Many years ago I recall the then national NDP Leader Ed Broadbent was railing against what I believe was a then Liberal Government for subsidizing large corporations for the purpose of preserving jobs.
He called it “Corporate Welfare”. He was of the opinion that these large corporations did not need the assistance of government grants to survive.
I think the present NDP government in Alberta is planning to play a similar game to promote their Climate Change Plan.
The plan is to shut down the coal fired generating plants and substitute that generation of electricity with “renewable” wind and solar generation.
At the present time, wind and solar generation are not competitive with coal and gas generation.
The capital cost per megawatt of wind and solar generation is much higher than coal or gas and the other problem is that this type of generation is unreliable as the wind does not blow all of the time and the sun does not shine all of the time, especially in the winter, so there has to be some form of backup generation.
For wind and solar generation to be sustainable it requires large subsidization from government or a carbon offset.
This is the case with the Capital Power wind farm at Halkirk who receive 40 per cent of their revenue from a carbon off set from the State of California.
The Province of Ontario has chosen to directly subsidize wind farm owners with taxpayer funds and have substantially increased the cost of electricity to their consumers to recover the cost of that subsidization.
It appears to me, that for the Notley government to move forward on their Climate Leadership Plan, they will have to get large renewable energy projects into the development stage.
These projects would be unsustainable without government subsidization.
It would appear that this government is quite willing to support these projects with taxpayer funds and who will the recipients of these funds be? It will be large corporations because they are the ones who can raise the capital to finance projects of this nature.
So now, who are the sponsors of “Corporate Welfare”? Our NDP are the sponsors of this welfare, that’s who.
When it suits their objectives, they see nothing the matter with using the public purse to achieve that objective. The real problem with what they are doing is that they are trying to achieve the impossible objective of changing the climate.
As I have stated in previous columns, reducing C02 emissions will not change the climate.
I was at a climate change conference in Calgary on March 17 – 18. We had several high profile speakers there including Dr. Tim Ball, a leading climatologist, and they all were able to show evidence that C02 has never been a factor in climate change.
Climate change is driven by cycles in our solar system.
The people that support the theory of C02 caused climate change cannot show any evidence to support that theory. All they can do is accuse any one who disagrees with them of being a climate change denier.
What is so frustrating is that governments, the media and environmentalists refuse to look at the real facts, so those that refuse to look at the facts are the real deniers.
There are trillions of dollars being wasted all over the world on this flawed science when the money could be much better used to make the world a better place to live.
I believe the motivation for NDP Climate Leadership Plan was really an excuse to implement the carbon tax. They must know that they cannot make a difference, especially in Canada, on changing the climate.
The carbon tax would be discretionary funds that could be used for their pet social programs like income redistribution, child care spaces and yes some of it will be used to promote their much lauded Climate Change Plan!
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