufficient and things
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like energy we shall see and in that vein um not only are we going to look at some of our favorite
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stocks like i said they're up today but uh the energy complex which we're all concerned with
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here in calgary will seem to hold up better than most because the old tnt investment philosophy
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when recesses take holds tnt stands for toilet paper and toothpaste which are things that people
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are still going to need no matter if the economics are up and down and energy and gasoline is
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certainly one of those things so and it also helps that the carbon tax has been repealed
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so it's a double-edged sword and we're gonna have to take whatever we can get
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i've got a record i've got a report here from semaphore these are well they're net zero
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investment gurus and they're talking about the global fundamentals for things like crude oil and
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ev batteries which are particularly subject to tariffs and as we all know subsidies here in this
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this country, which they predict will spark a trade war outside of the US,
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particularly places like Canada and Europe, where the governments are
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fighting to keep the value of these subsidies. The good news is that there's
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LNG competition in Europe. Remember, there's no business case. Our
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illustrious leader, dear Chairman Justin, said that there was no business case to
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shipping LNG to Europe or Germany but I when I was in Houston at the Sierra week energy talk
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conference I was able to talk to some gas company executives in Houston and they insisted that it's
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not too late for Canada to still get into the LNG game the massive LNG Canada facility is taking
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on gas as we speak starting in the first week of April and is on track to start exporting to Asia
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sometime this year. So assuming that we get at least one or two more of these export terminals
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up and running on the coast, there's a good chance that Canada could still be the third or fourth
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largest exporter in a market that's expected to double within 10 years. Like they always say in
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investing school and rehab, it's never too late. You just have to get started. So with that we're
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going to dive into our show and talk to some of our guests and hopefully turn this into a regular
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thing so here we go take it away john i'm here with jeff calloway from energized natural resources
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for those who don't know jeff is also the chairman of the western standard board of directors and
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he's got his offices here just down the hall in the elvedon center in western standard world
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headquarters. He's always been a valuable resource. I can just walk down the hall and pick his brains
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on some of these issues that are affecting the oil patch in the day. The government's mature
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well strategy was one of them. Jeff's company specializes in some of these older, lower
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productivity wells in the rural areas, which at the end of the day is good for both the Alberta
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government and the rural communities where the activities take place to keep them going longer
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for their maximum lives but that's not what we're here to talk about today we're going to talk about
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corridors and utility corridors and specifically to the hudson bay where jeff was a little bit of
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a mover and shaker and some of this activity that's going on in churchill and and the railway
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to revitalize it to get uh not just uh energy commodities like oil and gas and pipelines but
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also power electricity and uh commodities maybe such as uranium in saskatchewan to uh either one
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of these ports either churchill or i think it's port nelson port nelson i'm i'm being informed here
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port nelson uh that they're talking about redeveloping and using the hudson bay as a
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deep water port to get to some of these overseas markets in europe so i would just like to welcome
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jeff to the show and say hey how's it going this is our second edition oh yeah we are yeah i'm too
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bad i didn't make the first i'm not sure how that happened it was it was kind of a work in progress
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it just kind of happened uh it was quite spontaneous guinea pig for someone else okay
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but uh anyway thanks for uh coming on today and uh taking a few minutes so what can we say about
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energy corridors uh mark carney was in town here the other day and he was pitching sounded kind of
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like a pipe dream he was talking about energy corridors going east west north south uh maybe
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you can tell us a little bit about uh your involvement in uh hudson bay and uh maybe what
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you thought of what mr carney had to say well i mean it's a nice change in tone at least in some
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of the the language but it's kind of like uh prime minister trudeau's comments about the budget will
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balance itself it just doesn't work that way so they're still holding on to you know bill c69
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the tanker band c48 we've seen so many projects uh just get stymied and just can't get approved
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and move forward on under these bills and yet they seem steadfast in wanting to keep those
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so you can say you want to do utility corridors and you know unleash the energy independence
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so to speak of, of Canadian resources and get resources to global markets,
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but you actually have to do the actual real work to make it happen.
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And they say, they're not going to do that. And Carney has said that, you know,
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he wants to give, you know, basically veto rights to various provinces. Sure.
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And, you know, and consultations with indigenous communities.
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So if you're starting out giving effectively vetoes to various provinces or
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interest groups, whoever they may be, it's just not going to end up happening because each of
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them are going to want to extract the maximum of a pound of flesh and then you just don't see any
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projects going forward. We saw that actually with, there was a multitude of LNG projects
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proposed out on the West Coast and ultimately under Christy Clark's government out there,
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she was holding so many of them to such high standards that they all ended up collapsing.
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we finally had one now which is fantastic yeah and likely we'll see if if id you know come on
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phase two there which would be fantastic for the natural gas markets but um yeah we we should have
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had more by now oh yeah absolutely for sure yeah i've got this thing from uh some of four of these
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are our net zero people and they were talking about reviving some of the lng talks and uh not
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specifically about Canada per se but generally yeah you know with the global
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LNG market expected to double within the next 10 years or so which is something
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that we're gonna be talking about a little bit later well and we've seen
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China now they're stopping any imports of US LNG right hey would be great if we
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had our LNG plants operating out and timely exactly yeah and you know you
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can't just turn these things on on overnight like Trump seems to think you
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can move a manufacturing plant and get it operational in a month or two but it doesn't
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happen it takes years well you gotta admit like when i started covering this in the u.s um you
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know they didn't have anything there was there was an export ban on natural gas and now they've got
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a dozen of these things going along uh yeah say the gulf coast yeah and uh you know they're they're
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they really are moving and shakers in the in the game um so when we're talking about hasn't bay
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this isn't really a new thing is it no um well really it's far from a new thing it's like call
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it late 1800s is conceptually when it started and it actually originally started with a port
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development uh at Port Nelson which is just south of Churchill on the Hudson Bay and the Canadian
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government really got behind it at the time and they actually built there's a rail bed that goes
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right out to port nelson port nelson there's nothing there now but the rail bed is out there
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they had built a 17 span train bridge out to an artificial island but this is like 1910 so with
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those winds coming across the hudson bay to into that kind of shallow delta on the nelson river
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they just couldn't they didn't have the technology and equipment to really handle that at the time
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So that was just before World War I. World War I happens, kind of puts a pause on everything
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as the country's resources get focused on World War I. And, you know, then the thought is, okay,
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well, let's go up to Churchill, where you've got, you know, the Churchill River. It's a little
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better port. And at that time, it was a little bit colder. The trains were smaller. They built
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that, it was about 300 kilometers of rail line from Gillum up to Churchill. The problem with that
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west side of manitoba past thompson and then up to up to churchill so that impacts your
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the amount of of products you can put on that rail line and really the solution is to go to
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port nelson as part of a larger utility corridor type of concept for a at least a rail line it's
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only about a little over 100 kilometers from gillam out to port nelson you don't have to spend the
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gargantuan amounts of money on that last 300 kilometers going over muskeg and actually like
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i was actually part of a group going when omni tracks held the the rights to that they kind of
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put it up for sale because the it had flooded again and the railway was right operational so
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omni tracks was was that the american that was the american rail that were running it yeah and
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they had uh they were basically abandoning it yeah yeah so we actually had a deal to buy that
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The railway, the port, the port authority, the tank farm that was there and Churchill had been used to import as well as transfer like different fuels from that port up to other communities around the Hudson Bay.
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Right. And so you could use it as as oil and gas export facility or, you know, for fertilizer.
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That's been talked about a lot. It's currently being used for exporting zinc from one of the zinc mines in northern Manitoba.
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Yeah, they shipped about 10,000 tons last year to do 20 of ours.
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And obviously, it's a major resupply point for northern Manitoba and just northern air,
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because they bring ships around from Montreal up around northern Quebec to Churchill.
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As well as there's talk of putting, like, well, loading containers and stuff.
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either at the port or putting them to the port there and then shipping because if you're talking
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about inter-provincial trade barriers uh you know most people haven't been up in the arctic but they
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don't realize how remote these communities are like you know i've been to uh anuvik and you know
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and they have to barge fuel up in the summertime yep um you've got a short shipping mckenzie river
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right because there are no roads there are there is no highway yeah like you either airlift this
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thing like you're gonna have oh yeah dirigible you know heavy lip blimp yeah there's been those
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kinds of concepts as well and you know like there's a couple big gold mines that are being
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built up in the northwest territories and yeah northern ring of fires northern ontario but these
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are up in uh like was it the george mine deposit mount hope bagel way way north and so they've only
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got a short it's up there too right well that's the vetera i can never say it it's like on some
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island where they in the northwest passage where they can refuel the diesel ships yeah it's um
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it's a big empty empty place not a lot you can't just pop down to the store to you know get your
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parts for whatever whatever gets broke so you need to load up you know in that short shipping
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season but in terms of Hudson Bay you know obviously you know yes it's ocean
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it's salty right but of course it's fed by a lot of the freshwater lakes so it's
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not as salty is what say the Atlantic Ocean is but a lot of that ice that's in
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there is only first-year ice and so it's easy to actually traverse it's not it's
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not very hard. And the open ocean, like the lack of ice in the Hudson Bay, that season is expanding
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here as we are progressing through time. One of the benefits of climate change. Climate change.
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We have no editorial policy. That's right. Yeah. So what do you see happening in the future? Are
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you encouraged by some of these developments? Now the government in Manitoba has been talking,
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the new premier can you yeah canoe yeah I can't say it but I can kind of visualize it yeah so
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they've donated some money for some studies and they're going to build some hydro out there I
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think hydro is a missing link well there's there's a few dams already on the Nelson River like it's
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designated as an industrial river already they are talking about expanding more of their electricity
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production and then clean electricity production in manitoba sure and you could run you know like
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these big power lines like say straight across to fort mcmurray and like for some perspective it
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sounds like a long a long ways but it's kind of it's it's like going from calgary to northern
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alberta it's the same distance across a little over a thousand kilometers and you know it's over
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pretty empty ground so right um you could easily easily go and do that you could easily um if you
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just put a little bit of a rail spur out to uh port nelson you could you can really start shipping
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a lot of goods out there like through offshore um terminals uh type of thing more than just like
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oil and gas yeah yeah yeah absolutely no more goods yeah yeah 100 percent um what was it they
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They were talking about one of those inland ports in Winnipeg, right?
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Yeah, that's almost like a tax-structured type of development, you know, in Winnipeg.
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There was a global warming, washed away half the country, moved to, shipped to the rivers.
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And then the next thing you know, they were world traders, right?
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So it would, it would really, I mean, it would, it would save a ton in, in shipping costs.
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It's done everywhere else in the world, like on all across the North of Russia, we've seen
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dozens and dozens of oil tanker ships, even not even ice rated tanker ships now going
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across northern russia not recommending that but uh but they do and you've got the gulf of bothnia
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which is off uh finland you know that's often ice laden people who live in eastern canada will know
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that the saint lawrence is often you know we're full of ice and we still ship you know product
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into montreal and quebec city so yeah i know like uh through the saint lawrence yeah that seems to
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me like uh how often is that thing uh frozen i remember when we were in school we used to see
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see the pictures of the you know the boats that would get stuck in the winter do they even get
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stuck through the whole entire winter anymore yeah they i i i can just say i know for a fact
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they do because i just saw an article on that the other day that there was a ship stuck in the
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in the st lawrence it needed some some help because of some ice but uh you know they they
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deal with it now as canadians we deal with it there's a there's a great canadian shipping
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company i mean they they go all up to the north and they ship through the ice like we we do it
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canada already it's just people aren't aware of it so right yeah and then uh it's kind of timely
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with these uh trump tariffs if we're looking for a way out and we're going to increase into
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provincial prey trade and reduce barriers and things then we're gonna have to get it somewhere
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right yeah and what if it is a very central location yeah oh yeah 100 and we've got massive
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amounts of resources in this country to actually ship like we have no no risk of running out i
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mean as much as people are have probably become aware of the immensity of the oil sands the
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amount of oil that's there yeah we have probably multiples of that in natural gas reserves and
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resources in i heard it or else on critical uranium hot ash yep yeah copper mines and that
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goes diamonds yeah diamonds in the north yeah and that actually kind of goes back to what
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you know carney says these words about you know getting these resources to market but if you're
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going to keep you know bill c69 we're going to continue to see things like mines take i mean
00:26:56.140
5 10 12 years for approval and so despite um it's good it's welcomed that the carney has said that
00:27:04.460
oh we're going to get the the approval timelines down from five years to two years through a single
00:27:09.100
regulatory window yeah that's what we we used to have right vote conservative though because
00:27:14.940
they'll do it in one so sure or even uh you know we were talking before the show that uh it's going
00:27:22.140
to take him probably at this rate five years to be able to come up to the with an agreement to
00:27:26.700
actually lay the foundation for this uh two-year window so and how long is the liberal term going
00:27:32.380
going to last i mean and if you give provinces and or other interest groups uh an effective veto
00:27:39.280
on it you're never going to end up seeing and why wouldn't you if you i mean if you're a rural
00:27:44.840
uh native band up uh you know on your reserve you've got maybe 10 000 people well there's only
00:27:49.740
40 000 people all in the entire northwest territories yeah and they handed you a video
00:27:54.460
or a veto wouldn't you take it well i mean just in the sense of calgary here make demands yeah
00:28:01.940
When the province wanted to put through the ring road,
00:28:10.380
and they got a billion dollars out of the province
00:28:14.120
They had to change the name of the one stretch there
00:28:17.280
It's not the Sucina, it's over by where the Costco is.
00:28:25.620
to break the smash curb so that they could put the road
00:28:29.120
Yeah. Yeah. So if you don't have that will from the federal government itself and you're giving vetoes and out, it just it's not going to it's not going to happen.
00:28:39.240
I mean, business and capital is fluid, so it will flow to other places where it can make make things get projects actually developed.
00:28:49.060
And that's just not Canada right now. And unfortunately, we've burned a lot of these foreign investors as governments.
00:28:56.420
And so they're they're very cautious on deploying capital here.
00:28:59.700
So by contrast, you you look at my wife is Ugandan.
00:29:05.620
So, you know, go over there and you can see how you've got a country of 50 million people.
00:29:12.240
You know, third world country wants to, you know, improve its economic plight.
00:29:16.700
Sure. They've got a lot of oil resources in the west side of the country.
0.82
00:29:20.660
the president is strongly pushing through you know a pipeline for export as for tanzania to
00:29:26.860
get to the coast you're seeing massive investment in oil and gas development because they know and
00:29:32.160
they see the positive impact that oil and the revenues and the royalties will have on jobs
00:29:39.480
infrastructure development so you know social services funding health care education all that
00:29:44.380
we seem to have like they can they've got that figured out in africa like maybe we should
00:29:51.600
start taking a lesson from the africans i don't know right so um are you still involved in this
0.76
00:30:00.000
like where do you see no i'm not i'm not anymore so after how to pie it's gone back into the pie
00:30:06.920
in the sky well in terms of hudson bay um was was involved for a while and then you know there's a
00:30:13.460
group that really pick up the torch from well to be very blunt about it um we hadn't we had an
00:30:20.160
agreement and we were literally told by the representative from uh trudeau's the prime
00:30:24.800
minister's office there's no in way we're going to let you uh buy this those are that's that's
00:30:31.840
the quote you can fill in the blank right and um so that kind of put a put a pause on that but
00:30:38.580
another group called Niestan has really picked up the torch. It's an indigenous-led
1.00
00:30:44.500
entity that's moving the whole utility corridor forward. And yeah, it's fertilizer, grains,
00:30:52.740
which is very applicable to there. Yeah. So yeah, I was talking with Robin before. He's a mutual
00:30:59.220
friend. And it is a very interesting concept and they've persevered. I give them a lot of credit
00:31:07.060
because negotiating with, you know, three different provincial governments and all the various native bands that they've been able to cobble everyone together.
00:31:14.920
And, you know, then there's election changes and changes in government and changes in band leadership.
00:31:20.020
And so they've they've but they've done a good job.
00:31:24.080
It is good now that we've seen Trump's tariff threats.
00:31:28.420
It seems to be catalyzing and coalescing some opinion around making this a priority.
00:31:33.920
And so I hope that the various governments get behind them and make it happen.
00:31:41.140
I mean, he has managed to do something no leader in this country has done for the last 150 years, which is unify it, right?
00:31:50.120
Well, unify it and hopefully it results in some action and not just words.
00:31:56.220
And that's the problem I see with Carney's pronouncements on energy.
00:32:02.160
They're words, but they lack the actual substance to make things happen.
00:32:06.540
So, again, I chalk it up to nothing more than like Trudeau's comments about, you know, the budget will balance itself.
00:32:14.720
So what we've seen out of the Conservative government proposals and their campaign platform is much more encouraging to actually seeing Canada unleash its wealth and potential,
00:32:54.920
i appreciate you taking the time yeah pleasure yeah uh as always yeah likewise so if you want
00:33:00.680
to talk about orphan well stuff too you know that's maybe let's save that for another show
00:33:05.000
yeah that's a work in progress as well and it is it is and it's another one of those complicated
00:33:10.360
issues extremely complex issues there are some solutions but there's no overnight uh quick fixes
00:33:17.720
to the to the issue so and there never are so uh there we go there's uh there's jeff and uh
00:33:24.360
talking about utility quarters and a little bit about orphan wells thank you very much
00:33:30.360
okay here we are with uh russ barnett who heads up nobody really knows what it's called they're
00:33:36.920
going by the formal handle of the rural alberta concerned communities group acronym raccg
00:33:45.000
it's kind of an informal coalition of landowners and concerned citizens near caroline who are
00:33:49.640
opposed to a solar farm that's almost twice as big as the town itself and since putting together this
00:33:55.320
coalition um it's against an alberta utilities commission ruling which by coincidence came down
00:34:01.320
on friday the february 28th at five o'clock which we in the news business called the witching hour
00:34:07.560
because that's usually when the bad news comes and the powers that be don't think that there's
00:34:11.720
going to be a chance for anybody to really respond to it well caroline did and i happened to travel
00:34:17.480
out for a meeting in the arena where skating legend and Canadian icon Kurt Browning spent
00:34:23.080
his formative early days training and I can tell you firsthand that these are motivated people
00:34:27.960
they're reasonable people and they are exposing a shortcoming in the legislation when it comes to
00:34:32.200
renewable energy in general and for all the right reasons. Surprise, surprise when we started
00:34:37.400
covering the story here in the Western Standard it exploded and as it turns out there are at least a
00:34:42.120
dozen other municipalities across Alberta that are in the same situation with respect
00:34:46.680
to unwanted renewable developments in their communities and they're mostly on private land
00:34:52.360
it was like all these voices thought they were crying alone in the dark and it's starting to
00:34:56.200
turn into a real movement so uh one of the other interesting things was after we started running
00:35:02.680
these stories and i'm not sure that russ knows this uh we got a letter from uh people in wayburn
00:35:08.040
saskatchewan which is experiencing some of these similar issues and they wanted us to cover their
00:35:12.360
story as well. So here we are with Russ and we're going to check in and see what they're doing and
00:35:18.040
what some of their next steps are. And it seems like there's been developments every day, Russ.
00:35:22.820
How's it going? No, it's going pretty well. Thanks for the opportunity, Sean.
00:35:26.740
Well, thank you. So you sent me a quick little email here today about how the AUC is starting
00:35:33.780
to pull down the videos of the public meetings that are going on on their website. Do you think
00:35:38.700
that that's kind of a response to maybe some of the negative coverage that they've been getting
00:35:42.380
from this you know i'm not sure if this is a if this is a new thing or whether they uh this has
00:35:48.380
been standard practice since the beginning i know that uh i certainly watched all the five days of
00:35:55.040
proceedings that that we had and i looked at other ones as well and uh there's been a couple of other
00:36:00.920
articles done by other media that's been put up on youtube and and that's been removed by the auc as
00:36:06.200
well. Really? And so this whole, like how this started was a couple of years, two and a half
00:36:12.740
years ago, I live in Caroline and the, we were notified that there was going to be a developer
00:36:19.960
was moving into Caroline and would like to put a solar farm here in Caroline and within the
00:36:25.620
village limits and about twice the size of the, of the community. And so there wasn't that much
00:36:33.340
resistance because the possibility of this being approved, uh, based on, you know, common sense
00:36:39.620
and the people's thoughts were like, this has no chance because it's going to be built across the
00:36:43.820
street within village limits, uh, across from a kid's park, the outdoor rink, et cetera, like
00:36:49.140
literally across the street. And so it started and then the UCP government, you know, they were
00:36:55.380
elected in May, 2023, you know, by the representing the people of Alberta. And then in, uh, I guess
00:37:02.680
was august of that same year august 2023 they brought uh daniel smith and the ucp government
00:37:08.680
brought in a pause on renewables while they assessed what was happening and so that pause
00:37:14.840
ran for a year and we thought that okay it's been paused and common sense is going to come back
00:37:20.520
and uh and these things will you know be evaluated on on the merits and you know with municipal input
00:37:26.600
etc and following well there's four main things that the ucp government brought in
00:37:32.280
uh in for the renewables and they wanted the auc to focus on agricultural land and that's a big one
00:37:39.960
and then they wanted to protect viewscapes for you know this the wind farms and the solar projects
00:37:45.160
etc yeah the other one was to pay attention to municipal input and then to make sure that there
00:37:51.000
was reclamation costs even if it's on private land such that when the solar farm or solar project
00:37:57.480
had run its life then there would be you know reclamation dollars and everything would be
00:38:01.320
taken care of and it would be removed and so we we never really got that involved because it was
00:38:08.440
on pause and these things were coming and and there's absolutely no way that anybody would
00:38:13.240
look at the project proposed project in caroline and say okay so you know that's that's okay it
00:38:19.880
protects the view scapes you know it's only across the street uh it's on agricultural land but that's
00:38:25.480
no big deal we've got a new term called agrivoltax it's a marketing term like solar farm like it's
00:38:31.000
not a farm it's a project and agrivoltax is a not it's a you know it's a dreamt up term right and
00:38:37.480
so they just kept it just kept moving along and uh you know we got involved and when you look at the
00:38:44.600
AUC you know they're a quasi judiciary and they're supposed to be under the control of mr newdorf and
00:38:50.520
ultimately uh daniel smith yeah and uh you can't fight the AUC because they control the process
00:38:58.600
there's no such thing as an appeal because you're going back and you're asking them you're you have
00:39:03.880
to prove that they've made errors on their regular decision it's the same group you're going back
00:39:08.920
it's a request for variants they don't even call it an appeal right and so right from the beginning
00:39:15.280
we realize that the group and other folks like you said before around rural Alberta we recognize
00:39:20.780
that you can't fight the AUC they control a process it's the same group they have a huge
00:39:25.580
propensity to approve every sort of project and they'll go through contortions to justify those
00:39:31.260
approvals so much so that they look foolish right well perhaps that's the reason that these videos
00:39:38.320
and these hearings on YouTube are being removed
00:39:44.120
their justifications make them look ridiculous.
00:39:48.460
Yeah, I've snapped through some of these hearings in the past,
00:39:51.500
and, yeah, I know kind of what they're all about.
00:40:04.500
but he seems to be kind of on your side in all this as well.
00:40:07.820
would you would you agree with that for sure let's face his his uh constituency offices in
00:40:13.560
rocky mountain house yep so because of the amalgamation uh you know clearwater got in got
00:40:20.100
engaged you know rather late i would say but they had the opportunity to go over and sit down
00:40:25.540
personally with with nixon and explain everything that was happening yeah and that caused him to
00:40:31.160
write the letter to mr newdorf yes and i followed that letter who's been a little less committal i
00:40:36.880
i understand you know um and i've met him as well and he's an amicable fellow but uh you know yeah
00:40:43.360
he's he's almost kind of a junior minister in the in the whole thing because he's said before that
00:40:47.760
like his portfolio isn't really that big and when when we're talking about this power portfolio and
00:40:53.440
in terms of like exports from alberta you know we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars
00:40:57.680
it's not a million of dollars kinds of kinds of things so it almost seems like you guys were
00:41:04.000
probably a little bit off the radar yeah the when you think about that from the power power uh you
00:41:10.340
know generation capability and what it does to actually rule alberta and alberta in general
00:41:14.580
the if the solar farm here solar project was up and running and it ran for a complete year based
00:41:21.520
on all the previous statistics and sunlight area in this area etc it would generate it would add
00:41:26.800
to the alberta utility grid 0.013 so why are they going through all this uh it's an insignificant
00:41:35.200
amount for 0.01 why would they raw so many feathers oh and i and i understand that caroline's
0.90
00:41:41.500
only 500 people but you know uh it seems to have really kind of caught fire across uh the rest of
00:41:47.920
the uh alberta well if you could build something and let's say it costs you a hundred dollars and
00:41:53.620
and you got $50 from the government to build it, then you could turn around and sell it for $75
00:41:58.340
after 12 months of operation. Why wouldn't you do that? Sure. Why wouldn't you? Exactly.
00:42:06.340
So, yeah, all these emissions credits and they're using the credits to finance these things.
00:42:13.540
You know, I got a real lesson in renewable economics just talking with you over the last
00:42:19.620
a couple weeks here you know that you can you know steven jabal was running around touting
00:42:25.380
uh alberta's renewable grid market while alberta's got the only deregulated power market in the
00:42:30.660
country and yeah if you can go and get 30 tax credits from federal government you can use
00:42:35.380
emissions credits and then you can bankroll this thing and you know you're from germany
00:42:39.620
or wherever they're from yeah and then build it and then turn around and sell it without having
00:42:43.940
to put up a dime of uh you know the reclamation like you you talked about you know we've got this
00:42:48.580
big issue in Alberta here with the abandoned orphan wells and some people are saying that's
00:42:54.020
going to cost a hundred billion dollars and you know don't quote me on that because I'm going to
00:42:57.740
have a Alberta energy regulator calling me up and saying that the no taxpayers aren't paying for that
00:43:02.540
but you know really we are right yeah it's the it's the it's the whole AUC process is corrupt
00:43:10.100
and there's some you know some blatant things that highlight that for example the developer
00:43:16.360
has to is tasked to re to report to the AUC the municipal i guess opinion of of the project
00:43:25.720
so of course you know the developer you go out and tell us and of course that you know they're
00:43:29.400
motivated to get it done so is the AUC so in the example of caroline you know we've got about 500
00:43:35.720
people 302 voters you know eligible voters ecp type or you know and most of them were in the in
00:43:41.800
the arena there that day it was like pretty much i was still sitting there thinking that wow that
00:43:46.600
must be pretty much the entire voting population of the town that's right and so uh you know i'm
00:43:52.440
an accountant on the back side so i like numbers and so i went in and looked at all the information
00:43:57.160
that was put forth uh by pace which is the company which is only 50 uh out of the uk and 50 out of
00:44:04.280
germany so it has nothing to do with really with canadian operations other than the local people
00:44:08.920
hired or the community right yeah or the community so i went and looked at the information that pace
00:44:15.160
put forward and and they put forth to the AUC that the population of the village of caroline supports
00:44:21.560
it and so then they had nice pie graphs and bar graphs and things so i went in and took a look
00:44:27.320
because i know i'm within it's literally if i look out my window here i would be able to see it
00:44:32.760
and so we looked at and the sample size that was provided to the auc was 12. oh my gosh the amount
00:44:40.380
of people that supported it were seven and so that got a favorable review unbelievable and so
00:44:46.160
so the auc says well the village didn't object the people didn't object the village council
00:44:52.260
i mean they were basically you know missing in action the whole process well and you're being
00:44:57.780
uh amalgamated into clearwater county right there's a devolution there the town into a
00:45:02.400
amrit that's correct so anything that isn't explicitly stated uh is viewed as a positive
00:45:08.980
by the auc right so you know it's it's just it's a corrupt process and that's one and then they
00:45:15.820
have the same company that's going to provide the uh reclamation costs or the bonding or what's
00:45:22.280
supposed to happen that's the same company that provides the estimate as to what you know what
00:45:26.700
is supposed to be removed so there's multiple things throughout the process that really make
00:45:30.880
technological sense well and one of the things that you were talking about too was this mitigation
00:45:35.540
they're going to use the sheep to eat the grass underneath the solar panels but you're on the
00:45:41.360
eastern slopes of the rockies and you know there's wolves and coyotes and bears and well all these
00:45:48.000
mitigation efforts right are are basically you know none of them have been proven in in the
00:45:53.660
you know in the agribaltics one what's the fallback you know when the saskatoon berries never
00:45:59.240
work right or the lettuces don't work and the bears come in and eat them yeah right and then
00:46:04.760
so like you said with all you know here's the plan to put sheep in well who's going to do the
00:46:09.620
sheep who's managing the sheep well we don't really know do they have any experience no
00:46:13.760
it's almost like bugs bunny and the and the coyote right the coyote and the dog
00:46:18.380
so the developer the developer is able to say this is a process that works and there's no
00:46:24.000
empirical evidence required from the developer's side right when the community because it's never
00:46:28.840
been done really i mean like we're talking about an industry that's they don't even ask for evidence
00:46:33.240
right so when we say it's going to reduce property values and it's going to do this and we hire
00:46:37.940
independent experts h3 you know environmentalists and all these other people right and they then
00:46:43.800
they produce information in the auc hearing well right you know you need all this evidence but auc
00:46:49.780
can just say well you didn't have anything specified there was no land use bylaws in
00:47:23.040
yeah it must have been a long time ago or the 50s right so they just keep on amending these
00:47:28.700
bylaws as time goes by right and it's like you said these uh solar developments haven't even
00:47:33.240
really been around so what's the position of the county yeah so the big problem that the county
00:47:38.920
has and all the other municipalities and things milo and hannah and lamond and all these other
00:47:43.160
ones that i'm talking to sturgeon lake and smoky river and things is that these municipalities in
00:48:14.920
with the Clearwater Council because they face the same
00:48:16.940
thing well why why do that because the AUC can just override us in my where do they stand now
00:48:22.280
where does Clearwater stand on it they're fighting it they are they're they are they are participating
00:48:27.980
in the proceeding they've highlighted palpable errors they've hired lawyers they filed a game
00:48:33.140
this morning up onto the onto the AUC proceeding so that that the county is now you know involved
00:48:39.680
they had to be pretty much they were over there talking face to face with Mr. Nixon right and
00:48:44.580
And so, well, and you guys have only amalgamated with the county since, I think it was effective January 1st, right?
00:49:00.540
So we were also talking about, Premier Smith was on her talk radio show.
00:49:06.140
As we all know, the Premier Smith used to be a talk radio show host when she was kind of in the political wilderness.
00:49:12.660
Were you encouraged by some of her comments? She made some kind of encouraging comments that maybe perhaps this is a little ideologically motivated from the previous NDP government, but at the same time, it seemed like she's kind of stopped short of maybe implementing another moratorium 2.0 or making some actual legislative changes.
00:49:34.460
yeah so we were encouraged and uh mark was one of the one of the folks that i've been speaking
00:49:41.500
with and things and he called into the show and uh and she acknowledges that this is left over from
00:49:47.980
you know from the knotley era this is ideological driven there really is no sort of common sense
00:49:53.920
behind it she talked about the need for baseload power you know in order to have a reliable utility
00:50:00.600
grid etc well she's talked about that uh a lot or since she became premier yeah and she is very
00:50:06.440
uh knowledgeable about some of these issues i would say yeah and then she brings up the private
00:50:10.760
ownership thing and the protection of of you know private ownership and what they can do with the
00:50:15.560
with the land well with your own land yeah but of course that that's a that's a ridiculous uh
00:50:22.360
point in my opinion because well to a point i mean you know there's a thing in chastamere
00:50:29.000
do you know the story on the water slide park there guy built it on private land and it's like
00:50:33.320
one of the world's largest one slides and it's completely abandoned and it's on uh totally on
00:50:39.560
on the interweb of one of the like the top 10 creepiest places on earth you know after like
00:50:46.040
you said after it's been abandoned like and how do how do you pull up all that cement and uh you
00:50:51.400
know everything that went into it right so i don't feel that you know you you can't just take when
00:50:57.320
you buy a piece of property it comes with rules and regulations and zoning and mineral rights
00:51:02.680
all the other sort of stuff so to protect that i understand my house in calgary i can't uh start
00:51:07.640
painting up murals on the front of my house well no and like you know i can't bring i can't bring
00:51:13.880
drilling rigs into my backyard here and start drilling for geothermal feet you know yeah they'll
00:51:19.080
probably frown on that yeah for sure and so i think that's a weak excuse but her acknowledgement of the
00:51:23.960
the rest of it i think is encouraging okay and and i think that's what uh as a as the members
00:51:30.120
all around alberta um you know i guess become more and more cohesive then the voice will get
00:51:37.860
stronger and stronger but there's but there's definitely that i receive calls all day long
00:51:43.660
people are sending in my flyers and that's another one too i think when you were up in caroline you
00:51:49.180
saw the flyers that were created you know stop this insanity let's tell the AUC yep so you know
00:51:55.560
print your name and address and everything and phone number and email and all that sort of stuff
00:51:59.540
well those were all excluded those I filed all those up on the proceeding with the AUC yeah and
00:52:05.620
the AUC uh fought back with the freedom of information and privacy act saying that these
00:52:10.580
people explicitly didn't say that they their names and everything could be made public right
00:52:16.740
and so my comment back to the aec because it says right on the flyer let's tell the aec you know if
00:52:22.020
they have a different interpretation as to why people sign this i'd be very interested to hear
00:52:25.700
it sure so but anyway so they just killed they just killed all those people that signed the flyers and
00:52:31.620
you know to show their support the aec denied all that yeah that happened here in calgary with the
00:52:36.500
recall day that's right 60 000 signatures on on a petition so uh what are the next steps here
00:52:45.380
Russell, what have you guys got up your sleeves?
00:52:49.440
One of the next steps that came off, and keep in mind,
00:52:52.700
I don't speak for all these people, but just sort of passing on what's happening.
00:52:57.180
But I think the next step is each person is solidifying their support
00:53:05.880
And so we're going to get together sort of as a more formal group.
00:53:10.040
And I think we'll multi-author a letter to the political people as well.
00:53:15.380
you know, expressing concerns. And the other one is to take some of the decisions that have been
00:53:22.360
previously made and compare those decisions and come up with some sort of commonality
00:53:27.920
as to how the AUC is going through contortions to justify things that just don't make sense.
00:53:33.300
There will be a common track in that. And so I think that's one of the things that we need to
00:53:38.160
do so we can sit down with Newdorf and the other politicians and say, look, this is what, it's not
00:53:43.300
just caroline caroline was the one that sparked this because it's probably the most ridiculous
00:53:48.220
one that's been proposed and been conditionally approved right the conditions are just you know
00:53:54.700
just crazy right right and and it's like you said i mean they promised to do this with the
00:54:00.140
that was the whole point of the moratorium pauses because people really didn't want this and it was
00:54:04.840
be able to give them a voice and and the saying how it was supposed to go right yeah but the ac
00:54:10.960
you know by their actions they've basically told the public that they don't really care
00:54:15.040
right or they're operating under some different standard yeah okay we're gonna have to cut it
00:54:20.960
there okay okay so i was just gonna say yeah go ahead i was just gonna say so if you if you win
00:54:28.140
one of these auc if you win in the hearing yep then the ac will coach the developer encourage
00:54:34.280
them to reapply right so that's and that's sort of sparking absolute outrage so that's what the
00:54:40.340
group is going to carry on that was in another one of your letters was kind of like um the open
00:54:45.920
door rejection policy or something like that this is the easter veil project yeah oh 700 acres of
00:54:52.660
glass on agricultural land right and yours isn't even 700 acres no but it's twice the size of the
00:55:00.200
village right like you said it's it's almost the absurdity of it all that's driving oh for sure
00:55:11.480
And chances are we're going to have you back on real quick
00:55:14.580
so that Western Standard readers can stay tuned
00:55:20.420
And in that regard, now it's time for me to make the pitch
00:55:27.420
If you're not already, just go up to westernstandard.news, sign up.
00:55:35.200
You know, one of the things when I went to Caroline,
00:55:36.780
I was really impressed with was how many people actually read the Western Standard and how many
00:55:41.420
people are using us as their main source of news to cover some of these exact issues like
00:55:47.260
that they're dealing with you know with the solar farms and the rural developers and so we just want
00:55:52.860
to make a pitch to all you folks out there to sign up it's extremely reasonable we're only talking
00:55:58.620
about 10 bucks a month which was I used to work at the Herald and I think you know one of the
00:56:03.500
criticisms was it was about two bucks a day and you know so the question was is like would you
00:56:07.820
pay two bucks a day to get basically wire copy and you know news that you can pretty much get